Trajectory

Improv is good for your soul

Level One – Fundamentals of Long Form Improv

Anonymous Student Feedback 

 

Please answer the following and please provide any additional comments or details. In other words, err on the side of being long winded if you feel inspired.

 

1. Would you recommend this class to others who were interested in taking an improv

class and/or possibly performing? (5 – Emphatic Yes; 4 – Yes; 3 – Maybe; 2 – Probably Not; 1 – Emphatic No) Why?

 

Absolutely. Originally I started out taking short form classes with another troupe, but I learned much more from this class... actually I learned more about communication from this class than I did in four years of college.  I learned how to listen and retain information, read people better, make decisions faster, adapt to any situation, and interact with others without contention and without feeling like I need to be right all the time. The class offers a supportive and non-judgmental atmosphere where I can express any weird or quirky side of my personality, and it’s perfectly ok. There’s a whole team that will accept the weirdness and run with it. In the end, we’re all here to laugh and play.

 

2. How would you rate your experience in taking the class? (Scale of 1 to 5: 5 being excellent, 1 being terrible)

 

5.

 

3. How would you rate the instructor? (Scale of 1 to 5: 5 being excellent, 1 being terrible)

What were the instructors strengths? What were the instructor's weaknesses, if any?

 

He manages to strike a weird balance between being supportive while being distant. It feels like he's more of a facilitator than an instructor, and that the class has the freedom to develop its own personality. He doesn’t try to shape our individual styles as performers and gives suggestions on how to develop what we naturally do rather than telling us to do it differently (which is very encouraging). His suggestions just serve as a springboard to expand our range and explore new directions.

 

It’s incredibly helpful to see how he performs with the troupe, how he interacts with the other performers on stage, and how the audience reacts to the techniques he teaches in the class. Then we can pick apart the performance during the next class and analyze what worked, what didn't, and why.

 

4. Why did you take the class and did it fulfill your expectation?

 

I became interested in improv during a dark period in my life when I just needed some sort of (healthy) distraction. I've always admired people who have the confidence to fully express themselves, people who are able to find humor in every situation, and people who can roll with the punches. After a while, I got tired of just being in the audience and wanted to see if I could become someone like that.

 

I've been toying around with music, art, and speaking/writing for as long as I can remember. The difference is that all of these art forms feel anonymous since the focus is always on the song, painting, or story rather than the person who created it. Improv showcases a person as a whole entity- voice, idea, movement, emotion, and reaction. This makes it both exhilarating and frightening because I can't hide from myself and I'm dependent on other people without knowing what they're going to do.

 

Am I comfortable with all of that now? No. It's a process and I'm still in the beginning, but I feel like I'm on track to become who I've always wanted to be.

 

5. What were your favorite parts of the class and why?

 

I liked getting to know the other players. The exercises exposed our vulnerabilities and created a type of intimacy that I haven't experienced in any other group setting. We're all a little crazy, we all have issues, and we all seem to like and accept each other anyway, and that's incredibly comforting.

 

6. What were your least favorite parts of the class and why?

 

The parking at the venue sucks.

 

7. What would you change about or add to the class and why?

 

I would add a few extra hours/days to the classes.

 

8. What are your goals going forward with improv (i.e. perform regularly, rehearse with the ensemble on occasion, nothing etc.)? Did taking the class influence your answer today and if so, how?

 

I honestly don't know where this is going to go. My first love is still short form. It's sort of like writing poetry- I find that I can be more creative when I have some parameters in place (meter, style, length) than when I'm given a blank page and told to "just go." The ultimate goal is still personal development.

 

9. Tell us anything else we should know.

 

I'm very grateful for this class and everything that I've learned so far.

 

Turkey time

I believe in karma. What goes around comes around, so it makes sense to pay it forward.

There's this guy from the improv troupe who I added as a facebook friend last week- not so much because we're friends but we're now at the point where we're well enough acquainted (read: recognize each other's faces and have mutual friends) to be facebook friends.

This morning, his status read "I need a family for Thanksgiving :-/" Without even thinking about it, I called my mom to ask if we could bring him to my brother's house for lunch. She said yes, so I called a few other improv kids trying to find the guy's phone number. I called him at 10, and he works at night and had just gone to bed at 8, so it's a miracle he picked up the phone. He was at my apartment 45 minutes later and we headed north to pick up my mom and go to my brother's place.

What can I say? I have a soft spot in my heart for improv kids. Although we barely knew each other, this guy got to meet my entire family, eat fried turkey, and play football with my little cousins instead of sitting home alone waiting for his next shift to start. And we had three hours in the car to get to know each other a bit better.

On a separate note, this is how I eat turkey:

We don't stand on ceremony, and it's more fun to pick at the carcass than to eat actual slices of meat. The guy grabbed a bone and started gnawing on it too, so I'm pretty sure we're now cousins or something.

