A recent New York Times guest essay, “How a ’70s Improv Book Became Silicon Valley’s Required Reading”, connects Keith Johnstone’s teachings to Silicon Valley’s fascination with status, constructed realities and the founder’s so-called “reality distortion field.”
It’s an interesting article—but it makes a troubling leap.
Improv does not teach us that facts are optional. It teaches us to pay closer attention to what is actually happening.
When we say “Yes, and,” we aren’t agreeing that everything another person says is true. We’re accepting an offer within a mutually created scene. It’s an artistic agreement—not a command to surrender our judgment, boundaries or understanding of reality.
If my scene partner says, “This house is haunted,” I can enter that imaginary reality with them. If a business leader misrepresents a product, ignores evidence or deceives investors, that isn’t “Yes, and.” It’s dishonesty.
Confusing those two things does a disservice to improv.
The article also makes a straightforward factual error about Johnstone’s status work. It tells readers, “He who looks away first is the more dominant.”
That is backward.
In Johnstone’s status work, the person who breaks eye contact first generally plays lower status. The person who comfortably maintains the gaze plays higher status.
This may sound like a small detail, but it matters. Eye contact is one of the clearest physical tools actors use to communicate status. If an article gets the direction of that exchange exactly wrong, it raises questions about how well it understands the larger theory it is using to connect improv with Silicon Valley.
More importantly, Johnstone didn’t teach status so people could dominate or manipulate one another. He taught actors to recognize the countless status transactions already taking place—in the eyes, voice, spine, posture, movement and space between people.
Seeing a power dynamic is not the same as exploiting it. Greater awareness gives an improviser more choices: to raise a partner’s status, lower their own, reverse an expectation or allow the relationship to change.
Status. Let us see it.
William Hall of Fratelli Bologna offers an important response in “The Contract the Article Missed.” He argues that the reality created in improv depends upon an ongoing collaborative contract between the players.
That distinction matters.
A powerful founder’s “reality distortion field” asks other people to enter one person’s vision. Improv asks everyone involved to build something that none of them could have created alone.
One person imposes. Improvisers contribute.
One excludes an inconvenient fact. Improvisers incorporate it.
One says, “Accept my reality.” Improv says, “Let’s discover this together.”
To her credit, author Tara Isabella Burton eventually arrives at something much closer to the truth. She writes that theatrical play demands our full attention and concludes that theater games remind us to look at reality in the first place.
Exactly.
Improv doesn’t untether us from reality. It trains us to listen more carefully, notice more deeply and respond more honestly to the person standing in front of us.
That’s not reality distortion, that’s being present.
Want to experience improv instead of just reading about it? Join us for a class this week.
Play Today.
Click HERE to find the class for you!
It’s an interesting article—but it makes a troubling leap.
Improv does not teach us that facts are optional. It teaches us to pay closer attention to what is actually happening.
When we say “Yes, and,” we aren’t agreeing that everything another person says is true. We’re accepting an offer within a mutually created scene. It’s an artistic agreement—not a command to surrender our judgment, boundaries or understanding of reality.
If my scene partner says, “This house is haunted,” I can enter that imaginary reality with them. If a business leader misrepresents a product, ignores evidence or deceives investors, that isn’t “Yes, and.” It’s dishonesty.
Confusing those two things does a disservice to improv.
The article also makes a straightforward factual error about Johnstone’s status work. It tells readers, “He who looks away first is the more dominant.”
That is backward.
In Johnstone’s status work, the person who breaks eye contact first generally plays lower status. The person who comfortably maintains the gaze plays higher status.
This may sound like a small detail, but it matters. Eye contact is one of the clearest physical tools actors use to communicate status. If an article gets the direction of that exchange exactly wrong, it raises questions about how well it understands the larger theory it is using to connect improv with Silicon Valley.
More importantly, Johnstone didn’t teach status so people could dominate or manipulate one another. He taught actors to recognize the countless status transactions already taking place—in the eyes, voice, spine, posture, movement and space between people.
Seeing a power dynamic is not the same as exploiting it. Greater awareness gives an improviser more choices: to raise a partner’s status, lower their own, reverse an expectation or allow the relationship to change.
Status. Let us see it.
William Hall of Fratelli Bologna offers an important response in “The Contract the Article Missed.” He argues that the reality created in improv depends upon an ongoing collaborative contract between the players.
That distinction matters.
A powerful founder’s “reality distortion field” asks other people to enter one person’s vision. Improv asks everyone involved to build something that none of them could have created alone.
One person imposes. Improvisers contribute.
One excludes an inconvenient fact. Improvisers incorporate it.
One says, “Accept my reality.” Improv says, “Let’s discover this together.”
To her credit, author Tara Isabella Burton eventually arrives at something much closer to the truth. She writes that theatrical play demands our full attention and concludes that theater games remind us to look at reality in the first place.
Exactly.
Improv doesn’t untether us from reality. It trains us to listen more carefully, notice more deeply and respond more honestly to the person standing in front of us.
That’s not reality distortion, that’s being present.
Want to experience improv instead of just reading about it? Join us for a class this week.
Play Today.
Click HERE to find the class for you!
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