Improv, Hypnosis, and Creativity

During the year and a half I was taking improv comedy classes at Improv Boston and Improv Asylum, I was constantly struggling to achieve better focus, and get out of the way of what my unconscious mind wanted to produce. I learned really quickly that though I wanted to think things through and pick the best possible idea, a) that takes too long, and b) often the weird thing that just pops out of my mouth is way funnier and more interesting. I made contact with IRL hypnosis at the tail end of this time, and soon had the idea that hypnosis could achieve some of the same aims, since it involves relaxed focus and losing self consciousness. Recently I got to try this out!

Every improv class involves at least a half an hour of playing a variety of warmup games - a bunch of mid-20s to early-30s adults paying a lot of money to do activities you might see at a children's birthday party - because that's what it takes to leave the buttoned-up everyday world behind, and to be  spontaneously creating without judgment, as well as tuned into one another. But maybe hypnosis could substitute for the warmup.

For example, simplest game in the world: word toss. Classmates stand in a circle, and "toss" a word at each other. The objective of the person who receives it: look at another classmate and say a word. Any word at all. It just has to be fast. This game is incredibly difficult for adults. It instantly makes you realize all the layers of filtering we normally employ, to protect our self image. The choice of word could be fraught with peril: will it reveal something terrible about ourselves? Like that we're deranged, or not creative? And so the pause gets longer. Even though *any word is ok*. I'll bet this game would be a total disaster at most dinner parties - it takes a group of people very explicitly committed to not judging each other's output, and even then it takes practice.

So word toss was the first thing I was eager to try when I got a chance to do hypnosis with my former improv classmate. She's the first person I've hypnotized who does not know about my hypnosis fetish. I wrestled with myself about that, but ultimately decided it was ok, because a) she initiated, coming over and excitedly asked me if she could try hypnosis when she overheard me talking about it, b) I don't have the hots for her, c) her boyfriend would be there for the whole thing, and d) I was motivated to trance with her for reasons other than my fetish. But this is a broader issue that will come up in the future and I'll have to think about: whether it's ok to do vanilla hypnosis with people who don't want to know about my sex life, considering that I am bound to get a (usually mild) kinky thrill out of it.

Besides the warmup games, I was fascinated by the idea of improvisational storytelling. The book that got me to take improv classes, and which hit me like a lightning bolt out of the blue, was Keith Johnstone's Impro for Storytellers. This book is not just about improv comedy - the modern version of which Johnstone had a huge hand in founding - but about much bigger issues of performance, creativity, and the nature of stories.

Johnstone's most important message, that blew my mind, is that most people's problem with creativity is in trying, consciously, to come up with something good. Decades of getting graded on our work - and judging other people's work - has actually harmed us in that respect, and made most adults afraid to create anything at all. But no matter what age, we can find our way back to it with help. He describes an exercise in guided storytelling he does that certainly sounds a lot like hypnosis, in his other book Impro (you can read the entire chapter at the moment here).

If I get you to lie down, close your eyes and relax, and report what your imagination gives you, then you'll probably go into a deep state of absorption, and instead of 'thinking things up' the experiences will seem to be really happening to you. Afterwards, if I ask 'Did you feel the floor?' then you'll probably say, 'There wasn't any floor.' If I say, 'Did you experience your body?' you'll probably answer, 'I wasn't in my body' or 'I was in the body I had in the story.'

He writes that the participant "should have the experience of imagining something 'effortlessly', and 'choicelessly'. He should understand through this game that he doesn't have to do anything in order to imagine, any more than he needs to do anything in order to relax or perceive." His method is to ask a series of prompts that guide the person's attention to different aspects of the imagined situation. And it is as though the person only has to look and see what's there to answer the question, rather than deciding on it or making it up. This is long, but I wanted to include his transcript of this in action because I find it so fascinating:

