The third episode of the FuseBox Theatre Podcast is part 3 of our interview with Patricia Ryan Madson, author of Improv Wisdom. Also be sure to check out Part 1 (how she got into improv) and Part 2 (creating the Stanford Improviers and teaching adult improv classes).
In this episode, Madson talks about the process of writing her book, Improv Wisdom. It’s a fascinating story with some surprising turns.
Interview with Patricia Ryan Madson - Transcript Part 3
Voiceover: Welcome to episode 3 of the FuseBox Theatre Podcast. I’m John Sexton.
This is part 3 of our interview with Patricia Ryan Madson, author of Improv Wisdom. Madson has taught improv professionally for over 30 years, has studied with Viola Spolin, and has worked extensively with Keith Johnstone.
In this episode, she talks about the incredible transformation that Improv Wisdom went through from concept, to proposal, to publication, in its nearly twenty years of development.
I also share one of my favorite stories about a student of mine who first got interested in improv because of his son, and is now performing with FuseBox Theatre’s Purple Room cast.
Enjoy.
Interview
Patricia Ryan Madson: Six or seven years into doing this adult course [in improvisation at Stanford University], people kept saying, “Oh, you ought to write a book! This stuff is really helping me, I’m getting a lot out of it, it’s helping my life!”
So I started, mid-eighties, I guess, or end of the eighties, writing a book on improv.
But I’m an academic, and so the only way I knew how to write was sort of an academic book, with footnotes, and explaining the principles of this and that, and who said this and that — thousands of footnotes — occasionally an illustration. But deadly.
And all the time I’m writing this, I’m thinking, “What I really want to write is a little philosophy book. But who am I to be the philosopher of improv?”
So the book grew from just the academic text to starting to have some stories or illustrations from class. So it broadened out a little bit.
And when I started showing it to agents and publishers, roundly the feedback I got was, “It looks like you’ve got two books here: you’ve got an academic book and a self-help book. Make up your mind, we could never market this as it is.” And I think they were right.
So What Do You REALLY Want To Do?
So I hired myself an editor in Canada, and she said, “What do you REALLY want to do? What’s the desire of your heart?” And I said, “I want to write a little philosophy book.” And she said, “Let’s do that.”
So, with her help, I totally restructured the thing. I started using a different kind of language. Not the language of academe; natural language. Kind of the language of self-help, in a way. And the book began to evolve into sort of the form it is has now.
The biggest compliment, as I said to you when you wrote to me, is “Well I was able to show this to my parents, and they now get why I’m hooked on this stuff!”
I was going to self-publish. But by the time I finished working with this editor that I had paid to help me, she said, “Really, this book is too good for you to just put out a few thousand copies. I think you ought to write a book proposal and try to find a real publisher for it. Which is what I wanted to hear!
And then fate kindly got me an agent, and with the agent’s help re-writing the book proposal so it was all full of promises and hype and the things that book proposals are, managed to get twelve publishers interested in the book.
John Sexton: So you wrote the book proposal after the book was already finished?
PRM: Yes, after it was finished, thinking the book was done. But what’s interesting is that you don’t ever sell a book. You sell a book proposal. See after the book was sold, I thought, “Well, I’ve done the book… yeah we’ll fix it up a little bit.”
What happened from the time the book was sold and an editor said, “Let’s start working on it,” to how it came as a finished product, is this fabulous transformation. A fabulous improvisation.
And the book is so much better now, and so much exactly what I would dream it to be, because I had an editor who was not only a great writer, but who was on my wavelength intellectually and philosophically. So she helped me make it the book that it is.
But right now, if you look at the book I sold and the book that we’ve published, it’s a lot different.
Finding The Stories
The book as it is, is simpler. It’s smaller. A lot of the stuff the editor did was cut out stuff. I’d repeat myself like a teacher, saying things over and over in different ways.
She’d push me to find stories instead of pontificate.
What I know how to do is philosophize about improv, but she pushed me to find a story about something that happened in a class that would be an example. Stuff like that. So it was a different kind of writing, and it was exhilarating to be working with somebody; it’s that collaborative process. She’d make a suggestion and I’d go with it. I’d “Yes, And” it.
And so it took about six months with an editor from the time the contract was signed to the time the book was bound and put together.
Marketing Improv Wisdom
But Random House didn’t do anything except put it in its catalog. There was never an ad, never a book tour, nothing. And I guess that’s normal.
“It’s not a book about how to improvise, it’s a book about why you would improvise.” And I think that’s really resonated with a lot of people.
Basically they… one of the ways I sold this book was to say, there’s this thing called Improv WebRing. Improv Webring tells us that there are 1345 improv groups worldwide. So the people sitting there in promotions would say, “Ok, well I guess all of them will buy the book.”
But if they had given me 1000 books to send to all of those improv groups, it would have paid off big time. There are still 1100 out of those 1300 groups that haven’t heard of Improv Wisdom yet.
Used to be I’d log on once a day, look up a group, send them a personal email, and say, “Here’s a book you might like.” I can’t quite afford myself to send them to everybody, but people like yourself are helping me tremendously because you recognize the book and tell people or say, “This could be a resource.”
