The Role of The Brave New Workshop

The Brave New Worshop, founded by Dudley Riggs in 1958, has been a preeminent improvisational venue for decades, producing numerous comedians and writers through it's lifetime. The Workshop remains irreverant and influential today, poking fun at politics and society without pulling punches, under the comcept of "Promiscuous Hostility, Positive Nutrality," according to John

Haynes, Director of the Brave New Institute School of Improvisation, who spoke with Sex-Kitten.net after we were treated to Paxton Vs. Pullman earlier in the night. He described this tenet, which leaves anything open to mockery without leaning heavily on bias, as designed to "get the audience laughing, offend them a little bit, and maybe get [the audience] to think about some stuff." Minnesota's conservatively friendly social climate isn't the most receptive to scathing satire, but the Workshop has an extensive history of entertaining audiences, many non-traditional audiences that would not usually consider the theatre as an evening's entertainment.

The Brave New Workshop is not restricted to the theatre; many businesses and large corporations have turned to the Workshop for training. The Workshop's program shows how improvisational skills can be applied to the workplace to improve productivity. Corporate training also allows the Brave New Workshop to continue operating without any government subsidy or private grants, as a moral objection to taking money away from police or schools, and to also prevent any inkling of censorship that might result from relying on gifts from people that may object to showing up at the business end of the Workshop's satire.

Nonjudgemental idea generation is a key philosophy of the Workshop's corporate education, designed to counteract the oppressive environment of the business meeting; the philosophy can be found in a book written by BNW alumnus and owner John Sweeney, smartly titled Innovation at the Speed of Laughter. "So

you get a group of people together in a room," said Haynes, "and the boss stands up in front of you and says, 'I want you to brainstorm, and no idea is a bad idea'...until that idea actually comes out and you find out how it is a bad idea because everybody jumps in...the rest of us are like, 'oh, that's not going to work.' What we try to teach them is that the first 15% of idea generation needs to be without any judgement at all." When producing a show at the Brave New Workshop, the performers are encouraged to come up with 600 ideas – no discussion, each idea is simply written down – and the ideas that work are chosen from the rest. "If we ever censored any of the first 600 ideas that come out, we would miss great sketches, and so we try ot incorporate that into the corporate training and tell them, 'you're missing great ideas because you're censoring your employees." This idea is that employees, no matter their status, are encouraged to continue to give ideas, because they were taken seriously, they were listened to, and something was done with their idea. "Then when we get back to them and say, here's what we discussed about your idea, and this is what we're going to do, "said Haynes, "that employee is going to give you more information because they were listened to."

Those not looking for a way to improve corporate productivity are quite welcome to take the regular Brave New World set of improvisation courses. While many of the students are actors expanding their craft – few colleges have improv or sketch comedy programs, according to Haynes – a variety of other people are attracted to improvisation. Many are simply looking for a creative outlet, spending their workday confined to a cubicle and constrained by schedules and deadlines. These people are looking for imaginitive expression, a "creatively safe" enviro

nment to exercise within. "We say, 'hey, this is where you can take a risk," said Haynes, "this is where you can say and do things that you probably don't have any other venue to do or say those things."

This release from the rules and mores of society creates a playful area, a throwback to make-believe playtime of childhood. When rules begin to creep into make-believe, the creativity is squashed. Haynes said, take a group of precocious children, "impose a bunch of roles on them, and say animals can't talk, people can't fly, and watch how their creativity is instantly blown away, it's destroyed – and that's what happens to adults."

Haynes emphasized that improvisation isn't "jokey" or "stand up comedy," instead a much more primal, instinctive performance. "The worst phone call I can take from a student is the one that says, 'I'm funny. Everybody tells me I'm funny. My family tells my I'm funny, my friends tell me I'm funny,' and my comeback to them is 'Were they drunk at the time?'" This is not intended as an insult, but instead a reality check that people laugh harder when drunk, and do crazier things when drinking. And mom has to think you're funny because, well...she's Mom. "Your body is the most reactionary tool that we have," said Haynes, "you don't just stop and think 'I was just scared, I should jump and scream now'" when startled. Exercises are designed to pull participants out of their heads, stop them from trying to compose humor, and simply act however seems right at the time.

BNW on TV

John Haynes: ...People are just bombarded and dumbed down with all the reality [television], and when you think the last reality show that could be created is created, then you get things like 'Kept' and 'Strip Search' and it's like, 'where do they come up with these ideas?' you know, and I think people are starting to question their own integrity of 'why am I spending all this time watching this stuff, I'm going to go see something live'...

