I Want to Sing!

Life stirs so many emotions large and small, each on opportunity to experience more of our humanness. Funny that a Spontaneous Broadway improv class could open a new window into their wisdom.

From mindfulness practice, I realize that I am more than my emotions. Moving from “I am angry” to “I feel angry” gives me some internal space to slough off the feeling without feeding it further. Moving from there to “I can sense anger moving through my body” advances another step. No need to wallow or build attachment—the feeling can have its own temporary life without hijacking my world. Creating that little bit of distance also lets me relate with the feeling, to learn from it. The clouds of worry can clear and I’m back to blue sky.

Even with that intention of mindfulness, though, I know I still resist many of my feelings, positive and negative. Some I reject outright, averting my eyes and walking on by as they reach out for a coin of my consideration. I think I don’t have the time or energy to process them. Others are so minute I’m hardly aware they’re even there. In both cases, the lack of attention lets the sentiment linger and turn toxic. The stifling of one shuts down the full range of flexibility to feel them all.

Over the past three weeks, I’ve been taking a fantastic Spontaeous Broadway class at Bay Area Theatersports (BATS) with the inimitable Joshua Raoul Brody. We’ve worked on building our vocal range, communicating with backup singers and the band, establishing chorus and verse structure, and the like. It’s a talented group and a ton of fun. The most profound part of the course for me has been learning about the emotional lives of improv scenes.

In a musical, characters sing for all sorts of reasons: to express some quality of their personality, to share a need they have, to introduce an obstacle or an ally, and sometimes to advance the plot, for example. In almost all cases, though, they sing when their emotions cross a threshold. The time has come. They simply have to sing. The musical interlude gives the audience the chance to understand the character or the situation better. It gives a chance for the character to experience or express just what’s going on.

To work on this dynamic, Joshua led the class through a simple exercise. A single actor or two started an improv scene per normal. Maybe we asked for an audience suggestion for location or relationship, maybe not. As the scene continued, however, Joshua asked us—those in the audience and in the scene—to raise a hand when we felt that someone in the story had a reason to sing. Let the scene emerge and pay attention for the music’s call.

More often than not, we raised our hands in consensus. The heightened moments announced themselves clearly, even if a number of the characters could have done the singing from their perspective. I played a scene with a classmate where we were teenagers in line to buy movie tickets, both attracted to each other but hesitant to say so. As the tension in the scene grew and my character had to decide whether to buy just one ticket or two, all hands went up—and we all laughed. The emotion was clear. Other times, the feeling streamed through more quietly but when the actor playing the character raised a hand and explained why he or she wanted to sing, it made sense to the rest of us.

For homework after that week, Joshua suggested we monitor our own experience. [1] If our lives were musicals, when would we want a musical number? Pretty quickly and hilariously, I realized that I felt the impulse to break out almost all the time. A sweet exchange with a cashier could bring a song-worthy smile. Getting cut off in traffic called for a staccato soundtrack. A thought of my partner, Melissa, back home would cue wistful violins. With this theatrical playfulness added in, I found that I wanted to give my emotions some time. They didn’t need to take over excessively—this wasn’t an opera, by gum—but they deserved a bit of dance or expressive harmony. In other words, life gained a bit more color and a lot more joy.

Buddha knows, I rely on the insights of meditation and mindfulness every day. They make me a clearer, more relaxed, and more compassionate person, for sure. Every now and then, though, I wonder if they also mute the color and vitality of life’s experience. Does creating distance from a feeling rob us of the richness of its story? That’s maybe what I love most about this Spontaneous Broadway exercise: it’s a good reminder that meditation can help us enjoy the preciousness of our experience even more. We can wed our mindful attention—what’s happening in this moment?—to the delight and drama of our emotional world. Together, they can make for a moment of spontaneous expression that delineates character and advances adventure. And they can do it with a bit of Broadway sass.

[1] Funny, it turns out Joshua actually *didn’t* recommend this. So I either generated the assignment myself or mis-understood the assignment. Whichever, I’m glad it happened that way. It was a cool assignment–and Joshua says he’ll use it next time!