The Weird Sisters (and Brothers)

I've always felt like a little bit of a weirdo. It was a struggle to find people who could deal with my particular brand of weirdness. When I started doing improv, I realized I'd found people who would never let some obscure reference go uncelebrated. People who were amazingly intelligent but decidedly not boring. People who could quote Shakespeare in one sentence and rattle off a series of fart jokes in the next (if they quote the right plays they won't even need two sentences!). I had found my clan. 

For a while I just believed I found a lucky group of people in the Nashville Improv Company (I did, but that's beside the point) and that surely this magical kind of human didn't exist anywhere else in the world. Then as I went to festivals and took workshops and met people who have made improv their lives, I started to think that improvisation just attracted tons of awesome weirdos.

But now I look at some of the students I've taught and how far they've come and I know that some of us have weirdness jn our nature, but all of us have spent time nurturing that special kind of silliness that your can only find in an improviser. Nothing is ever too strange for us. The porridge will never be too hot or too cold, it's always just right. It's not just acceptable to be weird as an improviser, it's highly prized and strived for. I'm exceptionally proud to have found so many brothers and sisters in weirdness and I can't wait to convert even more people to our ridiculous religion.

 

Making Stuff Up

The things that you make up are the bones of improv. When you get on stage armed with a suggestion (whether audience based or not) you are about to be pulling improv bones out of thin air. Isn't that incredible?

Invention is often cited as one of the more intimidating aspects of improv, people think that their brains simply couldn't supply a useful idea on the spot. For most people the issue isn't about a lack of ideas, it's about not being able to recognize the good ones that are popping up in their heads. Here's a hint: any one of those ideas that shows up is better than standing there waiting on the perfect one. Your motto is any port in a storm and you've gotta dock somewhere (anywhere) before your ship capsizes.

I've taught kids and adults for several years now and the difference between how a young person's mind and an adult's mind works are staggering. If I ask a six year old to say the first thing they think of they will blast out the word "fart" or "alacorn" without any hesitation. With an adult there will be nearly a full minute of hesitation. We learn to judge ourselves and our ideas as we grow older. We toss out the things that are embarrassing or that don't seem immediately important and that is a huge detriment of our creativity.

The beautiful thing about improv is that it teaches us to value the stuff we make up. It teaches us to commit to even the silliest idea that we have because with enough thought and care even the most ridiculous scenes can mean something and say something very important. 

I Love Improv

I love improv.

I love improv because I get to make stuff up.

I love improv because not only is my weirdness accepted, but it's a highly valued commodity.

I love improv because it has led me to make friends with some of the most wonderful, talented, kind,
and intelligent people that exist.

I love improv because I get to be on stage and make people laugh.

I love improv because it has taught me that I am good enough.

I love improv because it is slowly buffing out all of my cynicism and negativity and leaving behind a person who is happy and whole.

I love improv because it has inspired me to talk about how much I like, enjoy, and love everything else in my life.

I love improv cause it's super dumb and that's okay.

Think about what you love, really roll in that for a while. It's nice.

Accepting Compliments

I've found that even when I feel supremely confident about a performance I've delivered, I'm still very bad at accepting compliments. That's not an uncommon failing of a young, creative person, though. Every time I go to see a show at my alma mater the actors, singers, and dancers deflect my compliments on their performances by telling me how bad they felt on stage and how many things went wrong. 

"Hey, you did a great job!" 

"Ugh, really? I forgot my line in this scene and this person tripped and somebody else missed their entrance by a full beat!"

I used to do this all the time until I realized that it was a total buzzkill to tell somebody that enjoyed the show that they were wrong to enjoy something so awful. My issue with accepting a compliment has evolved in an interesting way that is almost entirely too generous. Someone will come up to me after a show and tell me how much they enjoyed my performance and I'll accept the compliment by saying, "Oh thanks, everybody else is amazingly talented and that's why the show was good." Or maybe I respond with, "Thanks, it was a lot of hard work!"

Those replies might seem okay, but they're not what the audience member wants to hear. You know what they want to hear? "Thank you, I'm glad that you enjoyed it." Don't give them excuses. Don't give them the notes you took for the rest of the cast. Just look them in the eyes, smile, and thank them.

Improv Drag Race - NERVES OF STEEL.

Tonight I'm doing Improv Drag Race and boy am I nervous about it! I'm going to be decked out in drag and performing on an unfamiliar stage with an audience that I have no history with and that's given me a case of the butterflies. Oh, there's also only three people and a host in this show so that has something to do with it, too. I figured I'd write a blog to help analyze what I'm nervous about.

1. Wearing Drag.

I'm not nervous about this because I don't want to wear drag or because I'm afraid people will think I'm a cross-dresser or something. I'm nervous because drag is a cultural thing that I'm not 100% familiar with and I don't want to seem disrespectful of it. I am a stranger in a strange land and no one who's in this show has done drag outside of an improv context (as far as I know) and god what if everybody thinks we're making fun of drag. I want to get on stage and give these people a fuckin overwhelming drag show that features dumb improv jokes. I am going to be totally sincere and committed and that's all I have control over.



2. New place, new audience.

This is something I'm going to have to deal with on every stage that isn't Bongo Java. I feel like there is a little bit of leeway in the regular NIC shows because we have people attend every single show there and they've grown to know me and my sense of humor and they love my dumb jokes even when they are hardly even jokes. But when I really examine that I notice that the same people aren't coming to literally every show. I also notice that new audience members are often the ones who stop by to tell me how much they enjoyed the show. Maybe it's the regulars that are confused and puzzled by me? Either way, new eyes grant me the element of surprise!


3. Small Cast.

There's a lot more pressure on each individual to rock every single game that we have in the set list with a cast of three, but I am legitimately good at every one of the games on the set list. If I'm having an off night, I know that either of the other two people can step up and crush it just as hard as I would've. Plus, I did an improvised shakespeare show with four people and that was way harder than being beautiful an sassy in heels for 90 minutes.

