Impro

I've been reading the work of Keith Johnstone, who I discovered at a conference on theatre history. In his book Impro, discussing education and the destructive effects it has on children, he writes the following:

"I began to think of children not as immature adults, but of adults as atrophied children" (25)

I could not help but think of Christ's injunction to be "converted" and "become as little children" in order to enter heaven (Matt. 18:3). To atrophy is to waste away, to decay. Christ asks us to de-atrophy, towork so that we might regenerate.


In order to perform in the world with anything approaching love we need to become like children again: full of wonder and humble. And that takes work; it takes effort to rebuild a decaying limb, and adulthood, education, maturation, is often the result of decay.