Repeating, not heightening
Yes, this is an improv post. I don’t like it either.
Improv has saved and ruined my life, often simultaneously. It has been both a lifeboat and a child’s floaty I cling to in the ocean of life, barely keeping my head out of water. It has awoken me to parts of myself I didn’t know I possessed, and it has also made me utterly miserable. I am grateful for both.
I never felt joy like I did when I took my first improv class. Everything made sense. If my life was a puzzle, improv was a piece that was hiding under the table for years, and once I found it, all the other pieces I had made sense and locked into place. I made friends, I was less shy in public, I was a better actor. I could do anything with the power of improv by my side!
And then I studied it in depth. I took new classes that were very different from my beginner classes. in fact, these classes made fun of my beginner classes. This new form was the cool one, the right one, the one best suited for boys on the spectrum who hated being silly but loved being clever. You weren’t supposed to think in improv, just be in the moment. But…you did have to think, all the time. The longer I was there, the more I hated improv. I was certain it would be where I found my people, my new friends in this town. They were not interested and they did not like me. Okay, it was one person, but she actively made fun of me in scenes during class, which kissed what little confidence I had goodbye as it headed out the door, not to be seen for a long time. I wasn’t bad, but I stopped taking chances, intitating, being bold. My fire had died, and left me a spineless mess. Class after class did not help me, even at new schools. I knew what I wanted and nothing fit the bill.
Ironically, it was a practice group started by someone I did not think was very funny that saved me. I was weary, but desperate for company. We weren’t very good, but the practices were fun, the people were nice, and that lit a fire in me again. That team soon fell apart due to anger issues by the same person who had started it, but I formed another group, this time with people I had chosen. It was great. Improv came back to make my life bright.
Without improv, I never would have found sketch comedy. While looking at another improv class on a website, I found a very affordable sketch class. Affordability is often a key factor to the changes in my life. It was here that my improv puzzle piece connected with the lump of sketch pieces I had gathered, whichall this time I was certain belonged to the musical theater part that I had abandoned working on years before. I had found my thing, and I wasn’t letting go. Improv became fun again because it was not my endgame, thank god.
AND YET, I’M NOT DONE.
Years later, post pandemic, I was a miserable person throwing myself pity parties because I emerged from isolation with less friends, no creative job, and no performance opportunities. My sketch team had naturally ended right before the pandemic due to people growing up and moving on, but I felt like I remained in the same place. Instead of introspection and focusing on the next step, I repeated past patterns that has helped me out of my darkness before.
So now I try something completely new, right?
Nope. I went back to IMPROV.
I took beginner’s improv (lord help me), and fell back into all the bad tuff. I held back my ideas, my silliness, my risk taking. Thinking was back in full force, and this time, I was a writer. I was too busy “solving” the scene in my head before the location was determined. Still refusing to believe the problem was me, I took a more advanced class, and found myself face to face with people who still actively love improv, were still trying to make it work, but also felt the same despair I once did. It was me from 12 years ago. I am grateful for this class. It’s essence was to get people to stop thinking and start playing, and helped me immensely, but the biggest way was to realize that I was repeating old patterns, hoping for new results.
In improv, you work on heightening your beats(while still also not thinking! jesus christ) to create a bigger, better, stronger scene. Beware of moving laterally, it kills the scene and becomes repetitive. I have been moving laterally in my life, preferring to (excuse the improv metaphor) bore an audience to death with safe choices instead of jumping off the back line, unsure of my next move, but trusting I’ll find something. Because the reality is I don’t know my next move. I truly don’t. It might not involve comedy at all, and that terrifies me. Pre-pandemic, I always had an inkling of my next step, but this life and this world and the full on welcome party for fascism came crashing down and collapsed the staircase I was slowly climbing. The way up isn’t where it was before. And I don’t know where to go. Maybe it involves a little jumping into the unknown. I hope I have the guts to do it.
