the man was her husband, and she had found charges on the
cable bill for porn movies and was distraught. He, in turn,
responded by blaming their teenaged son, and after a spirited
back-and-forth, two more actors rushed onstage, playing two
different characters in the same narrative. One was a
psychiatrist helping the family with their crisis. In another
scene, an actor angrily slumped in a chair. “I’m doing time for a
crime I didn’t commit,” the actor said. He was the couple’s son.
At no time as the narrative unfolded did anyone stumble or
freeze or look lost. The action proceeded as smoothly as if the
actors had rehearsed for days. Sometimes what was said and
done didn’t quite work. But often it was profoundly hilarious,
and the audience howled with delight. And at every point it was
riveting: here was a group of eight people up on a stage without
a net, creating a play before our eyes.
Improvisation comedy is a wonderful example of the kind of
thinking that Blink is about. It involves people making very
sophisticated decisions on the spur of the moment, without the
benefit of any kind of script or plot. That’s what makes it so
compelling and — to be frank — terrifying. If I were to ask you
to perform in a play that I’d written, before a live audience
with a month of rehearsal, I suspect that most of you would say