Source/Author (year):: Keith Johnstone (1981)

This is one of my favorite books of all time. Below are some excerpts

Big points

Education

Status

“Drama is not primarily a literary art. Shakespeare is a great writer even in translation… A great play is a virtuoso display of status transactions.”

Space

Space changes depending on the surroundings. For instance, notice an empty beach begin to be filled with families that arrive.

“Here’s Stanislavsky describing a performance by Salvini, an actor who obviously used space in the way I mean: ‘Salvini approached the platform of the Doges, thought a little while, concentrated himself and, unnoticed by any of us, took the entire audience of the great theatre into his hands. It seemed that he did this with a single gesture—that he stretched his hand without looking into the public, grasped all of us in his palm, and held us there as if we were ants or flies. He closed his fist, and we felt the breath of death; he opened it, and we felt the warmth of bliss. We were in his power, and we will remain in it all our lives …”

“a master-servant scene is one in which both parties act as if all the space belonged to the master. An extreme example would be… Cavendish, who is reported to have fired any servant he caught sight of!”

Desmond Morris, in The Human ZOO (Cape, 1969; Corgi, 1971) gives ‘ten golden rules’ for people who are Number Ones. He says, ‘They apply to all leaders, from baboons to modern presidents and prime ministers.’ They are:

  1. You must clearly display the trappings, postures and gestures of dominance.
  2. In moments of active rivalry you must threaten your subordinates aggressively.
  3. In moments of physical challenge you (or your delegates) must be able forcibly to overpower your subordinates.
  4. If a challenge involves brain rather than brawn you must be able to outwit your subordinates.
  5. You must suppress squabbles that break out between your subordinates.
  6. You must reward your immediate subordinates by permitting them to enjoy the benefits of their high ranks.
  7. You must protect the weaker members of the group from undue persecution.
  8. You must make decisions concerning the social activities of your group.
  9. You must reassure your extreme subordinates from time to time.
  10. You must take the initiative in repelling threats or attacks arising from outside your group.

Spontaneity

It is often helpful to think of ideas as flowing through us; as though we were the medium, channeling creative energy. “We have an idea that art is self-expression—which historically is weird. An artist used to be seen as a medium through which something else operated. He was a servant of the God.”

Schiller said that uncreative people are just afraid of the rush of creative insanity.

Johnstone believes imagining should be as effortless as perceiving. The brain constructs amazingly intricate universes in perceiving… perhaps perception and imagination are really not separate.

“My feeling is that sanity is actually a pretence, a way we learn to behave. We keep this pretence up because we don’t want to be rejected by other people—and being classified insane is to be shut out of the group in a very complete way.”

“Sanity has nothing to do with the way you think. It’s a matter of presenting yourself as safe.”

Blocking and Accepting

Blocking is when the frame presented from one actor to another is rejected. Accepting is when it is embraced.

“Fred Karno understood this. When he interviewed aspiring actors he’d poke his pen into an empty inkwell and pretend to flick ink at them. If they mimed being hit in the eye, or whatever, he’d engage them. If they looked baffled, and ‘blocked’ him, then he wouldn’t. There is a link with status transactions here, since low-status players tend to accept, and high-status players to block. High-status players will block any action unless they feel they can control it. The high-status player is obviously afraid of being humiliated in front of an audience, but to block your partner’s ideas is to be like the drowning man who drags down his rescuer. There’s no reason why you can’t play high status and yield to the other person’s invention.”