Written by Wang Chia-Chi, psychologist & improviser.
Let’s connect → tomoewcc@gmail.com |
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Photos: Hannes Gleue
React! Impro, Weil der Stadt (near Stuttgart) · April — 11 days, dozens of scenes, one jet-lag that might just be longing in disguise.
We didn’t share a language.But we shared a moment.Not lost—improvised in translation.
I came home to Taiwan almost a week ago, yet my body still thinks it’s
Germany. “If the jet-lag hasn’t left,” my friend "N" joked, “maybe you
haven’t left either.” She was right: a little piece of me is still sitting
in that rehearsal room, laughing with forty-eight strangers who somehow
became family.
When English Fails, Trust the Partner
Ten years ago, at a Keith Johnstone workshop in Canada, my biggest fear was
that my English wasn’t good enough. Ten years later, my grammar is still far
from perfect—but I’ve learned how to connect onstage without it.
On day two in Germany Shawn Kinley asked us to describe objects in precise
detail—a nightmare for my vocabulary. After class I confessed my
frustration:
Me: “What do I do when words freeze?”
Shawn: “Run an experiment. Next time, speak Chinese.”
So I did.
Right before the next verbal traffic jam, I looked at my scene
partner, Daniel, and poured out a sentence of pure Mandarin. He didn’t
blink, didn’t demand a translation. He simply nodded once—“Okay”—and the
scene rolled on.
That tiny “Okay” landed like a revelation: I don’t have to rely solely on
myself; I can rely on my partner. Trust is the universal grammar of improv.
A Decade-Old Call Back
I first met Keith Johnstone in Calgary. His book Impro blew the hinges off my creative life—status, spontaneity, masks,
narrative drive. Two years ago, news of Keith’s passing left me wordless.
Last year I taught a “status” workshop for therapists—Keith’s
specialty—while recovering from a car accident, teaching seated the entire
day.
Then I saw the flyer: Shawn Kinley, Patti Stiles, and Steve Jarand—three of
Keith’s long-time collaborators—were gathering for a ten-day laboratory
called React! Impro. No schedule, no syllabus—just something in me said yes.
I clicked Register before I finished reading.
Some invitations aren’t optional; they’re callings.
Highlights I Never Want to Forget
- The collective “Awwww” when two characters hugged onstage and everyone in the room felt it.
- Day 7, breakfast table: “Yay, more improv today,” we groaned—then transformed into children the moment warm-ups began.
- A Maestro™ show packed with locals; right before the unknown swallowed us, I felt my fellow players’ hands in the dark, steady as rope.
I’m almost forty; improv is not my whole life. Yet those flashes of
warmth—where adults can be unfiltered kids, celebrating joy, sorrow, and
ridiculous pride—make me want to be a better human.
And then came this beautiful moment—storytelling, one word at a time, in
many mother tongues.
Two Dreams of Keith
My late-night dreams brought Keith back twice.
In the first dream, he appeared not in a theatre, but on Qingdao East Road
in Taipei—at the heart of the Sunflower Student Movement (→About this movement). He was embracing a young
student protester.
When I woke up, I immediately thought of something Keith once said in
Impro:
“In a normal education, everything is designed to suppress spontaneity.”
Improv, then, is a quiet revolution—a reclaiming of the imagination.
One of my fellow React! Impro participants, after hearing about the dream,
said to me:
“Art is political.”
In the second dream, Keith was in an old house that looked like a
traditional Chinese medicine clinic.
He was running the King Game—an exercise I had actually played in real
life under Shawn’s facilitation at React! Impro.
In this game, you play a guest trying to make the king’s life easier.
Fail, and you’re “executed.”
For me, it captured Keith’s spirit perfectly: a little cruel, a little
playful, and full of deep truths about status and storytelling.
When I played this game in real life, the pace was fast, the language
dense—I struggled.
In my dream, Keith—sharp-eyed as ever—kept pointing out how I had offended
the king.
I hadn’t knocked before entering. I failed to use his title. I forgot to
ask how he was doing.
After several failed attempts—each one showing me a little more about what
I was missing—I tried again.
This time, I opened the door with a sense of newfound confidence.
But the king was gone.
In his place stood a wise old European woman, witch-like and radiant.
She was holding a child—the very student who had “lost” the game earlier.
I was surprised. And deeply moved.
Because in waking life, at the end of the workshop, I had turned to N and
said:
“Let’s play again sometime. One day, I want to enjoy the King Game fully—in language and in improvisation.”
And the woman—my dream’s quiet muse—seemed to whisper:
The journey has only just begun.
