Now, after a few days' intensive improv workshops with both people who I know and who I just met, I can no longer claim that what we do on stage is just a play, a game, something that has nothing to do with reality. It has everything to do with reality, and exactly this part of reality that we don't speak about with people other than close friends. Peoples' internal worlds leak out onto the stage. What I saw today: depression, loneliness, alcoholism, and their expressions, and the way people go about them on the stage is exactly, I believe, what happens in their real lives, or lives of those close to them. It's eye opening, but now I'm asking myself about how many people realise that we can read each other like an open book. It's the facts that are not real, the facts are made up indeed, but the structures around them, they're always reflecting the person's internal world. It's perhaps impossible to avoid. Maybe because our brains are shaped in certain ways, and they produce similar effects, no matter if in life or on stage.
It so often happens that a friend who's dealing with a specific issue in their lives brings up this topic, indirectly, on the stage. Once you know people privately and compare their offers on stage with their private lives it gets surprisingly aligned. I'm not talking about what but how. You're playing that you have an argument with your spouse, what tactics will you use? What will you bring up? Will you say that you're hurt with the way that your husband looks at other women, or will you suggest that he doesn't understand you? In other words, in your private life do you have issues with low self esteem or maybe rather inability to connect? Even if you deliberately choose to play a behavior that's not typical of you, your typical ways of going about it will show through. Not explicitly, but implicitly. And once you're sensitive enough to see the how between the what, to read between the lines, you'll see who the people really are.
And because of that an amazing thing happens, which as the result resembles group therapy: because being a good improviser requires being sensitive to other people, once you have a personal issue on your mind while playing, and you play with your heart, you suddenly see other people playing your issue out to you. And you step out of your perspective. You see how they go about it. You feel validated, you feel connected. It's a mini replay of the real world's mechanism that you draw to you what is in your head. When you do improv you can no longer avoid what's in you.