The biggest compliment, as I said to you when you wrote to me, is “Well I was able to show this to my parents, and they now get why I’m hooked on this stuff!” I wanted it to be not a manual of how to improvise — for people like yourself who know and study — but I wanted it to be a little book of ideas, a book of concepts, principles, that might have a much broader life than just for people who want to do improv theatre.
And it has. That’s what is knocking my socks off and making me so happy.
It’s like it’s my child. I don’t have any natural children, but this book is running around in the world, doing good work.
A Tubby Fellow From Las Vegas
I got an email early on. Something like, “Hi, my name is Robert, and I live in Las Vegas. I moved to Las Vegas from Seattle. Frankly my life has been pretty much a mess up until now. And I’m writing you because I went to the Las Vegas library in search of a DVD to watch — I don’t read books — but I saw your book there, and something told me to pick it up, so I brought it home and I read it.”
“It told me what I needed to hear. I’ve been overweight by almost 100 pounds for most of my life. Since reading your book, I’ve started “just showing up” at the gym. I’ve lost 60 pounds. I’ve gotten a job. I’m starting to contact my mother, who I haven’t spoken to in a long time. And I’m writing thank-you notes. And I just wanted you to know that you started all of this. And I wanted to thank you for helping me get on with me life.”
And I’m just like, woah, look at that! And it came through a library! That’s the best part. Books can do magic. Some tubby fellow in Las Vegas started going to the gym… that’s improvising!
Do you… I’d be interested in any stories you have about people you’ve worked with who report in any way how improv changed their thinking or doing.
My Stories
JS: It’s interesting for me, as someone who is relatively young, I’m 26 — I got involved in improv in college, in a group sort of like the Stanford Improvisers, probably — but we didn’t have the benefit of a faculty sponsor, and we didn’t know what we were doing at all. None of us had ever read an improv book.
I think maybe some people had read stuff on the internet, but looking back on it I’m surprised at just how much we didn’t know, and how much we didn’t seek out either.
You say that out of 1300 improv groups, there are 1100 that haven’t read your book. That doesn’t surprise me at all. There are people that I’ve worked with for years who have never read an improv book, and it makes no sense to me at all. So I got started doing that and eventually I figured things out and started reading and started studying and training and thinking.
But most of my students — after I got to the point where I more or less knew what I was talking about and could share and demonstrate these concepts to people — I would say 90 or 95% of my students have been significantly older than me.
So it’s very interesting for myself to be teaching people who are in their 40s, 50s, in some cases, 60s. People who have lived twice as long as I have, who have families and kids and things like that, who come into the class and I’m telling them a life philosophy, essentially. Because in the level one classes I try to emphasize the philosophical aspects of improv and what it can do for your life.
And that’s why I always recommend your book to my students in level one. I say, “It’s not a book about how to improvise, it’s a book about why you would improvise.” And I think that’s really resonated with a lot of people.
All About Larry
One of my favorite examples is a guy who I’m still working with right now. And he’s actually coming later this afternoon, I wish you had a chance to meet him.
His name is Larry [Atamanuik], and he’s in the Purple Room which is the adult education program for FuseBox. And he actually got into improv because of his son. His son Anthony improvises and teaches at Upright Citizen’s Brigade in New York.
So the way he came to me was that Larry is a musician — he’s a drummer that’s toured with famous groups and things and he’s worked as a musician for a long, long time — and his son was into this thing, improv, and Larry got interested in it, which is really fantastic to me because a lot of times you’ll have parents who aren’t interested in what their kids are doing.
Especially if it’s something like improv, where the concept that people have of it is, “Oh, you’re just being silly, you’re just trying to be funny, why don’t you do something real with your life?” Or whatever.
It took me a while to communicate to my parents the value of improvisation. And again that’s one reason I think your book is so great. You know, I don’t want to give my dad a book about the Harold. I want to give my dad a book about what this can do for you as a human being.
So I think Larry is just… he has a natural inclination towards positivity, and just being interested and going with the flow. So he got interested in what his son was doing.
Larry happened to be living in Nashville for music reasons, and he started coming to the Improv Nashville shows that we were doing at the time. And he signed up for classes and took several classes. In the level one class I recommended your book to him, and I think that really is what hooked him. And since then he’s become more and more interested in the performance aspect of things, and he’s just really sticking with it, which is great.
I think that’s probably one of my favorite examples of a story: A father got interested because of something that his son was doing. And now, on any given Friday night, both father and son may be doing improv shows in two different parts of the country. I think that’s pretty great.
Wrap-Up
That’s it for this episode of the FuseBox Theatre Podcast. Next time we’ll continue our interview with Patricia Ryan Madson with a story about how letting go of expectations and giving yourself permission to be “average” can actually produce the best results.
Remember to check www.fuseboxtheatre.com for articles, interviews, video sketches and more.
You can get more information about Patricia Ryan Madson and her book at improvwisom.com
Improv wisdom is available on Amazon for about $10.
You’ve been listening to the FuseBox Theatre Podcast. I’m John Sexton.
Thanks, and Goodnight.
{ 0 comments… add one now }