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.