Life in Free Agency

Recently, I left a group that I had been a part of for about four years. Before leaving and even for a short time afterwards, I thought that I was back at square one. I worried that I wouldn't be allowed to make art on-stage with anyone for months, maybe even years. Fortunately, that fear was misplaced and I'm already doing shows that I find really hilarious and rewarding.

FACT: I've never once promised not to shill my own shows.

iO Summer Intensive: Week One in Review

Hoooo boy what a busy 7 days I've had this past week. I'll give a broad overview here and as I iron out time to write in my very full schedule I may manage to come back to specific things. I took a lot of notes!

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The first day really had its tone set by the welcome we were given to the ceremony. All 143 intensive students were gathered in the Del Close Theatre and Charna (the owner and co-founder of iO) gets ready to enter. We can tell that she's coming because she's preceded, no, heralded by her dog Stella. She then spends a few moments on stage debating across the room with instructors whether or not we should get started. I say debating, but what I mean is Charna wanted to start, they suggested we could stand to wait a little longer, Charna started anyway. It was pretty funny.

I am really glad to be a member of the section I'm in which is filled out with some very talented people from around the world. Our class has people from California to New York to Australia to Sweden (and a couple states/countries in-between) and there's a pretty wide set of performance experience among us. Our week one instructor was Bill Arnett and he essentially guided us into scenework and essentially playing ourselves. From the way he taught, I get the feeling that he was teaching us a lot of dangerous secret techniques that are banned at this dojo. He also kept saying, "believe it or not, sometimes people struggle with this" after we'd do surprisingly well our first run through exercises. We learned a bit about openings here, a bit about scenework there, a little of how to gather inspiration, and a little more about varitions on edits. Then on Thursday (the final day in our week) he drew out a diagram of what the classic harold looks like and then insisted it didn't really need to be that way. We did three harolds which had bright spots and weak parts, but were shining examples of the work we'd done and the amount we'd grown as a class. With week 2 starting tomorrow morning, I'd say that we've only just started to get very comfortable with each other.

It was Wednesday before I decided I was ready to play without reservation and accordingly it was Wednesday before I felt like I did anything really fun in class. Nobody else has mentioned feeling antsy about performing with new people, but I doubt I'm the only one who feels trepidation about it. At any rate, I'm doing my best to get to know the people I'm with better while also stealing all of their good and fun habits while they're on stage.

There's a lot of things I like about the program so far, but my favorite has to be that I've met so many people who I would have probably never met if the intensive didn't exist. I've spoken to a fellow student from Pakistan whose love of this artform is downright inspirational and who reaffirms my idea that improvisation is a life-changing thing. I've done an incredibly silly but very well rounded scene with a classmate from Sweden that felt better than some scenes I've done with people I've worked with for years. I even learned what Lance Storm's wrestling school was like from a Canadian classmate who studied there for a little while! This improv thing isn't nothin', y'all. To bring together this many talented, kind, smart, and wonderful people, it's gotta be a pretty big deal.

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.

Nashville Improv Community

Last Tuesday night I had the honor of performing with three other improv groups in Nashville at Zanies. The line-up was Nashville Improv Company, Sprocket Improv, LOL!Nashville, and Tongue N Cheek Improv (or TNC as their fan page bills them). It was a super fun night and it was very nice to get together with some improvisers who I hadn't really gotten a chance to talk to before. Also we all brought in a lot of people and started practically zero fires, so we'll probably be invited back!