The Direction of Intention

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Keith Johnstone was one of the early pioneer’s of what we call Improvisation. He was a playwright and interested in developing better ways of writing dialogue. Much of what we now know as Improvisation was a result of a eureka moment he had one day with the actors in the studio. They realized that every relationship – every relationship – is a status negotiation. When his actors became conscious of taking high or low status, or flipping status, their work became dynamic and interesting. The path to better dialogue was through status. And, often the status negotiations were screamingly funny. So they experimented and played and laughed and discovered. And now we have this thing called Improv.

The word “status” is loaded and is often mistaken for “power over” others. That can be the case but is not necessarily so. Every time I introduce status games to a group of non-theatre folk they bristle at the word largely because no one wants their true status to be revealed. It is not nice to admit that you want status over others; everyone wants to be royalty or a superhero or a movie star. Who doesn’t want to go to the 20th high school reunion and show everyone just how well you’ve done and rub certain noses in your success? But, I don’t want to be seen as doing it.

If we are constantly in status negotiations (and we are) then we are also constantly in alliance negotiations. Within status and alliance there is choice. If your negotiation is a tug of war attempting to get others to see and agree with you (to be right) then you are negating power in others – playing for power over. If you are trying to control what others see/think/feel then you are negating power in yourself. This is an outcome focus.

There is another option. If your negotiation is oriented toward what you bring to the commons instead of what you get from it, if you are invested in creating instead of being right, generating instead of controlling, then you are quite literally creating power with others. Keith Johnstone also recognized that there was one simple rule that made the whole thing work: “Say, Yes, and….” In other words, embrace and work with what comes at you. Make and accept strong offers and something magic will emerge. It is a process dedicated to creating something bigger than any single participant is capable of creating alone. It is a field of possibilities in which negation, enabling, control, or being ‘right’ have no place. And it is rich with status!

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