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.