'Improv Wisdom' by Patricia Ryan Madson

By Jesse Kornbluth
Founder, HeadButler.com

You're looking for something you can't quite name, the answer to a question you can't quite articulate.

Something else shows up.

It's on a different subject altogether.

And yet, for no apparent reason, it tells you what you needed to know.

"Improv Wisdom" is like that. I have no interest in improvisational theater. I doubt you do. But if I step back just a bit -- if I look at my life like a play that I improvise at almost every moment -- these 148 pages offer more in the way of genuine self-help advice than anything Dr. Phil can direct me to.

"Don't prepare, just show up." That's the book's subtitle and its message. Its radical message, because we have been so trained to plan and script and PowerPoint that the last thing to occur to us is just to dive in and make it up as we go along.

Patricia Ryan Madson, a professor emerta at Stanford University, used to be just like us. She had a career path. She did things that were "good" for advancement. She won awards. She got her dream teaching job.

Then her life fell apart. Her teaching "lacked intellectual distinction." She didn't get tenure.

How could this be? She'd been a good girl, she'd done everything right. Except, perhaps, one thing: She'd never done anything for its own sake, never taken a detour for the hell of it, never showed she was different from all the middle-level talents who grind out second-tier careers.

Patricia Ryan Madson got the message. She took up drumming, just because. Spent summers dancing and traveling. Studied Eastern religion. And, two years later, was asked to head Stanford's undergraduate acting program. She spent the rest of her career there, winning the university's highest teaching prize -- though she might say the crowning achievement of her decades in Palo Alto was the founding of a theatrical group, the Stanford Improvisers.

Improvising, she emphasizes, has "nothing to do with wit, glibness or comic ability." It is simply about saying "yes" to what is in front of you. And, therefore, you can learn how to do it -- how to listen, plan just enough, follow the plan but not religiously, and then trust yourself to get to a good place through improvisation.

It all starts with "yes." Are you prepared? No? Worry not. You're fine. Indeed, spend a day without planning -- see if it ends badly. Nervous about being out on a limb? Good! The only time you should really feel confident is after you've succeeded. Worried that you won't succeed? Lower the bar. Mistakes? They're often "results that we had not planned."

Along the way, Madson offers advice that seems to have nothing to do with theater or life. "Make a point of thanking people for thankless jobs." Write a thank-you note every day. Be a guardian angel to one person. Why? So you can be more awake, more attentive, more in the stream of life.

PISCES MORTUI SOLUM CUM FLUMINE NATANT. That's an inscription Madson saw over a Welch bar. Translation: "Only dead fish go with the flow." Now that's a warning you won't forget.

It's not, however, a cue to micromanage your life. It is an instruction to take charge -- but "taking charge" has no link to control or power. It's just about engagement ... creative engagement.

Since I finished this book, I've been living more with two hands, open ears and a relaxed mouth. I may not be making immediate progress on a long piece of writing, but I sure am taking more notes and writing more random paragraphs. I'm noticing who listens and who doesn't, and seeing how the people who don't hear what's actually said are blocking their own progress. And I'm feeling more pain -- other people radiate it, and maybe I do too -- but also experiencing more joy. In a word: I'm more alive.

This book alerted me to a better way just when I needed to hear it.

Maybe it's also the right time for you to get interested in improvisational theater.

Click here to buy Improv Wisdom now.

Jesse Kornbluth is a New York-based journalist and founder of Head Butler.com, a cultural concierge site and free daily e-mail featuring information on new and classic books, movies and music.

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