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.