Enjoy not knowing

One of my favourite improv exercises is called 'What Happens Next?'. It goes like this: -

An actor stands on stage facing three 'directors'. The actor begins by asking "What happens?". The first director issues an instruction (eg "You pick up the letter sitting on the table"). The actor then plays that through. When she reaches the end of the action she asks "What happens next?" and the next director issues the next instruction, the actor plays that through and we continue in this way until the narrative is complete.

I use this a lot in auditions as a way of establishing which performers will happily give over control to others. In the example I gave above, an untrusting actor will take that first direction ("You pick up the letter sitting on the table") to mean "You pick up the letter sitting on the table, open it, read it, see that it's from a lawyer and react to the fact that you've just inherited a million pounds."

A trusting actor will simply pick up the letter and then ask the question.

Of course this may be the way that the scene progresses but the untrusting actor has taken it upon herself to do the directors' work; making four additional narrative choices when the object of the excercise is for her to make none at all. At a very basic level the actor does not trust her directors; she cannot wait to learn what happens next.

Improv works best when the actors genuinely don't know what's going to happen next. Experience teaches good performers to simply 'enjoy not knowing' because most of us in the audience find ignorance of the future a terrifying thing. Watching actors on a stage embrace that ignorance is a big part of what makes improv magical.

"Enjoy not knowing for a while" was also the best advice I was given when I quit my last job back in 1990. There are times in all our lives when the future is essentially unknowable and these are usually Big Moments; job loss, relationship breakdown, new parenthood and so on. We can choose to either rail against that fact that we don't know what happens next or simply embrace it for a while.

Something will happen. Something always does.