S~K: What do you think are some of the good things on TV?

JH: Daily Show – I think the Daily Show right now is probably one of the smartest written show, well performed – John Stewart is great at what he does, the people that they have on that show – again, sketch comedy / improv background, most of them – the interviews, the stuff that they do , the camera cutaways and everything, it's very smartly written. And, in fact, it's funny, I think there's some people that actually get their news from the Daily Show, versus CNN or Fox or, you know, the major networks.

Other stuff I think on TV that has been really good, I think some of the animated stuff. Simpsons has kind of lagged a little bit, but over the years it's been very smartly written. Family Guy is good cutting-edge stuff, I think South Park. They just shove it down your throat, and it's kinda good in a way, because it's almost like, 'we dare you to fire us,we're going to see how much we can get away with.'

In some of the other live [action] shows...I think Sopranos gets it. I think the good thing about Sopranos that they've done well, is that they've mixed that kind of drama [with] real-life humor, and I like those kinds of shows.

Saturday night live has some hits and misses right now. A lot of their deal right now is editing. Sometimes I don't think they do a good a good job of editing. That's one thing that's really important. Sketch comedy has to hit quick, and good comedy writing is driving to the next joke – that's the key – and sometimes they give you the joke in the first few lines, and then there's nothing else after that, there's no heightinging, there's no absurdity about it, it's just there, and it still goes on for like 2 or 3 minutes. MadTV I think has done a good job with that. Kids In The Hall I still think is one of the best sketch shows around. Mr. Show, that comes back every once in a while in syndication.

Women's roles are often a difficult obstruction to overcome in new students' heads. From both sides, women are often deeply embedded in their own personal roles, but then are also 'pigeon-holed' by their male counterparts into stereotypical characters: the sister, the mom, the hooker. Great effort is put into overcoming the social conditioning that prevents unbridled creativity from the students. An indicator of this conditioning can often be starker contrast when genders play each other. "If I play a woman, it's telling if I come out and do the thing, 'I'm dumb and needy, and men are mean.'," said Haynes, "Same thing with a woman, and every man is an overbearing, abusive pig. Maybe that's been your experience, but let's break out of that." The Workshop has seen greater female enrollment than in it's earlier days, making it more comfortable to women to drop their restraints by not feeling outnumbered by men in the same class.

"We really pride ourselves on having that foreceful, strong voice coming off our stage, that says, 'Women are funny, and they're smart, and they do other stuff than mix up a batch of biscuits in the kitchen or have a baby,'" said Haynes, lauding two of the Workshop's most visible female performers today: Shanan Wexler and Katy McEwen. These two wrote and performed "Das Bootylicious, or: Women of Mass Destruction," a show that gained accolades around the Cities and got Wexler and McEwen dubbed the funniest women in Minneapolis. In fact, Wexler carried one of the funniest scenes in Paxton Vs. Pullman, simply by trying to drink from a juicebox with both hands tied behind her back. The scene wasn't mocking of women – in fact, it had little to nothing to do with her character – but her ability to infuse humor in such a small task demonstrates the Workshop's effort to eliminate the constrictions of how the brain says the body is supposed to act, and return to instinctive reaction...if your hands were tied behind your back and there was a juicebox on the floor next to you, wouldn't you use your ample spare time to try and have a sip?

The list of alumni includes women alongside men: Mo Collins, one of MadTV's lead performers; Magician Penn Gillette; Peter McNichols of Ally McBeal fame; Linda Wallem, writer & producer of numerous films & TV shows; Saturday Night Live writer and activist Al Franken; Doris Hess, writer for Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley. All are examples of the Brave New Workshop's success in producing actors with a unique and valuable insight into their own performance, no doubt better equipping them to compete with more traditionally-trained actors and comedians. Not every student of the Workshop will win Emmys or grace the cover of magazines, but each will take away a new level of personal insight: the ability to see what they have within, and can create without oppressive self-imposed rules. In our interview with John Haynes, at no time did he promise students or actors will become famous, or even great: his focus was that the students will each be taught to release themselves and act naturally. Nearly everyone can benefit from applying this knowledge to their roles in their personal lives, roles in their job and relationships, in playing with their children or dealing with stress, without ever having set foot in front of an audience.