“Now, become frat boys”: Embodied Improvisation and Identity Play in Devised Theatre

• In Event: Practicing the Possible: An Interdisciplinary Exploration of Improvisation Toward Remedy and Inclusion

Abstract

This example examines theatrical embodied improvisation as a reflective process for exploring new ways of being. Rather than viewing improvisation solely as a tool for learning, I consider it a space within which actors can enact, play with, and practice new identities. I also point to the ways that engaging in improvisational embodiment prompts reflection on the everyday presentations and affective resonances of embodied identity. To do this, I center the experiences of 10 femme and non-binary undergraduate actors as part of a long-term ethnographic study of a rehearsal process for a devised theatre piece on climate change.

During one of their rehearsals, the 10 actors engaged in a series of improvisational exercises where their director prompted them to embody various more-than-human entities such as beetles, mischief, and mosquitos. They moved around the room with various characteristics of these characters, rubbing their hands together, crawling around, and peering behind curtains. Then, the director instructed them to "become frat boys." This direction prompted them to shed their small, contained movements and begin to move in large, languid steps around the room. As the director continued to prompt them to find specific gestures for their “frat boy,” the 10 actors took on movements and behaviors stereotypically associated with fraternity culture, such as walking with their pelvises forward, chest bumping, ‘sup nodding, and gesturing in large, bombastic ways.

Drawing on concepts of identity as performance (Butler, 2004; Goffman, 2006), this study explores how improvisation becomes a space for identity play, enabling participants to engage in expressive reflection and self-making. For these 10 actors, the exercise turns into a dynamic reflective process where their existing identities as femme and non-binary individuals interact with and are challenged by the enactment of their “frat bro” personas. A brief reflection after the activity demonstrates the actors’ felt affective resonances of having had ‘new’ bodies: They felt freer in “frat boy” bodies than in their everyday ones. The actors point to specific ways they felt “allowed” or “free” to move as frat boys that felt forbidden for their everyday (femme) bodies (e.g.: big; goofy; suggestive). In this scenario, improvisational embodiments became a way for the actors to explore and interrogate their quotidian embodiments and performances of self.

The findings also highlight the ethical dimensions of embodiment, particularly for actors whose bodies carry less privilege than those they portray. In the case of these students, improvisation provided a safe space to explore performances of identity that would be marginalized or constrained when performed in their femme/non-binary bodies. Through their exploration, improvisation emerged as a generative space for subverting conventional identity constructs, fostering new modes of self-exploration and expression, and promoting deeper understandings of the embodied self, especially in relation to wider social contexts.

Author

• Lana Cosic, Vanderbilt University