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.