'What sort of stories do you like?'
'Science fiction. Well . . . Tolkien. Stories like The Hobbit.'
'OK. Imagine a lake surrounded by mountains.'
'Yes.'
'You are swimming in the lake.'
'Yes.'
'Can you see any fish?'
'Yes.'
'Large ones?'
'No.'
'Shoals of little ones turning and darting?'
'Yes.'
'There is one particular fish. What do you do with it?'
'I catch it.'
'You swim back to the shore and three hooded figures are waiting for you. What do you give them?'
'The fish.'
'And what do they give you in exchange?'
'A stick.'
'What do you do with it?'
'I point it at an oak tree and it vanishes.'
'And then?'
'I point it at the three hooded figures and they vanish too.'
'You set out through the woods. Does the path lead up or down?'
'Up.'
'What do you hear? Is it from your right or your left?'
'Left. Someone crying.'
'You look down into a clearing and see a woman surrounded by . . .?'
'Little men.'
'What's she wearing? Anything?'
'She's naked.'
'The little men see you?'
'They're coming at me waving sticks.'
'The woman calls to them?'
'She says it's not me who did it.'
'Was it someone from the castle?'
'Yes, he threw her out naked into the forest'
'Do you help her?'
'Yes.'
'Do you go up the path?'
'I put my cloak round her and we set off to the castle.'
'It gets dark?'
'Yes.'
'And you are going to sleep?'
'We cover ourselves with leaves and we lie about eight feet apart.'
'You're fast asleep when you wake up to feel her touching you.'
'Yes.'
'What's she after?'
'The stick.'
'Does she get it?'
'Yes.'
'She points it at you and what happens?'
'It goes all grey and wintry.'
'What do you see in the mist?'
'A huge oak tree, and three hooded figures leaping about and shouting.'

This callback, or "reincorporation", of earlier material provides a satisfying ending, and was apparently really funny when it happened. I studied this carefully. Clearly the questioner has a very active role in helping the story come into existence!

I feel the allure of this mode of creation. Although I'm not now an improvisational comedian, the book and the classes were a tremendous inspiration to me, and gave me something I desperately needed. It  had an immediate, concrete impact on my behaviour, in that I sat down and wrote a dozen comedy sketches and 20 short stories over a period of a few months, after being absolutely terrified and paralyzed to do the slightest thing "creative" since as far back as middle school. This sentence alone was enough to free me:

It's hard to write a great poem about a sunset. What a ridiculous idea. Just write a poem and see what comes out.

Most of what I created will never see the light of day (the stories are all  mind control pornography - surprised?), but thanks to Johnstone I couldn't care less. It was great.

In looking for the dialogue in Impro, I discovered another fascinating connection with hypnosis, in discussing the possibility of an unexpected emotional reaction, or "abreaction" - and he uses that term!

Once the basic technique is mastered, I let students try it again. This time they'll be bolder. They'll encounter other people, they'll have adventures, but I'll still guide them away from 'bad trips'. I'm using the game to demonstrate to the student that he can be effortlessly creative, not to teach him that his imagination is terrifying and should be suppressed! People cån get upset playing the game, but if they weep you can cuddle them, which makes them feel better. When people abreact I always establish that (1) it's good for them; (2) they'll feel marvellous in half an hour; (3) it 'happens to everybody'

Pretty plausible sounding advice, and not redundant with the tips in the major hypno books!

After plenty of pretalk and negotiation (though I didn't call it that), we did a couple of simple beginner trances, and then started the word toss. I got her boyfriend, also an improviser, involved as the one giving her the words to respond to.

The results were inconclusive. She didn't seem to hesitate over her choice of words, but they also came slowly - as words tend to do in hypnosis. I think the choices may have been a little less inhibited, less screened. For example, when he said "work" she just went "eeeugh", which certainly reflected her un-hypnotized feelings.

Then I had her do a word toss with herself. This is surprisingly hard to do normally, since you can get tripped up thinking about the pattern your words are making. So I suggested that she would hear herself say the last word and respond to it, but then let that last word go, fade away. From what she said afterwards, this "amnesia-lite" suggestion didn't work, but she still powered along, steadily giving out the words.

After more chatting out of trance, we decided to go ahead with the story. I did my best to imitate Johnstone, and even quickly reread the passage above seconds before the trance. Since she had pointed out that many of her word-toss words had related to a vacation in nature, that's where I started.

"You're in a wood. Is it a dark wood or a light wood?"

"Light."

