Tuesday, March 9, 2004

Level 3L - Harold, Jon Karpinos in for Ross White, Class #6

Ok, it’s about time I sat down and did what I promised myself I would do. This is not so much a journal at this point as it is a memoir.

The last Harold class was taught by the lovely and talented Jon Karpinos, since… what was his name again? Oh, yes, Rob, no, ahhh… Ross. That’s it. Ross White had some really pressing day job kind of stuff going on. Kidding. We love you, Ron.

We warmed up with a lively game of Shame, which is now our favorite warm-up game. Shame is the game we played when we did that exercise where the group just starts playing a game and understands the rules as we go. It is an awesome game, and I feel safe saying that any one of us would be glad to teach it to you if you want to learn it. Jon had us heighten it until it became insane fun. Yay, Jon! Yay us!

We did a couple of Harolds, with varying success. Some good stuff, some ehhh stuff. We did one where we all just kind of got lost. We knew we didn’t have to follow the form strictly, but we strayed so far that some of us stopped playing (me, of course) because we didn’t know where we were.

After that we had a long discussion about the form that finally tired Jon so much that he just said he didn’t want to talk about it any more, that it was clear that we knew the form and we just needed to do it. It was kind of cool watching as everyone, including me, realized that we did know it. The next one we did was more fun.

We all sat around and talked about our strengths. I don’t remember if I said I even had a strength. Oh, yeah, I remember. I said I was strong on Yes. Suzanne added “, and”, but I said “No, just yes”. That is the oddest sentence, isn’t it? “No, just yes.”

After we each told our own strength, the rest of the group told what they thought our strengths were. To my surprise and delight, one of mine was “strong choices” followed by an example. Another was that I was “good at bringing the scene back to the relationship”. Thank you, Scott Jennings!

Woo hoo! I am learning some stuff. I was right in thinking that the two classes at once would be beneficial. Sometimes I know what I am doing.

When we did the last Harold of the night, the last Harold before our performance, we rocked so hard. What a wonderful finish to the class. Kit and I concluded that what we needed to do for our Friday night class show was to meet early and do three Harolds before the show so that the one on stage would be great, since that seemed to be our pattern.

We didn’t wind up doing that, but we did do a really fun show. I was not in any of the scenes, but I played the group games and had a blast. I had a good reason to stand back, and the scenes were great and did not need me, and I will not take any more shit about it. You know who you are. No, not you. I haven’t heard any shit from you, but I know you were thinking it.

All in all, a wonderful class. I am very happy I took it, and I will take it again from a different teacher (although I was treated to three of them this go-round). People, if you haven’t done it yet, re-take the same classes from different DSI instructors. You will learn tons and tons and you won’t regret it, I promise.

No comments: