Randy Fertel: Winging It

Kelly meets up with writer, teacher and philanthropist Randy Fertel to talk about this new book “Winging It: Improv’s Power and Peril in the Time of Trump.” 

 

You tell a great improv story in the book about Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock. 

“Yeah. So that took place in Sweden. I think it was with the Miles Davis Quintet and Herbie Hancock was meant to do a solo – he was supposed to hand it off to Miles, and so he came to this final cord of his solo, and he said, and it was like a piece of rotten fruit hanging out there, and Miles gave him the slant eye. And then Miles launched into a solo that made total sense of that chord. And so, Herbie Hancock says in his memoir, ‘What is this alchemy?’ And my answer is, it’s the alchemy of ‘yes, and’ it’s the alchemy of gifts.” 

 

I think many people will be surprised at the idea of a dark underbelly to improvisation. 

“One of the key paradoxes of improv is that it sets out just to be fun. It sets itself up as just being fun. We’re just noodling here; we’re just, you know, playing games. But it has a persuasive goal. It wants to disturb you. It wants you to activate your instincts and intuitions. It wants to throw decorous art and culture for a loop.” 

 

So where do you think we stand right now? 

“The problem is, once you’ve thrown out The Enlightenment, The Scientific Revolution, the legal system, and evidence-based fact in the ditch, how do you reason with the people who’ve accepted that? They’ve disclaimed reason. The book ends with a concern about the tribalism that we’ve fallen into. Each tribe thinks the other is not much better than animals, which is to say, non-rational. How do we find a way to move forward because democracy is about persuasion, and it’s about communication, and it’s about dialogue. It’s about respect; call and response; ‘Yes, and.’ The Houses of Congress don’t speak to one another. The sides of the halls don’t speak to one another. It’s really crazy.” 

 

Photo Credit:  Michael Ventura