By: Aaron Alexander
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| Robin Williams |
The shock came and the sadness lingered. The tributes have
all been written, read and shared. The issues have been debated back and forth
by people with wildly varying levels of basis for comment. And now, people,
broadly speaking, are moving on.
But I know that from now on, every time I step on stage,
I’ll remember Robin Williams.
I’m lucky enough to perform improvised comedy, which puts me
in a similar relationship to Robin as to Argentinian striker Lionel Messi - we
play the same game, same rules, same tools, but only one of us can make you
re-evaluate the limits of human potential while doing it.
On the other hand, I reckon scoring a goal gives me the same
joy as it does Messi (if not more, as he actually does it with presumably
monotonous regularity). And I think I know just a little of the feeling Robin
Williams had when he was in the Happy Place: on stage, with a live audience, in
free flow, riding waves of laughter.
All of us who improv live for moments in the Happy Place,
where you’re in tune with each other and the audience, and a creative chain
reaction can occur. While we live for it,
on stage Robin Williams just lived in it. He had a direct connection, an all
access pass, he could see the matrix, hear the music of the spheres and conduct
it from an inflatable throne in his bouncy castle in the kingdom of fools. And he will always rule there, like a
trickster god of ancient mythology.
If you watch his early work – and you must – alongside how funny he is, you’ll notice one
other thing: how much he loves the audience. He wants to connect with them as
individuals, share a moment, push their buttons, do whatever it takes to tickle
their fancy. In his 1978 Live at the Roxy
special he arrives on stage through the audience and within minutes he’s back among them,
literally climbing the walls
to get to more of them. They are his material.
One of the basic principles of improv is to say ‘yes’ to everything
that comes your way. Take any offer as inspiration, and build on it. Robin
Williams had a boundless capacity for saying ‘yes’ to inspiration. And he could
find it almost anywhere – a light fixture, an audience member’s hair, a piece
of set, an awkward body position – any offer could spark a character, a voice, a
line. And the speed…everyone talks about it. To work at that speed there’s
simply no room for fear or self-doubt.
And most importantly, he’s so transparently, blissfully
happy in those moments. Yes, I know, cocaine and so on, but that’s not what I
see in his performance (even if that’s what he felt he needed to get there in
those days). I see joy. And it’s his generosity with his joy that lifts us up.
His is not a comedy of cynicism, the stand-up with biting observations
puncturing complacency. His is the inner child given absolute permission to run
free in a world of infinite possibility. Part Genie, part Peter Pan.
That joy in play, in free creation, I don’t believe it ever
left him. He worked with the famous Second City improv company before he was
famous. Years later, a global superstar, he could turn up backstage at a Second
City gig to perform – not solo, but sharing the stage and scenes, generously,
with young improvisors. You don’t do that unless, purely and simply, you Love
the Work.
As we all know now, there was a darkness inside him as well.
On one hand it may have given him the power to deliver dramatic performances
that stunned the world with their weight and raw intensity. No one expected
Mork to win an Oscar. On the other hand, it was a darkness powerful enough to
overwhelm the light within him. But while we must learn from the sorrow and the
tragedy, that should not be the legacy of a man who spent his life spreading
happiness across the globe.
We all have our memories of Robin Williams. To those of us
who are driven to walk on stage with no script and no safety net, he will simply
always be the master. We’ll try to squeeze and channel just a few drops of the
creative quicksilver that ran in his veins. We’ll hope that maybe one day in a
scene we’ll hear his voice in our heads, Obi Wan-style, saying “Go for it.
Climb up there. Do that voice. Don’t think, go with it. Just say ‘yes’,
goddammit!”
I’ll always be grateful that he walked among us, that he
made us laugh, and cry, and love him.
He was the Greatest of All Time.
Vale, magister ludi.
Aaron
Alexander was scheduled to write a DOTW blog post about The Improvisors Go to the
Movies (7pm SUNDAYS, August 10 to October 5), but following the tragic
passing of Robin Williams, no other subject for a blog about comedy
improvisiation seemed appropriate.
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