Lessons from The Second City

In case you haven’t heard of The Second City, it is a  comedy troupe that started in Chicago (2nd Largest U.S. City behind New York for years, and my hometown)way back in 1959.

Second City was the “training ground for a host of famous alumni including John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Mike Myers, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, John Candy, Catherine O’Hara, Tina Fey, Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, and over 500 more.

Second City’s claim to fame is IMPROVISATIONAL COMEDY, as opposed to scripted and memorized comedy.

Sound familiar?

Kind of like a certain martial art you know about?

One of Second City’s central tenets is that improvisational comedy CAN BE TAUGHT…anyone can learn how to do it.

We all see Tiny Fey or Steve Carrell and jump to the wrong conclusion, that they were born funny.

Nope, they were made funny through training.  Sure, they might have had a sense of humor to begin with, but Second City honed it into razor-sharp wit.

Second, is that Second City has developed a (gasp!) structured program to teach its students these impov skills.

Second City has an entire course catalog on various aspects of improv comedy…made up on the spot….no memorized techniques…just comedy principles.

They even have (double gasp!) prerequisite courses before taking advanced improv courses….why bother teaching advanced skills when the students don’t have a foundation, or even been exposed to one?

Here are a few examples of Course Offerings:  Movement,  Movement for the Improviser & Stage Combat

Movement

This is a fundamentals movement class in which the student
learns to express themselves physically while using their
instincts and intuitions. Basic skills like relaxation,
stretching, and improvised movement are explored in this
class. The tools obtained in this class will serve as the foundation for any performer’s physical performance.

Movement for the Improviser

Stop performing from the neck up! Working through
movement exercises will ignite your improv and sketch work
with energy and vivid physical expression. Silent scenes,
character exercises, and basic choreography will give you
access to a wider range of characters to play and bring new
life to both your independent work and work within an
ensemble. Slow down the chatter in your scenes, penetrate
the silence, and gain confidence with moving to song and
music onstage.

Stage Combat

Have you ever wanted to learn how to slap someone, deliver a
punch to the stomach, or how to fall without hurting yourself
in the process? This is the class for you! This Stage Combat
class focuses on the skills needed to protect the actor and
their instrument when engaged in stage violence. A working
knowledge of stage combat is essential to any performer’s
training and this class will give you those fundamental skills.

Prerequisite: Acting 2 or Improv Level B

The act of improvisation relies on the brain’s language centers, which makes sense because there is a “back and forth” just like a dialogue.

In contrast, the act of rote memorization — whether it be comedy, jazz music or martial arts — uses different parts of the brain other than the language centers.

This means that there are two different skills being developed here.

It also explains why people who are good at memorizing aren’t necessarily (and often aren’t) good at improvising…UNLESS they practice improvising.

What Second City excels at is linking these two skills, learning simple techniques/principles and improvising off of them.

Here is one exercise from The Second City that gets students in the improv mode:

“Yes, and…”

I noticed all the “yes, ands..” at a Second City performance years ago.  I realized they were doing it, but at the time didn’t know why.

Now I know.

First, yes.  Saying yes accepts whatever the first performer floats out there — there is no mental resistance to what the improviser has just been given.

No matter what the first performer says, the second person doesn’t contradict it or judge it.  It keeps performers from thinking, “why did you just say something so stupid?  What am I supposed to do with THAT?”

In Systema, this translates into taking whatever the attacker gives you and moving with it, along with whatever first move your body makes as a result.  It keeps you from getting mentally stuck and thinking what SHOULD you do.

There is no should.  (Do or do not).

Saying yes takes out the initial tension and fear from the encounter.  I often have my students also think to themselves, “huh? now that’s interesting…”

Next is the and…

And leads the performer into his rebuttal.  It also gives him time to formulate a quick, witty response.  He can latch on to any component of the sentence he was given and morph it into comedy.

“Yesterday my wife served me liver for breakfast.”

