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Chivalry and the Knights of Improv "Chivalry is the belief and practice of knights in the middle
ages and even today. Chivalry was a code of ethics upheld by noble landholders
and/or knights who were influenced by Christianity. The chivalric knight was
loyal, courteous, protective, and gentle and honorable to all, including
enemies. Knights sought love and glory, but not selfish love and glory; love
and glory for his lady and king first. " Our Vocabulary What is Fun-to-Play-With?
Now think about those players you don't like to play with. Why would
that be? Reasons might be:
If you look at the bad-things list, you'll see one major theme theme emerging: selfishness. This is the opposite of
Chivalry, according to the definition quote above. Hence, to get rid of
selfishness, we need to teach Chivalry! How to Teach Chivalry? Then again, do we think that Lance Armstrong does not hurt when he's
training for the Tour de France? Do we think that Venus William's joints don't
hurt after a long day on the court preparing for the Finals at Let's see how we can teach this without hurting too many prides and
egos. Shootout If you try it out just with those instructions, you'll have a shot, and
then see 3 players debate for themselves who shot first. Perhaps after a second
or so, one of them will give in and start dying. No-one likes to die, after
all. Then I change the rules. For every shot, at least one of the players
needs to die. I tell them that they should consider the dying part the most
fun. And why would they not die - it's a game? I tell them that if they have
any doubt, they should die. That's Chivalry - offer your life for your fellow
players, just like a Knight would gladly die for his King. Try the game again
and you'll probably see that things move a lot faster. Perhaps all three
involved in a shot will die instantly, and that'll evoke laughter. Sure, one of
them shot first, but who cares, really? It's a game! For medieval Knights
Chivalry was a not a game of life and death, for us it's a game, so surely we
should be able to master Chivalry, no? It's fun to die for your partners. It really can be fun to give up your
life, like a Chivalric knight would do for his King, but giving your life in a
game should be a lot easier. In the same way it can be just as much fun to step
out of a scene (or not to step in), or to give up your own ideas. A player that
realizes that is more fun-to-play-with. Failure Exists Only In Our Minds Try this: sit down in silence, let your mind wander, but, internally,
for yourself, name everything you 'see' in your thoughts. You'll probably find
that at times you think that you are not thinking about interesting stuff, or
that you thoughts stick to e.g. sheep, nothing but sheep, and that this would
not be good enough. Who are we kidding here? It's just your thoughts, and
you're not even telling anybody what your mind is thinking. Most of us are
censoring ourselves, as if our ideas, left to wander by themselves, are not
interesting enough. Saying No Yes Let's - or Not If you try it out with experienced improvisers, it might take some time
before players dare reject an offer (because we've all been trained to accept
anything). But really, why would we want to get hit by a bus when we just
discovered a whale, with which we might have a great adventure? It should be OK to think about being hit by a bus, there's nothing
really wrong with that, feel free to come up with the idea. But you should
know, or sense somewhere that the idea might not drive the scene forward, and you should be able to let it go. If no-one ever
tells you you'd never know. If they do tell you it's not a failure, just like
it's not a failure to be shot at Shootout. Look at it this way, you've learned
something, and that should be fun! Let's Not The part of having a laugh about a 'Let's Not' should be stressed, to
teach ourselves that this 'rejection' is not a failure that we should take
personally. Just like having ourselves killed, even if we think we shot first,
getting an idea rejected should be fun. See it as a tremendous opportunity to
be allowed to suggest something else - an opportunity that we would be denied
if our offer was accepted. For those who still think this is being negative, consider the game Ding!, played by some short-formers. In this game, at any time
during a scene, a bell can be rang. After the bell,
the last player who did or said something, needs to do
or say something else. Let's Not is basically the
same, but in rehearsal (b). It's also a great way to teach storytelling, as in this exercise we
might come up with situations or offers we'd never think of otherwise. Dealing with Rejection About Being Nice We see too many bland, characterless characters in improv.
We should be able to play nasty characters, and our fellow players should be
Chivalrous enough to deal with that. They should also be clever enough to come
up with tilts to change the balance, in which we should be Chivalrous enough to
accept the change of balance, and let go of the status of our character. Recently, playing with these concepts we had a scene about an Eskimo
man, who's wife dragged in a seal, which she was going
to prepare for supper. Our Eskimo complained about just about anything, form
being cold in the igloo to resenting having seal again for supper. The girl
playing his wife was familiar with the concept of chivalry, and happily
provided even more things for him to complain about. This was funny until the
balance between the two had been more than established, after which she tilted
the scene by announcing she had fallen in love by a Green-Peace activist, and
would be taking off with him, after this Last Seal Supper The sheer devastation
on the face of the Eskimo man was priceless, and the scene ended by our nasty
Eskimo man begging and screaming her to come back and stay. Afterwards both
said they had tremendous fun tormenting the other character (not the player!),
and knowing this was quite OK (with the other player, not with the character)
and even being encouraged to do so. The point is that we should not only give up our own selfishness about
our offers or our stage presence, but also our status. Chivalry is just as much
about allowing ourselves, or the characters we play, or the status of the
characters we play to be changed. Saying No to the Audience So What is Chivalry?
So basically, Chivalry is Letting Go of Your Ego. Improv
players should be Improv Nights, all in the service
of the King of Fun (d), and our Knights should be prepared to die for our King.
Or, too paraphrase the quote we started with: "Chivalry is the belief and practice of the Knights of Improv. Chivalry is a code of ethics upheld by all Improv Knights. The chivalric Knight is loyal, courteous,
protective, and gentle and honorable to all, including Team Mates, Competitors
and Audience. Improv Knights seek glory, and fun, but
not selfish glory and fun; glory and fun for his Fellow Knights and the
Audience first." Finally, I think that Chivalry should be taught and trained, just like
accepting, tilting, raising the stakes and so forth, and should become integral
part of our Improv vocabulary. Footnotes
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