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A friend recently gave me what is apparently a classic book on improvisational theater, called Impro, by Keith Johnston. The entire book is remarkable, and worth reading for anyone, not just those in the theater, but my favourite passage is the one below:
I once had a close rapport with a teenager who seemed 'mad' when she was with other people, but relatively normal when she was with me. I treated her rather as I would a Mask - that is to say, I was gentle, and I didn't try to impose my reality on her. One thing that amazed me was her perceptiveness about other people - it was as if she was a body language expert. She described things about them which she read from their movement and postures that I later found to be true, although this was at the beginning of summer school and none of us had ever met before.
I'm remembering her now because of an interaction she had with a very gentle, motherly schoolteacher. I had to leave for a few minutes so I gave the teenager my watch and said she could use it to see I was away only a very short time, and that the schoolteacher would look after her. We were in a beautiful garden (where the teenager had just seen God) and the teacher picked a flower and said: 'Look at the pretty flower, Betty.'
Betty, filled with spiritual radiance, said, 'All the flowers are beautiful.'
'Ah,' said the teacher, blocking her, 'but this flower is especially beautiful.'
Betty rolled on the ground screaming, and it took a while to calm her. No one seemed to notice that she was screaming 'Can't you see? Can't you see!"
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