The problem with me is...

that I haven't learned how to get past my embarrassment.

I really think that's at the root of everything. I tried karaoke last night for the first time and was so caught up in wanting everything to be perfect that I was a nervous wreck before AND after my song. It might be the same thing that's holding me back in improv. 

The first audition

I went to my first improv audition last month, which is not something I would have attempted even three months ago. There was a huge turn out (40+), and there were people there who brought in their acting resumes and professional headshots. There were also people there who had been in improv troupes for years, either in high school or in other cities. And then there was me- a longtime fan of improv who's only had two workshops just this spring. This was my first time auditioning for something non-music related in about eight years.

The first time I was called up on the stage, I took a few seconds to look out at the audience. All of the people in front were strangers, all the judges were former teachers of mine, and the back of the audience was all of the improv kids that I had been watching for ages. I knew all of them and all of them knew me, and I was overcome with this feeling of love and support from the back of the room. I could tell that they wanted me to do well.

After about an hour and a half of games, they made the first round of cuts and I was asked to stay for the second half! What broke my heart is that one of my friends from the workshops was cut, and she's had way more acting experience. The actors with the professional headshots were cut too. We played a few more games and the judges sent us home and told us they would call in the next few days.

The producer sent me the sweetest rejection e-mail ever. It was personalized, super gentle, and very tactful. I was upset for about an hour, went to bed, and when I woke up from my nap I was completely over it. I had just done something huge- auditioned (without vomiting, wetting myself, or falling off the stage), made it past the first cut (and a lot of good people were cut), and I was completely happy with the way I had performed.

As a gesture of goodwill and to prove that I had a thick skin, I ended up going to the improv show that same night and got such warm greetings from the troupe members who had seen me at the audition. Overall it was a very positive experience and a bit of an ego boost even if I didn't make it into the show. And besides, there's always next year :-)

Quote of the Day

Granted, it's a very old quote, but it's  relevant to my recent revelations on emotions and expression. Yet another reason to love Muse.

"I remember the first real concert we've ever made was for a band competition,” says Matt “We were the only real rock band; all the others were pop or funk-pop, kinda Jamiroquai if you want. We knew we had no chance to win - we were not the best musicians - it was a matter of 'fitting'. So we did the best we could, we took advantage of our feeling of being 'different'. We came on stage with make up all over our face, we were very aggressive, we played very violently and then we broke everything on stage. All that to say that the will, the attitude meant a lot to us. So we won. And I think that psychologically it changed many things in our heads. Because we came to lose, we expected to lose. And we were angry somehow. And we had just realized at this time that we could replace lots of things. We realized that emotion, the vibrations that you create are as important as your technical skills. We had just discovered something: music is a matter of emotion."

My improv teachers keep telling us to commit to a character and just go for it all the way. Commit, express, be affected, allow yourself to get caught up in the emotions of the moment. That's unfamiliar territory in my case, but I'm learning.

GUST - To All the Girls I've Loved

The best part is that I know all of these guys. <3

 

 

Post Secret and Improv

Post Secret it a hugely popular website where strangers write their secrets on a post card and mail them in anonymously.

Improv is the creation of a scene/skit/play/whatever as it's being performed with the intent of being entertaining/humorous. Maybe that's not the best definition on the planet, but it's what I can come up with at 2 in the morning.

The reason I'm posting at 2 in the morning is that I just got back from a long-form improv show and checked the Post Secret website for updates, and noticed some interesting similarities between the two. Both are enrapturing because they're rooted in stories from real people. We want to see honesty and be intimate with someone and to be trusted enough to see the naked truth.

And yet, both are fake. The submissions for the post cards are anonymous. The stories that are created in improv, while based on real stories, are completely made up. People want intimacy from others without giving of themselves, and there are far more people reading post cards and watching shows than there are submitters and performers.

I really really really want a relationship with really intense and mutual trust, honesty and intimacy. Until that happens, I guess I'll keep doing improv and learn to get comfortable with sharing myself even if it's not reciprocated. 

Hi there, long time no see

After a four-month obsession with Whose Line Is It Anyway, I found an improv comedy class taught by a local little hole-in-the-wall black box theater that features some surprisingly talented people. My first lesson was last Monday, and it brought something very important to my attention. I am a horrible communicator.

Which is kind of surprising since my degree, jobs, and hobbies revolve around communication. But it actually makes sense in a way. I'm either so focused on one activity that I don't notice if someone comes up and starts talking to me, or I'm 10,000 miles away dreaming and not noticing anything around me. There's a whole middle area there, between extreme concentration and dreaming that's lacking.

The good thing is that I'm finally doing something about (in a fun way so I'm tempted to keep going). With these classes I'll learn how to listen, how to make eye contact and really understand what someone else is saying, and how to notice what's going on around me. I can already tell that it's going to have a positive affect on all of my relationships :-)