Okay, I think that helped. I'm going to go shave my sideburns and armpits now.

Good Feelings and a Runny Nose

I'm having trouble finding the words tonight. I'm a little wiped out from a busy week last week and a little bit of a late-summer cold making a nasty resurgence. I feel very pleased with where I'm at in life, but whenever I start writing the only words that come out are negativity about where I used to be. That's not important and that's not fun to read or write about.

I will say this, though: I am so happy to have so many people that I care about and who care about me. Knowing that I have a positive effect on people's lives, even if it's very minor, makes me feel good. The idea that people enjoy working with me and enjoy watching me work is invigorating. I finally don't feel like I'm a drain on the people around me. I feel like I'm a tidal wave of exuberance, and that's great.

Now if you excuse me, this tidal wave is going to crash on the rocky shores of his bed.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Why is it that when teachers talk to you, they are insistent that you go to grad school so you can teach? When Chicago improvisers talk to you, they tell you to pick up and move to Chicago. Are those huge kinds of life shakeups really necessary for someone's career and craft to thrive? Is the measured approach not even a little viable?

As far as grad school goes: I am not even somewhat tempted to dive back into the pool of academia again. Moving to Chicago, however, is a somewhat more difficult idea to dismiss. I have been telling myself that I will stay in and around Nashville in order to build an improv community there. They're the people who got me invested in improv, and that is where my allegiance lies. I've been thinking that I am living my life in a smart and safe way, because luck fails me more often than it comes through. But maybe I'm just scared.

If I moved I'd be moving alone, with no support system in place up there, no job planned out, no money to survive, no place to live, no real guarantee that I'll even be doing anything worth all the stress of figuring all of those other things out. I'd also be able to get some real improv training and actually take steps towards making performing and teaching a full time career. And Chicago's cool, I guess. Well, it's freezing actually. Kind of the worst temperature.

If I stay... I stay. Plans remain unchanged and I can keep building myself up and getting my life in order. I think that it's pretty clear to me that Nashville isn't where my path ends, but I'm also pretty sure that I'm not exactly ready to handle some insane cross country move yet.

What Do You Want Out of Improv?

I was reading a post on an improv blog and it made me think about what I want out of improv. It's a post on improvnonsense titled No One Here Wants to be Funny? In that post, the point is made that it's okay to improvise just because you want to be funnier. I'm guilty of rolling my eyes when someone in a workshop or a class says that they want to be funnier or quicker on their feet, but that is a totally valid reason for wanting to improvise! My distaste for it comes from me assuming that if someone is here just to be funny or quick then they are going to be doing those things at the expense of their scene partners which is one of the things that made me hate improv when I was younger.

Then I had to sit and think to myself what I really want out of improv. I don't really want to be funny. Being funny is just a thing that happens when you're telling the truth. I want to tell the truth. I've heard it said that good art is lying to tell the truth, and that's what I want to be doing. If it's funny then that's great, but it's not my first goal.

If my goals were just this lofty idea of truth and art then I could still be acting. What does improv have that acting doesn't? I get to do anything. I will probably never be cast as a leading man in a play. I will almost certainly never be a villain that strikes fear into audiences' hearts. I doubt I'll get the role of a doting mother in traditional theater. In improv, I can do all of those things and nobody can stop me. I don't have to be on stage speaking someone else's words while dancing through somebody else's blocking on yet another person's set in yet another person's costume. I'm getting worked up just thinking about how restrictive traditional theater is! Shackled to another person's work. You're not the air, you're the filter. You're not the image, you're the lens.

I also really love that "good improv feeling" that comes when you're fully connected to your cast. There's something hugely satisfying in knowing that no matter how wildly afield you throw something, it will always be caught and returned with even more force. Something about the improv hyper-accelerator that just makes my heart swell with joy. I've spent a lot of time in my life feeling lonely and like there's not a person in the world who's on the same wavelength as me, and improv shows me that everybody else is right there with me. It's like somebody flicked on the light in a dark room and all of a sudden my friends are all here throwing me a surprise party.

I improvise because it connects me to people. I do it because it lets me make up whatever story I want to tell. I do it because it's fun. Whatever your reason is, it's good enough for me as long as it keeps you having fun too.

Butterflies Are A Good Sign

I'm not 100% sure what's happened recently, but before the last couple of shows I've done I have felt surprisingly nervous. Jittery, excited, butterflies deep in my gut kind of nervous. What's weirder is that I kind of prefer it to feeling cool and collected before a show.

I like to feel as though I'm pushing myself beyond my comfort zone, and if I'm going into a show with an elevated heart rate that's gotta mean that I'm doing something right. If I feel a little scared to just get on stage, what's the difference between that and making a big, surprising and risky move in a scene? It's much better than going on stage and feeling fine and never getting to do anything out of the ordinary.

Tonight I'm going to do a show in an improv form that we've decided to call "Meat'n Three" and it's going to be absolutely absurd. The amount of freedom and room to play in the show tonight is very cool. We'll be doing some "meaty" scenes, some three line scenes, some nonsense, maybe some songs. Whatever comes up in whatever order. It sounds terrifying, but when I'm playing in it I feel as though I could handle anything that comes up. Because we're making this form up as we go, anything we do will fit perfectly into our show. No structure means no mistakes, and that's kind of awesome.

My stomach is flipping over and tying itself in knots right now, and I couldn't be more pleased about it. If butterflies are any indication, tonight's show should be incredible.

