Connectedness?

[Paul Levy]

What have been your experiences of "connectedness"? The concept is an interesting one in life and in the arts. Feeling connected to the world around you. Feeling connected to your fellow friends and family.

What does it mean to be "in touch" with yourself.

On stage, a cast tends to be in touch when there is a high degree of physical and emotional trust in each other. There is comfort with physical contact, with eye contact.

Trust seems to be important and, over time, trust in a cast increases.

Where there is too much caution, a cast can feel "disconnected" and the dialogue can be clumsy and stilted.

Creating connection may involve taking risks, and here the ghosts of our personal life - our bad experiences of connection can limit our "Performance" - both in life and on the stage.

[David Zinger]

What a fine topic to discuss. I think connectedness is the essence of my field employee engagement. I think to disconnect is to disengage. I appreciated the comment about trust and focusing not so much on trust but focusing on connectedness to build trust. This was most helpful. I wrote a post on connectedness and employee engagement on my blog and this forum will have me rethinking some of what I wrote. Thank you.

[Shawn Kinley]

Hi...
I think the topic is a great one. I've always been taken by a comment that I've heard Keith Johnstone make a couple of times in relation to this. He said that our true friendships are linked to how well we can playfully adjust each other's status. I think there's much truth to this. Those whom we connect most strongly can say things that point out our weak points or our little idiosynchrosies. People we don't know or have not earned that connection aren't given that freedom.

In a business, structural status makes the connection more difficult. It's hard to tease the boss unless the boss has created that kind of environment. In theatre, friendships can be superficial when the praise is thrown around without a sense of perspective. (are you saying what you are saying because you mean it, or are you saying it because it's a nice thing to do?)

We are connected in the long term with trust and honesty. In life, we look out for ourselves and when someone is REALLY looking out for us as well, then we feel connected. We reciprocate and then the connection deepens.

On stage, all impro performers have the peers they perform really well with. It's usually the ones they have failed with and got over the failure with. It's usually the ones we play with because we know they are taking care of us and we are free to give and take our status with. They catch us when we make ourselves vulnerable but they call us on our actions that don't support our agreed direction. If they don't call us on it... we get a false sense of our connection and that plays out poorly over time.

You mention, "Where there is too much caution, a cast can feel "disconnected" and the dialogue can be clumsy and stilted." I agree. And in life, if everyone says YES YES YES... because they are trying to be "supportive" they miss the point. When you know that you have done something that doesn't deserve praise, and you know the audience knows it doesn't deserve praise, and the rest of the cast knows it doesn't deserve praise... then point it out immediatly. Don't be cautious, be honest and re-connect with everyone on the level that everyone is aware of.

In a show in Oslo, I watched a german group performing. It was going very poorly but there was polite applause throughout and most of the improvisers looked like they were commited and believed in what they were doing. FINALLY one guy said "What the hell is going on? I don't even know what I'm doing here!" The audience burst into laughter and applause. It was totally unsupportive of what had gone on yet it was TOTALLY supportive of the truth that was underlying it all. The audience and the cast were re-connected. The effect lasted a few moments until the other performers denied the inspired piece of spontanaiety.

Good topic. Lots to explore here.

[Colleen Laliberte]

What can I say Shawn Kinley...I'd love to listen to more of this from you. I have thought so often that if teams would go onstage and just give up the "OK guys! Let's have a BRILLIANT show! We have to be GOOD! Let's only do scenes that we think we're really GOOD at...yuck!...if they could just go onstage and be honest and playful , fearless, and NICE then we would have amazing work. I keep seeing actors who are afraid to screw up...or they want to screw up at the expense of their partners... so they're onstage "together" but lack any sense of "connectedness". How refreshing to be onstage with someone who is truly there to be with you...more on my recent attempts to convince some folks about the value of using improv to create a safe place for students to risk failure, thereby increasing their love for the process of "learning". So simple, yet so hard for some to "get".

[Johnnie Moore]

I'm often intrigued by the notion of "obliquity" - that we often get to one place whilst aiming for another. The Inner Game taps into this: the author got tennis players to "just call out the trajectory of the incoming ball" and forget about hitting it... in short this seemed to let them relax and hit it better.

You make me think that instead of aiming directly for trust, we work a little on connectedness, and I rather think you're on the money with connecting to ourselves. I'm a fan of Fritz Perls' line about losing our minds to come to our senses. Lately I've found it hugely helpful to follow a little ritual for noticing where bits of my body are making contact with other bits or the world.. a few moments of this and I find my perspective on life shifts and I feel more available to the world.

[Robin McCulloch]

I think this relates directly to how teams perform in businesses. When ever I do corporate workshops there is often this palpable feeling of distrust. And the distrust I think stems from their experience with the disconnect between what we are saying openly we want you to do and what we really expect you to do. And with enough history in those situations it can be very hard to accept that this new thing you want me to do is really safe to do.

I've had people come up to me after workshops and tell me that they thought it was great but they could never really do it in the job. They agree with the concept but they don't believe they would be supported in any practical way. They simply don't trust the people who make the rules to really follow through. And I think in many cases with good reason. Because it is one thing to embrace that great innovation comes with accepting "mistakes" as part of the process and another to really act on that. It is just too easy to label most "mistakes" as critical and therefore not acceptable. And finally people just want to play it safe...make "no" the default position because there is less danger there than with "yes."

The longer that lack of support goes on the harder it is to build that sense of trust. And we are living in a world where from the CEO on down no one is given much time to get it right so building that trust is an enormous task. The pressure to find the qucik fix leads to the quick bail-out and one more sign that I can't trust what you say.