I wrote a regular blog in my twenties.

Recently, I went back and read it again. It surprised me because I didn’t recognise the author anymore. He seemed so fundamentally different to me.

And so he should; I’m nearly twice his age.

Here’s an angsty extract:

“*Sometimes I meet someone and I think “I wish I were going to get the chance to know you”.

There are people out there – cool people, funny people, talented people, beautiful people – they’re like a great idea just before you fall asleep or a postcard from a stranger delivered to you accidentally. They provide a moment of exhilaration or inspiration that you know you won’t hold on to and that will never be part of your life.

A stolen experience from someone else’s diary, a perfect view from a speeding train that aligns momentarily- window frame, angle, perspective, light, something caught in the amber of memory that existed for you for that second but can never be recreated.

Do you know that kind of meeting?

A half smile across a crowded tube train. An overheard joke told with precision and perfect comedy timing. A poem filled with clarity and deeply felt. I’ve met artists who I’d love to chat with for hours, writers who don’t know that I’m even worth speaking to, friends of a friend who pass the time of day, plant seeds of potential and vanish.

I now realise -- too late, too late -- you can’t know everyone, feel everything, mean something to every single somebody. You have to pick your life like a bouquet, one flower, one experience, one friend at a time – and remember to celebrate the people you do have the privilege to know well, the places that feel safe and familiar, the experiences and instances that unfolded around you and you alone.

And when another fascinating life drifts past your eyes, a wind-swept blossom of exquisite, unknowable beauty, don’t give chase or crane your neck to see where it falls; know that you are also something special, fluttering on the periphery of someone else’s world and that someone somewhere is yearning to know you too.”*

I was obviously going through some stuff, huh?

But I love the description of meeting someone and finding an instant connection with them and it occurred to me [improv theory incoming] that is exactly how we should feel about the characters we play in improv.

All my favourite scenes start with a connection. Now, that can come from playing characters that already know each other well or it can come from characters that find an instant spark when they meet. Great scenes should feel like “a perfect view from a speeding train that aligns momentarily- window frame, angle, perspective, light” - like a portal onto another world. One with real flesh and blood people that think and want and need each other. A world that was there before the scene began and that will continue to exist once the stage lights fade to black (or someone sweeps the scene).

The easiest choice we can make as improvisers is to feel something for the other character in the scene. To be affected by them; exhilarated, inspired, frustrated.

It puts me in mind of the concept of sonder.

(noun) The profound feeling of realising that everyone, including strangers passing in the street, has a life as complex as one's own, which they are constantly living despite one's personal lack of awareness of it.

I think that’s what I was reaching for in the early 2000s. And it’s what I reach for now when I perform. To create a character with a complex inner life.

You can’t know everyone. That much is true. But we can at least get to know the characters we play on stage and try to live for a moment in someone else’s world.

<aside> 💡 Hey, my name’s Chris Mead. I write an article about improv almost every week. You can get the latest in your inbox by subscribing to my newsletter. Or check out the archive.

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