Top Five Things for Giving Notes

Having to give notes in improv is a necessary evil. We've got to look at our performances with a critical eye if we want to improve at we're doing and make it easier for us to have fun while we're playing and for an audience to have fun watching us. Here are some things that I've found to alleviate some of the awkwardness that comes with giving notes in improv:

1. Ask the performers how they felt about the scene. Did they enjoy anything specifically? Did they feel themselves slip up or succeed? If they noticed a success you can tell them what was great about it and try to encourage any good tactics they've come up with. If they struggled with something, point out what made it difficult and how to steer out of that skid.
2. If you are a performer as well, give yourself the harshest notes. Be the first to admit when you make a mistake, diagnose how you can fix it. Before you give anybody else a negative note, really search your work to see if you can apply it to yourself first.
3. Acknowledge that there isn't one specific way to do things. Rules in improv only represent the simplest path to success, not the only path to success. I know improvisers who break every single rule and create wonderful, hilarious scenes without alienating their partners. If someone breaks a fundamental principle of improv but it still works somehow, discuss what made it work.
4. Give mostly positive notes. Nothing hurts people's creativity more than you telling them that they're bad at playing make-believe. If you see a scene that has 20 bad ideas and 1 good one, rave about that good idea and forget all the bad ones. Yes! You were a genius to come up with that singular moment, let's do more of that awesome stuff! A positive atmosphere begets joyful work.
5. Pay attention and react enthusiastically. Watch everything that happens, watch all the little things, get invested in the scenes and the characters. If something's funny, laugh. If something's sweet give'em an "awwwww." If they make a horrible pun, boo loudly. Don't spend too much time writing down your notes, if the note is that important you will be able to remember it after the scene. If you care about their work, the improvisers will care about their work too.

Those are the TOP FIVE THINGS (pew pew pew) to get you started giving notes. I stray from these occasionally, but I don't think straying has ever made my notes more insightful or better received. If anybody has any suggestions that could help with giving notes, I'd love to read them.

From Improv to D&D

I started a Dungeons and Dragons campaign a few months back because it's something that I've always wanted to do and I was tired of waiting for somebody else to invite me to their game. I thought that since I love to write and improvise and make up characters on the spot, being a Dungeon Master would be a great fit for me. But when we started playing, I realized that improv instincts weren't carrying over into the game for some reason. I bought a whole damn book on rules for this game and we're going to follow every one of them, dammit! I paid cold hard cash for these encounters and dungeon maps and item listings, and you are gonna experience every single bit of this stuff even if it bores all of us!

My notes took me  hours to compile and my sessions were rote, boring, and devoid of details. I had no space in my brain to make up fun things because I was so focused on the idea that they were in a room that was 40ft by 50ft and the ceilings were 15 ft high and there's an exit to the south and north etc. etc. Even worse, I felt super stressed out every time Sunday rolled around and it was time for us to forge ahead in our adventure. That sucked, and the worst part is that I knew it was my fault that it sucked.

I stepped back from the game for a little while and I realized that I was focusing on the parts of the game that are the least interesting. What makes D&D fun? Creatively solving problems, silly characters, making up a whole world with the help of a couple of friends. What was I doing? Grids, tables, and very precise, rigid character interaction.

My prime directive is that if a player wants to do something cool, I find a way to say yes to them. If they are about to fail or sit in a place for hours upon hours and accomplish nothing, I let them. No more advice and nudging, just tell them what's happening and let them decide how to interact with it. At the moment most of my players are still boxed in by how I ran the first half of our sessions, but I'm hoping they'll have their Matrix "there is no spoon" moment within the next few meetings. 

My notes are: 

• a basic map of the places they're in and could go to
• stats for anybody they may encounter
• a list of character names and quirks that I could throw out if they talk to someone instead of murdering them
• the long-term goal and short term tactics of the main characters in the campaign

This way I can just say, "These things exist" and shut my big mouth. They make the decision to interact with things or leave them alone and I only chip in when they need me to do something. I'm all of a sudden not the only one making things up and it's so much more fun and collaborative! I can do this exactly like an improv scene, except this improv scene tends to move a lot more slowly and I can plan out all of my very dumb jokes as well as make more on the fly. Improv is a great tool in a lot of situations but it only works if you use it!

Little Accomplishment, Big Satisfaction

I have this weird mental block when it comes to joke-based games and singing games in improv. Scenes are my safe place and what I know how to do. I feel comfortable plodding along until a funny happens, but the immediacy required from line games and the pinpoint accuracy required in songs has always intimidated me. 

With my thoughts on how I'm not challenging myself enough fresh in my mind, I set out to do an improv show with only joke-based and song-based games. I think there were some baby steps of improvement for me!

Line game moment: there was a dreaded moment of silence after we got a give and I leapt on the grenade. I stepped forward without a joke and managed to make one up as it came out of my mouth. If I didn't have one I'd have probably had to just repeat the give in a confused way until someone pulled me off of the stage. Dang, that might've been better. 

Song moment: I started my verses at the right time! I didn't mess up the tempo so much that the song crashed and burned horrifically. Maybe now that I'm certain I can board the singing bus I'll be able to move up to driving it. 

You Know, Ozymandias Did a Lot of Good Stuff, Too

Watchmen spoilers ahead. If you haven't read Watchmen, quit reading my dumb blog and go read Watchmen.

Yeah sure, he devastated cities across the globe and cost hundreds of thousands of lives in the process, but hear me out! The Oz-man was an incredibly driven dude. Not only did he accomplish his sinister plan, but he avoided a common comic book villain mistake by waiting until after he'd already executed on his schemes to explain everything to the people who would stop him.

Did you know you're less likely to achieve a goal that you've told other people about? Derek Sivers talked about this in his TED Talk about keeping your goals to yourself. Basically you trick your brain into thinking you've already accomplished your goal when you share it with other people. Because you've already gotten satisfaction from it, you're less likely to do the work that's in front of you. I'm not going to be kidnapping many of the world's greatest artists and destroying countless cities and lives and blaming it on a giant-squid alien that I've invented, but from now on I'm going to do my best to keep my goals secret until I've already done the work to achieve them. Once I've made it, I'll wait 35 minutes and tell you about how cool it was.