“Yes, and…how did your liver taste?” (in Scottish accent. me=my in this case)

The improviser had the time to focus on the word liver and make an interpretation of me into my, messing with the sentence structure.

In Systema, the and comes from accepting the attack and just moving anywhere.  It gives you time to find something, anything to work with and see what happens.

Not all Second City improv is stellar comedy.  Some jokes bomb and others are mildly amusing, but getting performers to keep throwing things out there eventually gets the big laughs.

Not all self-defense encounters in Systema class are perfect.  Class is full of “Let’s try that again” and “partly successful defenses” that are good enough to protect you but not necessarily win the fight.

That’s called learning.

Improv and spontaneous self-defense, as Systema teaches, both benefit from principles internalized and applied in specific situations, always building on success.

Defense in a chair 2

Some more footage I found from the Defense in a Chair class:

 

Defense in a Chair

You Gotta Ask Yourself One Question…Part II

I’ve been thinking about a very serious question, rather a series of questions, about Systema lately, questions I think you should also take some time to address for yourself.  I’ll give you my answers which may help you as well.

 

To recap here is the main question:

 

“Why Systema instead of other very effective martial arts or MMA?”

 

A mixed martial arts fight is about who is the biggest best toughest person around; t is direct “alpha-male” type of behavior. The idea is to prove who is at the top of the food chain.

However, wars are not won always by the strongest side. History is replete with stories of smaller armies defeating larger more dangerous ones. Those who were smaller needed different tactics and strategies to defeat those who are larger.

If you are close to alpha male status, you are the biggest strongest fighter, then it may make sense to focus all your energy on this type of event.  Someone huge like Brock Lesnar, well of course he would want to go head-to-head with anyone in an ego-contest.

The problem with alpha-male thinking is just that, there is only one, like the Highlander.  What about the rest of us?

I am 5’10″ tall 165 pounds. I fully understand that most people are bigger, heavier and stronger than I am. I can’t even think about going head-to-head with such people.

As a smaller person, I am fully aware that the problem for me to solve is how to defeat such bigger, stronger people.

What would I have to do to survive being attacked by someone like this?

The wrong question for me to ask is how would I defeat the person in direct combat.

Smaller people are more dangerous because the stakes are higher, just as the smallest scorpion has the deadliest sting due to its venom.

Smaller people cannot afford to make mistakes or to underestimate their opponents.

This is why I got into the martial arts in the 1st place, I was a small person in a large world.

I needed an edge, trying to be the toughest guy in the room wasn’t it. I needed the kind of training in martial art like Systema offers.

 

BJJ offered (and still does in many cases) smaller people like me an advantage over larger, stronger opponents.  But with the rise of MMA it has lost some of its effectiveness because Americans are great at adapting and have created strategies for dealing with it.

No doubt I’m a fan of BJJ/Sambo but as I said last time, it is context-limited.  Plus, it still relies on too much struggling and force for my needs (that’s why it is called grappling).

While this context is important to be comfortable with, the nature of Systema training give me other advantages.

For one, the pain management work in Systema is unparalleled in the martial arts.

The breathwork to deal with the pain of being joint-locked makes it much easier to escape locks.

The joint-strengthening and mobility work make it easier to avoid getting into locks in the first place.

The emphasis on breaking vs. locking makes it easier to NOT struggle or grapple.

The nature of Systema striking is vastly different from the boxing paradigm which makes it easier for me to debilitate a larger attacker without trying to box toe-to-toe.

The major principles of mastering tension and relaxation to use an attacker’s force against him without using much force myself has been the MAJOR reason I continue to perfect this part of the art.

Speed, strength, endurance all decline with age but the major principles of Systema improve with age and experience and are particularly effective for smaller people like me.

There you have it, a second answer to “Why Systema instead of other very effective martial arts?”

 

Brad

P.S. More answers to this question next time…there’s a whole bunch more to say on this topic for sure.