Theory Of Impro

As part of the development of my project Performance Research Experiment #2: Paradox of the Heart. I recently made a little ‘improvised’ experiment at a monthly performance event called The News atthe SOMARTS theater in San Francisco.
I set up a station where I offered to record heart rates and skin conductivity response levels from volunteer audience members while they observed the otherperformance events in the space. In my first attempt at writing about the event I articulated a number of specific goals or objectives that I had had for the experiment
These included: 1) rehearsingthe actual ‘Choreography’ of working with these affect-measuring machines; 2) playing with the role/identity of the researcher; 3) exploring the interaction between this identity and the ‘testsubjects’; 4) seeing if I could in fact start to observe any kind of correlations between HR, SCR and various events being experienced by the subjects; and 5) creating a situation where the overallperformance of the ‘research’ became an observable performance for other viewers from outside of the dyad of myself and the test subject.
After writing this I realized that in fact none of these ‘goals’had occurred to me in such a specifically articulated way before I performed the activity. I had some general desire to dress like a ‘scientist’, play with my techie gear and play with people, bothaudience members and the other performers, at the event. The synergy of ‘imitation’ and ‘play’ here within a context of intuitive association are what interest me. I had a fuzzy desire to playfullyimitate a scientist and this led me to generate this action. Only in the aftermath did I articulate these five distinct goals of the activity. How is the spirit of play central to improvisation and orimitation? I had a lot of fun doing this. More on play from Johan Huizinga later….
Now words have created a different environment. Having thought through and written the event and broken down my...