To Myself: I'M CALLIN YOU OUT, BROTHER!

I've noticed a pattern in my day to day conversations where I will list an honest criticism of myself and the other person will deflect it. I think that comes from an incredibly kind place and I'm massively grateful to have friends that want to support me when I am down on myself, but I do think that it can be an impediment to personal growth if I don't ignore their comforting words from time to time. All my life I've teachers and bosses tell me that I'm very good at whatever I'm doing at the time but they think I can do even better. On the other hand, peers tend to spend their time telling me I'm incredible and why should I bother working more when I'm already awesome. You can guess which one tends to have a little more influence on my behavior.

The thing is, I agree with my teachers. My learning process seems to begin with huge growth. I take leaps and bounds and learn as much as I can and I devote my full focus to the task in front of me. Invariably, I find myself getting complacent with my achievements and I just stop working as hard. A lot of the time, the complacency begins with somebody I respect giving me the validation of "wow, you're really good!" I stand back and think, "yeah, I am great, aren't I?"

I think about where I'm at as a teacher and actor and improviser and I realize it's not very much different from where I was a year ago. I know I am doing things, but I also know that I could be doing more. I know that I could be taking more lessons away from the things that I am already doing. Unlike any previous point in my life, though, I don't have a mentor to push me just that little bit further. That person who is never quite satisfied with what I've done.

It's clear to me now that I have to be that person for myself. I am the one who is not satisfied with my progress. I'm doing all right, but I know I can do better. I'm not going to pat myself on the back for just showing up anymore. Participation isn't enough for me, I need to excel. I need to fight more and work harder, not because somebody else wants me to but because I am capable of it. In the words of Shia Labeouf, "Yesterday you said tomorrow so just do it! MAKE. YOUR DREAMS. COME TRUE."

One Weird Trick To Shield You From Negative Criticism

The main reason that I used to struggle with writing out and sharing my thoughts with people was because I was afraid that people would disagree with me vehemently and call me an idiot. This is especially true with me writing about improv, because there's a subset of improvisers who take a lot of pride in shouting down anybody who thinks anything other than what they've been taught. The worst thing is, I was afraid they'd be right about me being a total know-nothing.

The trick, I've learned, is to write about things I like and spend very little time discussing the things that I don't like. If I catch myself writing an incredibly negative post, it's usually because I'm wrapped up in a lot of emotion. Maybe somebody hurt my feelings at work or rehearsal and I wanted to write about how that person and everything they do is bad and is hurting the fabric of society. Then after I've written it, I read it back and it all seems a little silly.

If I write about my own experiences and things that have made improvisation fun for me, then who is anybody else to tell me that I'm wrong? If I spend posts upon posts being a positive beam of sunshine and someone comes in and calls me a dummy for enjoying things, that person is clearly just an a-hole. If you write about what you love, kind people will respect that (unless what you love is kicking puppies or something). The added bonus is that if you spend your time thinking and talking about things that you like a whole lot, you're going to feel a whole lot happier as a result.

Go ahead and get angry and write posts seething with vitriol. Get it all worked out of your system, then re-read that post and delete it immediately. By spouting negativity you are inviting other people to spout it right back at you. Granted, some things are worth posting takedowns of: puppy kickers, MRAs, people who order a diet coke and a water at a restaurant.

If you want to feel better and not worry about people telling you how awful and dumb you are, you should start by not talking about how awful and dumb everybody else is.

Being A Joy To Work With

I've been spending a lot of time at my day job lately and it's been making me think about what makes a co-worker a joy to work with and what makes others a chore to be around. What are the common traits of the people that light up my day as soon as I see them, and do I exemplify these traits?

I am guilty of showing up late from time to time, or venting my frustration with how the day is going, I can show up tired and hungry and I know that it affects my work, but I do my best to never allow these things to be excuses for not putting in my best effort. I spend most of my time at work finding ways to make the day easier and more pleasant for the people around me. It feels good to be around people who are happy, it makes me feel better to lend a hand when I can spare it.

In the same vein, the people who I enjoy working with are the ones who spend their time making the best of their day. We're at work, and even though sometimes they truly would rather be somewhere else, they're going to make this day worth their while. They're positive thinkers, they fix problems as they arise, and they're eager to help if they see someone struggling. They find ways to not only do the job that's required of them, but to do it with enthusiasm.

The thing is, those traits are useful everywhere and are an absolute requirement in a good improv troupe. When I find myself struggling through a day at work or a rehearsal at night, I know who I can turn to to help bail me out of my negative mindset. I know the people who will brighten my mood, and I strive to be that person for everybody else.

Get to work and find a way to enjoy it, because your joy can be infectious. Start an exuberant epidemic!

The Struggle:Taking a Break vs. Working Through It

I've been through the cycle of getting frustrated with improv, desperately wanting to quit, and falling back in love with it several times. When I first started feeling this way, my reaction was to grind through all of my troubles. I tend to do this with a lot of things in life. Tough it out, everybody's got problems. All I need to do is improv harder and I'll fix every issue I have.

I should know by now that increasing the intensity of something I'm struggling with isn't generally a good solution to whatever problem I'm facing. In fact, it almost always makes the issues I'm having worse. The reason for that is because I very rarely take the time to actually examine the things that are bringing me down during rehearsals or shows. I just tack on more rehearsals, more shows, more responsibilities and on and on until the wheels come off and I can take no more.

Now-a-days I decide to take a break, which is something I was terrified of doing before. I very much doubted my own work ethic and commitment to anything. I felt as though if I took even one step away from something, I'd continue stepping back until I'd quit entirely. It's a really strange fear when you're talking about improv, because if improv and performing are something I love and enjoy then they would logically not be very easy for me to quit doing. Logical or not, it's still the way I felt (and sometimes still feel).

