I hated improvisation and didn't want anything to do with it ever again
Honestly, I will never forget my first encounter with improvisation. I wasn't prepared for it, and I was utterly terrified when I walked into it by accident.
It happened in Vienna. I was 19, attending a high school conference with exciting workshops on percussion, dance, and many other subjects. It was fantastic — we slept on the floor of the Waldorf School, danced to "Smoke on the Water," ate yummy Viennese ice cream, and of course made new friends. All of it was great, apart from one event, which made me hate improvisation.
I was walking along a school corridor and there was a stage built, with people performing something — not in German, but in English, on top of everything else.
Someone came up to me and explained that they were improvising: making things up in the moment. I definitely needed that translation.
And then, from one moment to the next, they dragged me up on stage and asked me to play with them. There were a few props, and I remember finding an armchair and sitting into it. That was it. I wasn't moving, I wasn't talking, I was frozen. I felt utterly stupid and useless while everyone else was doing great things, whatever those were. These were some of the longest minutes of my life, and I felt not just ashamed of making a fool of myself doing nothing on that stage, but truly horrified. I vividly remember telling myself: I love theatre, and I love dance, but this — whatever the heck that was — I never, ever want to do again in my life.
I was used to our school plays, where we were told exactly what to do, clear instructions.
We did quite a few pieces at the time, being a Waldorf School and all that. I also loved doing modern dance and aerobics as a hobby. When I finished school, I seriously wondered whether to become an actress, but the thought of playing the same show over and over again wasn't appealing to me at all.
The practical culture studies program in Hildesheim was my dream. It combined everything I had a genuine passion for — literature, theatre, art, psychology, education — all in one place.
I took the entrance test, which was in literature, and I wasn't accepted. I was heartbroken. So I stayed anyway, unofficially, and spent a year doing innovative theatre projects amongst other things. I was allowed to take part in everything informally — until I wasn't. If I'm honest, I never felt fully at ease with the people there either, even while I was longing to belong. I took the test a second time. I failed again. I was devastated, and after a long phase of doubt, genuinely trying to work out what I wanted, I ended up studying Social Work instead.
Luckily, there was a theatre department there. Guess where I ended up spending most of my time. Coming from a Waldorf School — which did mainly classical theatre, and probably in a very specific Steiner way — this changed my world in more ways than one.
Our teacher introduced us to approaches like Grotowski and his body alphabet, and I fell completely in love with it. It was all body, no thoughts, a kind of primal, instinctual expression.
I think this was the moment my love for physical theatre was born — and for improvisation, too. In a way, I did a full one-eighty.
I wasn't interested anymore in the way we'd done theatre at school, the ordinary, classical way, and I dove headfirst into every exciting adventure I could find. I read Artaud, Peter Brook, and of course Keith Johnstone, and was lucky enough to attend two of his workshops in Germany — what a legend. In the theatre department, we also developed whole shows created by us, scenes we'd improvised and then fixed in place. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was getting the real deal, and I wanted more, and more, and more.
My Bachelor's thesis was about improvisation. I dove into every approach I could find.
Funnily enough, on the day of my oral exam, some unforeseen mishap meant I ended up improvising after all — playing cards with my examiners while we waited to actually begin. I was hooked. Excited. Alive.