Being a dad: Play the character smart
In improv a good rule of thumb is to play each of your characters to the top of their intelligence. Improvisers are called on to play a variety of roles and most of the time the characters they take on have occupations the performer has no experience in. I play doctors all the time on stage, yet I’ve never been to medical school. In fact, I’ve only been to a doctor a few times in my life and I never watch Grey’s Anatomy. My only real experience with the medical world is the movie Patch Adams.
Early on in my improv career I played a lot of dumb doctors. I didn’t know any of the medical terms or how to do a double bypass elbow surgery, so neither did my doctor character. I’d get a few chuckles, mostly for my physical humor, but I wasn’t getting the most out of my character.
At some point I was taught by my wise improv elders to “play the character smart.” I was instantly apprehensive about this idea since I am as they say “not the brightest rocket science in the shed.” Is that what they say? Anyway, the point is I was unsure I could pull off a smart doctor character. But I tried it anyway. And what I found is that as I said things like, “Nurse, hand me the spine removal kit” in my most confident voice I was getting more and more laughs. Because a spine removal kit doesn’t really exist. But I asked for it as if it did and refused to let anyone in the scene question my judgement. After all, I was the doctor. I went to 22 years of medical school. It’s 22, right?
This really opened up a lot of characters to me. Now that I could talk about any subject I want as an authority, even though I didn’t know what I was actually talking about. I could play a whole new array of characters. I could be a geneticist, a bee keeper, or even a Fox News Anchor.
So how does this relate to being a dad? I take this same mentality into my parenting. Let’s face it, I don’t have the foggiest idea what I’m really doing. I’m just making this all up as I go. But rather than act like I don’t know what to do, I put on my best doctor character and play the smartest dad I can.
“He’s going to need a pacifier STAT. It has to be taken orally.”
“Oh he’s crying, eh? You’re going to want to rattle him. Never shake the baby. But give him a light rattling.”
(author’s note: I didn’t think ‘rattling’ was a word but I gave it a shot, and according to the spell check…it is!)
Playing your Dad character at the top of his intelligence will benefit you in a lot of ways. For instance when you and all the other dads are sitting in the viewing room during swim class you can spout off information about how babies can naturally float because they are descendant from dolphins.
You can do a similar thing when you go to music class. You can tell everyone your child has natural rhythm because his great great grandfather on his mother’s side was a drum.
As you can see, I am currently putting this theory into action by writing this article as smartly as I can. Okay, now I have to go watch the movie Young Einstein with my son. They say if you watch that with your child everyday he will grow up to be a genius.