Here's my prescription to myself and anybody who is struggling to fully enjoy something they usually love: take a breath. Take just enough time away from that passion to remind you why you loved it in the first place. Find something else to enjoy for a little while. Set a firm limit on the break that you are taking and adhere to it (no coming back early or late!).

If you want to work through it, really take the time to analyze what you're struggling with. Identify why you're not having fun and deal with that. Talk to people, tell people how much trouble you're having and ask them to save you when the troubles come up. There's no reason to tough it out alone in improv, find a way to connect with a teammate or fellow student or your teacher. In the end, you'll both be better for it.

You can step back without quitting entirely and you can work through issues with the help of others. Don't collapse under the weight of your own expectations.

Breaking the Rules, Breaking the Rules

"You don't know what's lllliiiiiiiike!"

My personal philosophy on how to have fun and get yourself out of your head while doing improv: break stuff. Dive into scenes with the mind of a destructive eight year old. I'm comin' into your kitchen and I'm not gonna stop til I've broken every plate and cup in that room! Take that perfect scene with no issues that's developing on stage and set it on fire. Fiddle while Rome burns.

At first blush, this seems like an awful thing to suggest. We want to create something on stage, what good does it do anybody to tear down the things that are being built? Aren't we supposed to be collaborating with our stage partners? I'm not suggesting coming on stage and blocking your partners's every move, I'm saying come on with every awful and lame idea you have and charge face first into a wall with them. Play recklessly and relish in the chaos that you and your partner create.

Too often scenes settle into comfortable, recognizable shapes. If you see that happening, ruin it. Find the first idea that's going to throw everything off balance and blow up the status quo. Once you do that, it's now up to you and your partner to find your way out of the incredibly compromising position you just put yourself in. It's fun to do, it's fun to watch, and it's easy to get yourself engaged.

Another reason to break stuff: It gets you out of your head. If you have the mindset of "I'm gonna go in there and do some real bad stuff. Like, things are gonna get out of hand and someone's gonna have to call the improv police," then it's going to be much easier to achieve your goals as a performer. It's common to tell people to follow the first unusual thing, but for my style I'd suggest the first incredibly dumb thing. You can play a dumb idea intelligently and somehow it only gets dumber. Scenes go off the rails, everything gets messed up, and the whole show is a lot more fun.

This works in short form as well. I watched a game of four people in an airport where three of the characters were the kind of people you'd find in an airport and the fourth person was, inexplicably, Batman. After a second of bewildered laughter, I thought to myself, "Yeah, why do we have to be regular old airport characters when we could be The Batman?" Break the rules and break your scenes as often as possible. Bad things will happen, but so will amazing things.

Time Management

For the handful of readers who may not know, this weekend I am in Vegas with my dad, stepmom, and my sister. I'm telling you this so it is more acceptable for me to admit to drunken phone-blogging at noon PST.

I am not the most organized person in the world, but I really strive to be better than I am. I struggle with sending reminder e-mails and writing out lesson plans, but timing is something I pride myself on. 

If it's a show or a class or even a mildly important meeting that I'm running, I can figure it out down to the minute. I can figure whether people are going to run late, what things to cut to account for the late-comers, and how to drop the hammer and end whatever I'm doing at precisely the moment we're aiming for. I don't know for sure where this skill came from aside from valuing my own time. I wear a watch and check it nigh constantly. As a server, I am quick to clock out before my hourly tips drop below $10/hr. As an improviser or student or actor, I get angry when rehearsal or class runs over the time alotted.

I think the biggest mistake people make when estimating how long something will take is that they are far too optimistic about the timing of things. I have generally noticed that when inexperienced directors run a short form improv show, it runs short. Hell, anybody who is inexperienced will typically run short in any kind of presentation. If they're well studied and have a lot of information to get across, then they have a chance of running too long, but that is a much easier thing to plan contingencies for.

My tips on timing boil down to being honest with yourself about how long an activity takes and never sharing that with your audience. They don't need to know that you expect a game to last four minutes, they are just there to see you and be mystified by your bizarre ability to bend the seconds to your will. Yes, they want to be entertained, but entertainment is primarily an enjoyable way to kill time between obligations. They want to feel like their 90 minutes watching you is only 30 minutes and they want to feel like they got a great return on the investment of their time. As an audience member I want to make my memories count and nothing makes that tougher than a poorly timed and organized show. 

No short form game should last more than four minutes and no long form should run longer than thirty. No lesson in an improv or theatre class needs to consist of over five minutes of you speaking in a row. If any of the above run hot and everybody wants more, give them more and cut from the back end of your show or class. Always plan to have two or three things run short so you can finish big and make people want to come back next time. Cut things mercilessly if you see them die with no chance of resurrection. Never over run a show by more than five minutes and never over run a rehearsal or a class without permission from the performers or students. If you think you may go over time or under it, you are right. Trust your experience and instincts to guide your sweeps and be as bold and brash as you need to be.

And last but not least, I personally prefer a bad show that ends exactly on time as opposed to a good show that ends 30 minutes early or 30 minutes late. I can people watch for a random amount of time and imagine a good show for free, if you're charging me to watch the least you can do is time your show properly.

Class Can't Focus? Make A Change

My new class has finally started and boy is it a doozie. I have nine young students, five of them liked my class so much the last time they took it that they signed up this time. I feel like that means I must be doing something right.

The difficult part is that because the class is so comfortable with me, they feel like it's okay to break focus over and over again. Some of them just honestly can't help it, heck I don't blame any of them when they lose interest in whatever we're teaching. If they're not paying attention, then I need to make a change, not them. 

I've been doing the class improv style for the last few semesters and I have had varying results with it. It's just tougher to create something with these young people without some kind of skeletal structure to fall back on. I think I will need to start building the class around a pre-existing story like I used to do.

My other huge deficiency is that I don't include any crafts in my class really, because the logistics of building a paper mask or designing a background for my class to color are a little daunting. I have to be able to help at every step and I only have my younger sister who serves as my assistant to help me with that.

