Johnny's Blog - 2/23/08 Improv and the Blue Angels
I love the Blue Angels. When I was a boy, my father would take me to air shows at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, and the highlight would be the performance of the Blue Angels Flight Demonstration Squadron. Their precision and coordination was aggressively beautiful, with their six planes alternating between perfect synchronicity and calculated chaos just on the razor’s edge of danger.
I was recently watching a show on the Discovery Channel about the Blue Angels. There are a prized few pilots who are skilled enough to join the Blue Angel ranks, and they were interviewing some of them about the most important qualities in potential Blue Angels. They want someone with “Good SA.” “SA” apparently is an abbreviation for “Situational Awareness.” A pilot must demonstrate superior grasp of perception, comprehension, and action to prove they can handle the stresses, strains, precision timing and formations of the Blue Angels. Pilots must have SA to perform virtuoso maneuvers at high speeds, high altitudes, and high g-forces, and then channel individual excellence into complex, exacting, and dangerous team-styled maneuvers.
As they described “SA “, I thought of the qualities that make a superior improvisor and improv group (please permit me this analogical bridge). How many good shows have we seen where everyone seemed to be on the same page as each other? How often have I gauged talent and potential because I saw a player make a particularly astute observation, react naturally, or fit comfortably into a scene? How often have we seen a scene harmed by someone with bad awareness? How often have I seen very good individual improvisors at seeming right angles to each other in a scene?
Wikipedia’s entry for “Situational Awareness” reveals a whole field of study. “SA” is the knowledge and understanding of the environment critical to those who need to make decisions in complex areas. It is the perception of elements in the environment, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status in the near future. Having “Good SA” usually means being able to handle a high flow of information by determining what is relevant and important.
Let’s apply the principles of “SA” to a strong improvisor. First, he is constantly perceiving the scene, alert to environment, character, relationship, the suggestion, the story, and whatever else might be going on. He recognizes relevant information and detects cues of voice, gesture, space objects, and actions as they relate to status and condition. An improvisor who is good at perceiving will recognize quickly that he is a husband, and his scene partner is his wife. He will not walk through the table you just set your coffee cup on. He will quickly understand that you are both walking on a cloud, or are polar bears.
Great improvisors also have the “SA” knack of Comprehension, and synthesize disjointed perceptions through pattern recognition, interpretation, and evaluation, integrating information to its potential impact upon goals and objectives. They will put two or three things together and understand not just that it is a mother/son relationship, but it is overprotective mother and a son who wants to play rugby with his high school friends; not just employer/employee, but a compassionate boss who tries to gently fire the employee who wants nothing more than to quit and get the hell out of there. Call it the relationship, the pattern, the game, or the plot, the Comprehending improvisor is able to play within it, and explore and heighten it. He can create new information and place provided information against the established pattern of the scene.
The final step of good Improvisor SA is Projection: the ability to project the future actions of the elements in the environment. After perceiving and comprehending, then comes extrapolating this information forward in time to determine its effects. Even though an improv scene/form is a constantly evolving thing, I think the superior improvisors are able to anticipate the forest that the trees are creating. They figure out how to make their scene partner fall in love, get frustrated, be flattered, or the like. As relationships and themes develop, these improvisors sense it and honor it with every scene move. I think projection is half a conscious realization of a scene’s or form’s arc, and half unconscious action and reaction.
When the individuals come together, there is “Team SA” which relies upon each individual having good SA, along with communication and informational sharing that allows the team to operate at peak effectiveness by having a common picture of the situation. I think this is why the “funniest” people do not necessarily a great group make. The best groups are often highly competent, very funny individuals who have excelled in communicating with each other, revealing information, and putting all the pieces of the puzzle together in a coherent whole.
For fighter pilots, SA has been called the “Ace Factor.” SA gives a pilot the power to anticipate and always be a step ahead of an adversary. SA also allows a Blue Angel pilot to fly at several hundred miles per hour, wings only 18 inches from other planes flying at several hundred miles per hour, or fly straight toward a fellow plane and bank at just the right time to avoid a collision.
An Ace fighter pilot can make complex maneuvers look graceful and effortless. An Ace improvisor can make a complex, dynamic, and constantly evolving scene be natural, coherent, and funny. Somehow they never look lost in a scene and can find something in the scene to propel it. They infer; they predict; they explore; they heighten, they discover; and yet they never lose a sense of what the scene is about and where it is going. They comprehend the scene and the show as a whole. Their fun and exuberance hides the amount of engagement and activity going on within.
The more attuned an improvisor is to the flow of information, the quicker he can process it, use it, respond to it, and project it to the future of the scene. The more attuned the team is with each other, the better they can create together. Good SA leads to strong, interesting, entertaining, coherent scenes. Improvisors with good SA can create a good scene with anyone, but put a few of them in a group together and they have the opportunity to create something transcendent.
Side Note: In improv, we show our trust with exercises like falling backwards and figuring our group will be there to catch us. With our trust, we risk bruised backs and bad scenes. One of the Blue Angels’ maneuvers requires them to do a 360 degree synchronized, high speed spin, during which they temporarily lose sight of each others’ planes in the formation. That’s putting faith in your partners.
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