Can you give more references on Second City? It sounds very interesting.
Also, could you elaborate on the distinction you make between a tool and an
activity in the following passage:
>So I wonder if its possible to say that for adults improvisation is
>a tool while for children improvisation is the activity itself.
>My thinking is this is possible, especially for very young children,
>because experience has not yet forced a break between motive and
>action, they are part of a direct flow. While with adults, even
>incredibly well trained actors a break between motive and action is
>so pervasive that we can't go back and recapture that flow. It's
>not part of our personal sense of an activity.
I would also like to know more about "the break between motive and action"
as opposed to "direct flow".
This is what I see as a puzzle: If we acknowledge that language is a tool
used to organize and develop thinking, then it is obvious to me that there
is no "break between the motive and action" or between using language as a
communicative action and its role as a cognitive tool. So I don't see the
need to assume a difference between adults use of improvisation and
children's use of it. In other words, activity itself is never an activity
itself without it also being a psychological tool.
There is a very fine analysis by Vygotsky of how children begin to develop
"egocentric" speech, i.e. speech as a thinking tool, according to him. This
process happens under an "illusion" that speech is still being used for
communication. In other words, children who think they cannot be heard or
understood, exibit much less if any "egocentric speech" than children who
think they can be heard (or understood). (Vygotsky, L.S., Thought and
Language, MIT 1987, pp. 231-235). And yet, functionally, egocentric speech
is already a tool for thought, not a communicative device.
If we follow the parallel with language as a psychological tool, then
improvisation becomes a tool as soon as it is an activity. If language is
internalized and becommes "inner speech", then we have to look for something
like internalization of improvisational activity. The difference then,
between earlier forms of improvisation and "mature" forms of improvisation
will be in the degree in which improvisation became internal (i.e. something
like "inner improvisation"). But in both cases, improvisation will be a
psychological tool.
I don't know how clear does this sound. I would just like to find out more
about the "break between motive and action" and "direct flow".
Ana