I think the structure will help me with specifying what kind of crafts we should do. The second part is that I just need to suck it up and figure it out.

Gonna teach the heck outta these kids. They are gonna have too much fun. 

Improv Medicine

This morning I woke up feeling absolutely cruddy. I got my butt kicked by this past week and boy was I feeling it. I begrudgingly got out of bed at 8:30 in order to make it to a 10 AM rehearsal that I scheduled. I dragged my feet and grumbled and groaned, but I put my carcass in my car and drove to rehearsal. No coffee, no breakfast: just improv. I feel great!

While I was getting ready to head out and generally being a big ol' baby about it, I realized that improv might be the only thing that'd make me feel better this morning. When I get ground down by a hectic schedule it starts to take a legitimate mental toll on me. I start feeling old and weak and incapable. Improv (generally) makes me feel the opposite of all of those things. "It's time to make stuff up? I'm awake and I'm here to crush this." So no matter how cruddy I feel, I have to take my improv medicine. Even if the commute or the hour or the drama surrounding a show is inconvenient, I know I just need to hold my nose and grit through it.

It's that thing they always tell depressed people. One step at a time. Focus on achieving the smallest thing: get yourself to the place where you improvise. Next step? Get up for one scene or one game. Now try another one, maybe. Et cetera, et cetera.

When I think about how often I turn to improv to melt away my stress and aches, I remember directing a show with a little girl who was prone to headaches and generally getting hurt a lot. After one run in particular she threw up because of a particularly bad headache. I asked her how she managed to focus on her performance while her head hurt so much, she looked me right in the eye and said, "Well I didn't hurt then, Mr. Edd... I was performing."

That's basically how I feel when I'm on stage or in rehearsal. Everything is beautiful and nothing hurts.

Road Show Syndrome

I've started to notice a trend with my performances that, while not catastrophic, is very frustrating. I call it Road Show Syndrome. Basically, whenever I'm doing a show on someone else's stage, I leave the show feeling as though I somehow didn't do enough. It happens for a lot of reasons and I'd like to spend some time here dissecting it.

Whenever I do a festival with the Nashville Improv Company, I'm one of at least five performers. We have sets that range from 18-30 minutes and we generally crush as a team. We hit the stage with energy and intensity, we play our games fast, and we say goodbye.

When I'm in someone else's house I get really hungry to impress them. I want them to see that I'm good and clever and hilarious. I know my cast-mates believe those things about me, but I find myself needing validation from the improvisers who don't know me. That'll be real! If they can watch me and think "wow, that guy is incredible!" then I'll finally be good enough. 

Let me tell you, that never has helped me. In fact, it makes me second guess a lot of my choices. It makes me set aside the fun things I really want to do in service of making the "smart improv" choice. I very often leave road shows feeling like the weakest link in our chain when I know that I'm not. At least, I'm not as weak as some of my road performances make me seem. 

The main difference between our normal shows and our road shows is time. We usually do 90 minutes, so a cast of seven is going to have time to let everybody shine. Everyone will generally have one or two moments that are huge laughs. In a 30 minute set, a seven person cast isn't necessarily going to have seven sterling performances. You'll probably get two or three great performances and the rest will hopefully just be "didn't screw up the great stuff." My point is, it's hard to stand out in a short set and that's totally fine. Not everybody on the team needs to hit a homerun to win the game. 

What's not okay is that my performances are suffering because I'm being an insecure baby. I've gotta stop worrying what other improvisers think of me, because the good ones believe in me already and the awful ones will always find a way to tear me down. So I guess the solution here is the same as always: quit worrying so much and just have fun. 

Shut Up and Listen!

Yesterday I was asked by a good friend of mine to write about listening in improv. My immediate and somewhat rude joke-response was, "Uh, just shut up?" As unhelpful as those words are, there is actually some truth behind them. So because listening is the most important skill for an actor, improviser, and person to have, I'll go ahead and delve into it a little bit.

In improv, we have the desire to talk constantly. We feel like not speaking is the equivalent of doing nothing. Maybe we're even doing some intense, complicated, object work, but those moves are stage directions that everybody ignores and changes. If you want to contribute to the actual script, you've gotta spew some words from your facehole, right? As you can probably tell from my characterization of those uncontrollable word-farts, I don't agree that they're necessary at all.

Very often, we assume that listening is the same thing as simply hearing. You can talk over someone or have a very rapid conversation with them and hear all of the words they're saying to you. You can probably even understand exactly what they're saying to you. But if you're constantly talking, you're not letting those words affect you. You're not really treating your partner's words like they're the most important thing, because you're not giving them the silence and reverence that they deserve. You're not giving your response the necessary consideration to be worthy of replying to a string of words that just shook you to your core. You can have a whole conversation just hearing somebody and never listening.

Recently, I have noticed that scenes where one of the partners doesn't speak at all, says only one word, or only speaks in gibberish are actually far, far better scenes. The speaker is listening and watching their partner desperately for some clue of what they're trying to communicate. They invest themselves wholly in understanding what their partner is feeling. Their silent/gibberish speaking partner is quiet and doesn't have to spend time thinking about words, so they can spend their time reacting to and being affected by the only real words in the scene. Try one or two of those scenes and observe how it changes your play, watch how quickly it becomes real and emotionally honest instead of wackadoo and schticky.

So, here's my advice:

• Start with silence. 
• Let your partner's words affect and change you. 
• Speak to them only when you actually need to speak. 
• If you don't need to speak, uh, just shut up?

Two Improv Groups (Part Two)

First things first, Newbie group has a name now! Once Upon an Improv, or OUI because we are apparently French (OUI, ET would be a particularly amusing backronym). Pro group is Nashville Improv Company or NIC. There we go, less ambiguity! Now onto the point, I got stuff I need to translate from OUI to NIC that will improve my play.

