Caution: oversharing and bragging to come.
Last Friday, I was in divorce court. I shall spare you the details other than to say that my beloved ex rejected a proposed settlement, which meant an extra three hours in court and possibly continued months of waiting and paying attorneys.
When we were all done, I was chatting with my lawyer, and she gave me the biggest compliment ever: “How can you be so funny when this is so difficult?”
Now, to be fair, I was not funny in court. In fact, I only said one sentence the whole time. But we had chatted and discussed offers and swapped stories with the excellent translator.
I explained I could be funny because I accept my base reality and build on it.
What is base reality?
In improv, you have to establish your scenes. Some schools call this establishing your platform, but at Boutique Theatre Basel we prefer to use the phrase “establish your base reality.”
This is establishing the who, what, where, and why in a scene. It’s necessary to go forward. If we’re doing a scene together and I think we’re siblings and you think we’re romantic partners, it’s going to make for an awkward scene.
At the beginning of each scene, before you get to the meat of the scene, it’s essential that you establish your base reality.
Everyone in the scene and the audience needs to know the following things:
- Who the characters are to each other. Are they friends, enemies, siblings, or prison cellmates?
- Where the characters are. Are they at home, in a cafe, or on a sinking ship?
- What is going on. Are they just watching television as a family, in search of a hidden treasure, or being slowly poisoned?
- Why these things are happening. Is the world ending, the neighbor trying to take over their land, or the boss needs the spreadsheet reconciled by 4:15 pm?
Once you’ve established these things, you can get to your first unusual thing and make your scene funny. But without that base reality where everyone knows what’s going on, the scene will fail.
You need to recognize your base reality in real life
In improv, you establish your base reality. In real life, you recognize your base reality. My lawyer told me she has many expat clients like me who are utterly miserable because their ex-spouses won’t let them take the kids and return to their home countries. (Which is why I’m still in Switzerland, as well.)
The difference is I recognized my “base reality,” which is that this is where I live. And so I can either be miserable or I can build a fabulous life.
Naturally, I chose to do the latter. Many people fight against that base reality and hope every day that the judges will change their minds, or the ex will say, “Sure, take the kids and go home.” That’s not living in reality.
And when you don’t live in reality, it’s extremely stressful. In fact, one of the biggest stress factors is not accepting your reality.
For example, if you go to work every day hoping your boss will treat you nicely even though he’s been a jerk every day for the past four years, your stress level will be through the roof. If, on the other hand, you say, “I know John is a jerk, but I stay in this job because it pays my bills,” it’s much easier and less stressful. It’s that mismatch between things as they really are and your imagined better world.
Sometimes, base reality is easy to spot. And sometimes it’s confusing. And if you’re the boss, you do get to establish base reality.
Establishing base reality as the boss
So, because the world is suffering from a serious lack of podcasts, I launched a new podcast, Improv Your Future. It’s all about using improv skills to make your life better–because life doesn’t come with a script.
And this week’s episode, Episode Three: Establish Your Base Reality, deals precisely with a situation where everyone is confused about base reality, and the result is chaos.
Tristan and I answer this question:
I am on the board of a 100 percent volunteer run organization. Lately, there has been a lot of conflict among members. People are constantly stepping on each other’s toes and then people threaten to quit if they aren’t respected. I don’t feel like I can demand anything from people because it’s all volunteer. I’m not paying so I can’t really say, “Hey, I really need you to do X.” But then things don’t get done. Help.
Stop and think for a second. Do you see what is wrong with base reality here?
Yep, that’s right. People don’t know who they are to each other and what they are doing. Many of these problems can be fixed by having the boss establish a base reality. You can hop over and give it a listen (it’s short! 20 minutes!) and see how establishing a base reality makes all the difference.
Wait, this started out about you being funny
True. But it’s all because, rather than dwell on the problems and wish for things to be different, I accepted the base reality of my life. I couldn’t leave Switzerland with my children, so I say, “What can I do?” and the answer is, I can, “yes, and” everything.
Which is what I did. And my life is awesome. Because I accepted the base reality and built from there. So many people are angry and frustrated because they pretend that the base reality is something different.
But you can’t “yes, and” until you’ve accepted base reality.
So get to it. What are you in denial about?