Why Are You Wearing That
Parachute?
By Robin McCulloch
I remember the gesture very clearly. It was done with a care
for detail that informed all the work we did as improvisational
performers. It was like seeing one of those international
symbols inside the red circle, “no smoking,” “no
left turn” or “no dogs allowed.” I would
be on stage in front of a couple of hundred people, improvising
a scene I had pitched to one of my improv collaborators. Suddenly
you see the fear in their eyes; the hand would go to the chest
as if clasping something and then the distinct pull away from
the chest followed by the smile, half mocking, half seeking
forgiveness. Your improv partner had “hit the chutes”.
The gesture was that of pulling the ripcord on a parachute
and meant that they were bailing out. They sensed the scene
was going down in flames and as it hadn’t been there
idea in the first place, why stick around for the crash.
Does this have a familiar ring? Have you felt the clarion
call of the washroom sirens just as the meeting took a turn
for the worse? Or watched a colleague bail out on you when
things started to get tough? Maybe one of your kids broke
a rule, needs to be “spoken to” so knowing your
spouse is better at “that sort of thing” you head
out to “clean” the garage.
And we had no real excuse. We were supposed to be, arguably,
some of the best professional improvisers in the world. We
were on stage at the Toronto wing of The Second City, the
Mecca of improvisational comedy. A stage that had been, or
would be, graced by John Candy, Catherine O’Hara, and
the rest of their SCTV comrades, Mike Myers, Gilda Radner
and Dan Aykroyd…a very long list of accomplished improvisers
and actors. Also, the concept of “hitting the chutes”,
as we referred to it, was against the very principles of improvisation.
Support, agreement, acceptance and saying “yes”
to each new offer, these were the foundation of good improvisation.
So why would such accomplished improvisational performers
abandon each other to certain theatrical death? Maybe to understand
the fear you need to be aware of exactly what was being attempted
in the first place. There is a cyclical nature to the creative
process that exists at The Second City so it’s always
hard to know where to break into that cycle to start the explanation.
But let’s assume that a show has already been created
by you and your fellow cast members. Each night you would
do that set show, two acts, ninety minutes total, on average,
of memorized material. Then after taking a curtain call you
would get suggestions from the audience in various categories:
current events, occupations, pet peeves, etc. You would take
the suggestions back stage while the audience, you hoped,
would seek out that perfect mix of alcohol intoxication that
makes the jokes seem funnier but doesn’t make the audience
think they’re funnier than the people on stage.
The Pitch
Once you have the suggestions backstage, posted on the bulletin
board, you would immediately start pitching ideas to each
other based on a combination of suggestions or a single suggestion
or, to be honest, on something you had thought of that afternoon
while gazing at a waitress in a bar. You would have fifteen
minutes to pitch a couple of ideas, get someone to buy into
one or more of them, rope someone into the thankless roll
doing the grunt work to introduce your brilliant concept,
exchange some quick ideas about characters, grab a drink and
smoke before the lights start coming back up for the post-show
improv set.
Sound like some work meetings you’ve been in lately?
No time to solve too many problems while the folks that pay
your salary wait to see what kind of brilliant concepts you
discover.
While some of the other performers are out on stage taking
their chances you’re backstage, going over, in your
head, how you imagine the scene playing out. Then your turn
arrives. The lights come up to find you on stage and immediately
things start to change from the course you had imagined. The
performer you had enlisted to do the compulsory role of the
hotel Doorman has decided that the scene really revolves around
him. It is no longer a scene about two lovers sneaking into
a hotel for an afternoon tryst, but one about a Doorman who
secretly suffers from leprosy. Some initial shtick about a
one-handed Doorman suddenly makes your original partner decide
that the scene is no longer what they had agreed to and they
are refusing to enter. It doesn’t take long for the
Doorman to realize the leprosy joke is just that, a joke,
and will not carry a scene very far. He uses his good hand
to clasp the imaginary ripcord on his chest, hits the chute
and exits, leaving you alone, looking at your watch as the
lights fade to a smattering of confused applause.
I’m betting you can see the parallels with trying
to pitch your concept, which you thought your partner was
fully behind, for the new project. Suddenly he has a second
possibility that he has “just thought of” and
the other members of the team have come down with laryngitis.
The Post Mortem
What went wrong is that a group of highly competitive individuals
were attempting create something new in front of two hundred
people who had just seen ninety minutes of one laugh after
another. The audience didn’t know that the set show
they had just laughed through had started out as first time
improvisations in an improv set like the one they were now
watching. That it had been worked, re-worked, re-written and
rehearsed for months. No one told the audience that the performers
were abandoning the principles that made them successful.
How could they know that the very laughs that the performer
got as they backed off stage, at the expense of the scene
and fellow performers, were dooming the scene to failure?
I am sure you have all witnessed a fellow colleague getting
some laughs as they threw someone to the wolves to save their
own hide. You watch all that work go down the drain because
someone started feel the pressure and decided to hit the chute.
So what is the difference, then, between success and failure
in improvisation? Pretty much the same as it is in other aspects
of work and life. You can usually trace it back to commitment.
How much do you buy-in to the concept in the first place?
How committed are you to the team? If saying “yes”
is really just a subtly disguised “no” in the
form of “okay I’ll go out there with you but I
don’t think this is going to work”, then you can
almost hear the ripcord being pulled as the lights come up.
That gentle fluttering you hear is the room emptying even
though the bodies may still be there.
The Solution
To improvise well, you commit yourself on two levels, first,
to the principles of improvisation, acceptance, support, justification,
saying “yes”, and second, to the specifics of
the scene you are improvising. And your commitment can’t
be dependent on things staying the same because change is
inevitable.
The audiences at The Second City are usually very forgiving
because they understand that making it up on the spot is difficult
but is also rewarding when it all comes together in a magical
experience that seems too good to believe. But it is one thing
to be in the audience when it doesn’t come together
and quite another to be one of those poor souls on stage,
descending into comedy hell. Nothing quite focuses the survival
instincts like that first smell of failure; the first realization
that, Martian surgeons discovering why we have an appendix,
may only be funny to you. And once the not-funny veil starts
to descend over a scene most uncommitted improvisers start
to hear their mothers calling them home for dinner or if not
for dinner at the very least, OFF STAGE!
But when you see improvisation that is committed from the
start, ideas that seemed doomed at birth suddenly take the
most unexpected turns and become these amazing products of
positive cooperation. The desperate search for the “Big
Idea” seems unnecessary. “Big Ideas” go
nowhere without support and commitment. “Bad ideas”
can develop into great concepts with a supportive, committed
process.
The Second City was my office. Improvisation was the work
I did there. And the one thing above all others that made
the difference between failure and success was the level of
commitment.
Understanding the value of real commitment, to the team
and to the concept, can improve a team’s success rate
and innovative potential dramatically.
Think about this the next time you join a new project or
things seem to be going off the tracks or you realize your
Doorman only has one hand. When you feel yourself reaching
for that imaginary ripcord, ask yourself if you’re really
committed or you’re just “hitting the chute”?
Throw your parachute in the garbage because nothing is more
exciting or rewarding than using your support and imagination
to turn defeat into victory. And improvisation embodies
the principles that allow you to create solutions in a parachute
free workplace.
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