In OUI, we spend most of our time on longform and scenework which is generally the style of improv that I prefer. I like patient, thoughtful scenes that aren't afraid of a little silence because I find those moments to be the most honest and revealing. The work that we do on Saturday mornings in Clarksville is weird, knotted, hilarious and very often incredibly touching. I jump into scenes face first as soon as a fun opportunity opens up for me. I time jump and tagout for two second gags whenever one pops up in my brain. Above all, it feels like all of us have a whole lot of fun and manage to create some really genuine scenes.

The primary thing I want to bring to NIC is fearlessness. In shows, more often than I'd like, I find myself sacrificing "the fun thing" for "the thing I think the audience wants." I still have fun and the audience still leaves happy, but when I think about the show later I can't help but feel a little hollow. I mean, how many times have I been wrong about "what the audience wants"? Hell, I'm sure a lot of the time they'd really enjoy whatever it is that I wanted to do.

I'm too attached to the rules in NIC. I'm too eager to impress the people I'm playing with and the audience with my improv acumen, that I tend to deny my honest voice. I also need to toss the impression that if I play at my own pace that I'm not doing anything. Very often I speak in a scene just because I feel like I need to speak the same amount that my partner does, even when I'd rather just listen or pantomime. I want to be able to stand by my choices more stalwartly, I suppose.

So next time, Edd, I want you to remember that your audition for NIC is over. You've proven yourself enough and now they're pretty much stuck with you. Plus, you've got enough time in rehearsals to figure out how to absolutely break a game occasionally. Be bold, have fun, and be proud of what you've done.

Two Improv Groups and What They're Teaching Me

I'm rehearsing with two different improv groups right now and the difference in experiences between them is startlingly pronounced. Group one (let's call them Pros) is experienced and professional and pretty laser-focused. Group two (let's call them Newbies) is relatively less formal and experienced but they grant me this overwhelming feeling of... liberation. The Pros encourage me to improve mechanically as an improviser (editing scenes properly, quickly generating ideas, avoiding common traps in scenes, etc.) and the Newbies allow me to really let loose creatively and do whatever I think is awesome at the time. They complement each other perfectly and I'm very lucky to have stumbled into this situation. The next thing for me to do is begin transplanting my lessons from one group into the other. I'll start with how I can use the stuff from the Pros to help with my performance in the Newbies.

I am already coaching and teaching the group of the Newbies, so my mechanics knowledge is already being rather forcibly injected into the group. My sense of professionalism in that group, however, is lacking. I'm late or barely on time most weeks, I tend to ramble between scenes, and the most grievous of transgressions: I found myself hitting one of the cast members as a joke in scenes. The first two are death by a thousand cuts style problems, but the third is probably the most abhorrent thing I've caught myself doing in a while. The cast-mate brought it up to me (in a very mature fashion) and I was totally mortified that I was behaving that way. 

I was really puzzled as to what would make me feel as though that  kind of behavior was acceptable. In Pro group, I focus quite a bit on making sure my scene partners feel respected and taken care of. Though I now that I think about it, I can recall my Pro directors chiding me for being a bit of a bully early on in my time with them. They told me that I scared my scene partners and that some people in the group were refusing to work with me. That deeply affected me and ever since then I've felt like I was walking on eggshells, just praying that I wouldn't mistakenly become an awful person again in all of my scenes. We create really fun, great work, but I place a lot of limits on myself because I'm terrified of upsetting someone and getting yelled at again.

 Newbie group subtracts all of those inhibitions, though, for better or for worse. I have a lot of fun and get to do basically any cool thing that I can think of. We have a tendency to start a little late and end a little early, but we do really exciting work in the time we're actually doing it. Last week we managed to go right up to time without having to artificially strain to get there. I also haven't done anything hella awful like hitting someone or throwing a chair in a scene since it was brought up to me, so that's... progress? Total creative freedom is really nice, but that doesn't mean you're excused from the professionalism and human decency expected from me elsewhere. Especially not at the price of squelching my teammates' ability to also do whatever awesome thing they want to do.

That was a little more delving than I expected to do here, but I will detail what I'm trying to translate into the Pro group in my next post. It'll either be that or be a post about how I just had a self-revelation that I am possibly a very mean person, and not in a funny way!

Thanks for reading!

Vulnerable Villainy

We were running a long form the other day where one player realized he'd been endowed as the villain, so he went full douche-mode. Earlier, I'd told him to fully commit to whatever position he was placed at in the story. So if he was a hero he'd be brave and if he was a villain he'd be horrible. He followed my note as it was given, and he executed with precision.

He and I spoke after the rehearsal and we both agreed that while his character was infuriating, there was definitely something missing from him. It was hard to think of a form of comeuppance for his villain, part of what made him so frustrating was that he was invincible. I wanted him to be like a putty from power rangers, with a little button on his chest for me to strike when I was done doing cool martial arts flourishes. That kind of vulnerability is an option, but is it actually a good option most of the time? How does he stop himself from being impervious to harm and create an interesting, fun character?

The answer, I've realized, is to begin with a feeling. The answer to why a villain behaves the way they do should begin with how they feel about the characters that they are antagonizing. Feel first, and ask questions later.

The improviser in my group played with detached emotion, he never had a revealing moment and he never made any excuses for his awful behavior. He didn't even seem to enjoy his awful behavior. He was clearly the bad guy, but we knew nothing about him and never got to learn anything. Because we knew nothing about him or his feelings, we had no idea how to deal with him.

Here's me starting with a feeling:

My character despises those guys. Why? Because he is above them. In what way? He's risen in station while they have remained the same. How did he rise? Hard work, clever wit, and betrayal. What does he want? To prove he is better, that anybody would backstab anybody else if the reward was right and the opportunity presented itself.

If a character feels an emotion powerfully enough, everybody immediately starts to wonder why he feels that way. They wonder what happened, but most importantly they know that something happened to make this character feel this way. Not only does that all-consuming feeling answer questions about the bad-guy, it fills in empty spots in the good guys' characters as well.