And we were off. She saw markings on a tree trunk, heard a sound, and followed it into the bushes, to find an old man with a fishing rod, that had a boot on the end of the line.

I quickly discovered that guiding such a story is a skill that will take practice. I felt myself get worried that it was getting boring, and heard myself saying things like, "he says something unusual, what is it?" I don't know if that's against the spirit of the exercise. There were also times when I was concerned it might get scary, and wondered how much control I really had to steer the story away from distressing material. No matter what I tried to give her positive feedback and make it clear that whatever her imagination created was valid.

It was quite wonderful to see her calm, confident answers to my prompts as the story continued, and many times she offered details beyond the prompt. That surprised me because I think of hypnotized people as having a hard time initiating action. Eventually it unfolded into an eerie little tale, involving a small boy marking up the forest with strange symbols, and the old man as his servant. It wasn't a "proper" story, partly because it was so short, but it had a dream logic that I found compelling too, and there was a moment, just like in Johnstone's example, where we both knew the story had come to a natural ending. An oddly emotional ending.

I finished up with just a few more prompts to focus on the forest, with the late afternoon sun filtering through the treetops, to give her a bit more of her vacation.

She was enthusiastic about the experience, and told me how every detail of the scene had been vivid to her - that she could tell me exactly what the old man had been wearing for example. She had self-identified as visual before we began, and that certainly seemed to be true. I think visual people naturally get the most out of guided imagery, and for them it can be an extremely powerful and enjoyable experience.

I'm pleased with the session, and I want to do more someday. There are many other improv games that could be easier or more compelling in trance. (It's no coincidence that the Upright Citizens' Brigade Theatre's slogan is "DON'T THINK"!) I think of word-at-a-time stories, or some synchrony/rhythm games. Games involving high energy or initiating actions might be hard for hypnotized people.

But I think there's lots of potential for getting into characters, improv style, which of course massively overlaps with hypnotic roleplay, e.g. as discussed in Wiseguy's Mind Play. Stage hypnotists do this all the time, and also do activities where audience members interact with imposed personality traits. But I think this would be fun and funny to play with in less pressurized, more intimate settings, particularly for shy people who would normally feel too self-conscious to do any kind of performing. (which kind of makes my improv training like a months-long, thousand-dollar hypnotic trance, to convince someone as shy as me they could be onstage performing for an audience - with no script)

And where appropriate, improv character play can have a kinky dimension to it. For example, check out this hilarious audio file of a bright and literate college grad who has been hypnotized by her dom to talk like a ditzy valley girl (temporarily, and consensually). So I'm excited about both the sexual and the non-sexual possibilities. Being in the moment, not preparing or overthinking, letting go of mistakes, letting your unconscious create and accepting what it comes up with - these are all ideals of improv that trance can help anyone access.

As an addendum, a couple of people have asked, did improv training help me as a hypnotist? A little bit. Most of all by teaching me that you have to make choices, and commit to them. It may not always be the best possible choice, but the speed is important. You just have to respect the flow, and value it over everything being perfect. And often what your unconscious offers is better for that moment than if you had all the time in the world to think it over. Another way it might have helped is by the importance of truly tuning into your partner, and not letting your own plans take you out of noticing what is happening right now between you, and where the scene wants to go next. But thankfully for the sake of my slow brain, the pace of hypnosis is slower, with a little time to think - and unlike improv comedy, there is some room for thinking up wonderful ideas during the day, that you write down and then delight someone with!

One final note, because I love this stuff. Even if you're not interested in improv, Impro for Storytellers is one of the best books you could read about D/s: Johnstone was a researcher on status, and how it is deeply woven into every interaction we have, and D/s is about playing with status differences. In fact, with ridiculously large status differences - much larger than are usually "allowed" to be seen in everyday life, which is probably what makes D/s feel taboo. You just don't see people grovelling at someone's feet in mainstream American society! (at least not literally.) As a simple example of Johnstone's concrete discoveries, if you want to appear more dominant, at least for a few minutes, hold your head still, keep your hands far away from your head and face, make strong eye contact except when it could be interpreted as checking for approval, and make few unnecessary movements, with the movements you do make smooth and decisive. Anyone you have ever seen successfully portraying "dominant" has incorporated this body language.