Perhaps most importantly, if we are able to get some of these feelings out of the antagonist we are able to resolve the story and overcome them. We can dole out poetic justice or give them a chance at redemption. We can even let them win if we know what their conditions for victory and defeat are. None of that is possible without the villain having feelings and acting on them.

Basically, if you want to create something powerful and human: begin with a feeling.

The Energy Crisis

I'm really grateful for all the words of encouragement that people have offered me after yesterday's post. If it were possible for me to stop performing, I'd have done it when things didn't happen for me right out of college. I'd have done it when I was sick and depressed and everything felt hopeless. Performing, to me, is just as important as eating. I can't live without it, so there's no danger of me giving it up.

I'm feeling markedly better after I exorcised my demons and I'm much more clear on what I want and what's been troubling me. I wish I had the energy to do more, is basically what it boils down to. 

When I was younger I found ways to rehearse for multiple shows, take class 16 hours a week, run al student organization, and work part time on campus. I know now that having so much on my plate negatively impacted many of the things I was involved in. At the same time, if I could even do half of that I would be ecstatic. 

I suppose looking at it that way is silly. I'm still doing a lot and I'm doing it far better than anything I could've done in college. I just wish I could squeeze a little more blood from this stone.  Just a few drops more and I'll probably see some results, right?

When Do the Good Things Start?

Being sick is the pits. I think I've done it to myself, though. I've built a lot of stress up in my brain lately and it's definitely worn on my psyche these past few weeks.

For the first time in my life I'm accurately tracking my spending and income and boy does it make me pull my hair out. My spending habits aren't too terrible, but something about every dollar being accounted for makes me froth at the mouth. I feel like I should spend nothing ever, even if it's necessary or incredibly minute. 

I suppose a large amount of the stress comes from knowing that I'm not making very much money. I've got my server schedule trimmed down to make room for improv and teaching and my income is paying the price. My classes aren't quite in session yet and improv isn't paying me, but those things happen to be what I love to do so I'm just sacrificing money to do them.

To be honest, I'm getting less and less certain that I'm making the right choice. Most people my age have grown up jobs or are at least management in their cruddy service jobs. Am I even really even "chasing a dream" or am I just avoiding responsibility? Don't get me wrong, I don't want to sell insurance or manage a restaurant or grocery store. I don't want a job that can tell me when I'm allowed to perform and make me feel obliged to listen. I just feel... useless. Unimportant. Valueless. 

I acknowledge I'm being somewhat melodramatic, but I am really beginning to worry. When do the good things start? Am I not working hard enough? I'm probably not, I still have time to sleep. If you're sleeping and you're not finding success, then sleep less ya loser.

I don't have any answers for these questions right now, I just wanted to commit this crisis of confidence to writing. I figure I'll have answered one way or another eventually and I can at least have a good laugh at my present confusion. 

Failure, My Only Weakness!

I was called upon to guess for Five Things recently and I got the opportunity to learn something about myself. I realized that I don't fail gracefully and that my ability to fail bravely has limits. 

In most of improv, absolute failure is basically impossible. You can struggle with some things here and there, but as long as you're enjoying yourself and the audience is having fun, you're succeeding on some level. 

In guessing games, failure becomes an option. Most games won't end until you get it right, but there's some small chance that you'll never arrive at the right answer. It took me a long time to trust my fellow improvisers and myself enough to risk that small chance of undeniable failure. In Five Things, that small chance is considerably larger.

You have five minutes to guess five gives with two modifications each. You can only get information through pantomime and gibberish (which is really all you could ever need). Guesses are at a premium here, and every time you make an incorrect guess, the audience and your team howl as though you've burned them with holy water. I've noticed that the fourth consecutive missed guess tends to be my point of no return. My brain shuts down and I want nothing more than to disappear. 

Here I am, pretending to be this big brave improviser, when really I'm feeling like a helpless child onstage sometimes. People on the audience are still enjoying themselves, my team doesn't put any blame on me, but I feel like a huge disappointment anyway. The thing that really bothers me is that if I can feel like that in one of my favorite games, why doesn't it happen to me in other forms of improv? Am I not failing gloriously enough or is it just that failing at guessing games still has that new-failure-sting? Even by noticing when my brain goes into lockdown mode, I've already figured out how to avoid those circumstances. Is that me improving or just working around my weaknesses?

I've failed a lot on stage before and I've learned a lot from it, even if I've felt really upset right when that failure occurred. When somebody says to be bold in failure or to fail gloriously, does that mean that we actually have to love failure? Cause I hate it, and that's the main thing that drives me to improve. Or work around my weaknesses. 

Want To Get Started? Just Ask.

I've had a lot of improv and theatre related ambitions in my life and its surprising how many of them have come to fruition. The thing is, very few of those things just came to me. I had to go out and get them, but going and getting them isn't always as easy as it sounds.

New Idea: Tag Team Car Salesmen

You've Lost That Improv Lovin Feeling?

It happens to everybody at some point or another. For this reason or that reason, you find that you're not enjoying yourself at rehearsals or even shows anymore. You struggle and strain to still pull out a killer performance, but the work just doesn't feel like it used to. I've felt these feelings a couple different times for a couple different reasons and I want you to know that this doesn't have to be the end!

The MIB Agent-Alien Improv show was a rousing success!

Mid-January Resolutions!

I talked about last year, but that stuff's in the past. I've got some ambitious eyes and they are set on the future. Life and career related goals for 2015, comin down the pipeline!

Resolution for Every Year: More Pirate Shenanigans

What I Did With 2014

So I did a whole lot of stuff in 2014 and I figure there's no shame in bragging about a little about some of it. Maybe in the process of boasting I'll be able to do a little bit of reflection, too.

Taken at ComedySportz Richmond's 2013 Improv Festivus