Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Jeeezus! Look at the time! Why am I not sleeping? Oh, right. Feckin' improv.

Tonight was the last Level 2. Mind blowing shit, this class. I am glad I took it, but I'm not sure when I will catch up with most of it. Tonight we did the now-traditional 360 review type wrap-up. I like this, but at the same time, it makes me uncomfortable. I love talking about improv with the people I play with, but I never feel adequate to the task of this review process. These people are all so funny and talented. Who am I to judge them? So I just always tell them why I love playing with them and why I love watching them play. I guess that's the idea, anyway.

I was pleased and humbled by the feedback my classmates gave me. I have talked before about how I never did anything before in my life that I couldn't master immediately. I don't know what it was about improv that made me keep pushing on, no matter how much I sucked. To hear people telling me that I'm good at this and that they feel safe with me on stage - that means more than most of you can imagine.

And it is interesting that some folks wanted to see me play equal or lower status characters. I remember a DSIF workshop with Jill Bernard where she relentlessly worked to get me to take a higher status. She told me I was an expert at turning a high status character into a low status one, and we worked to overcome that. I guess she taught me good.

Jason Quinn, my new TTB! teammate, said something that caught my attention tonight. He talked about coming into a scene with half an idea. To people unfamiliar with improv, that might seem like an insult - like saying someone has half a brain. In improv, though, that is what we really want to do when starting a scene. We don't need the whole idea. Each of us needs to come into the scene with half an idea. Our scene partner will have the other half.

How cool is that?

I will be moving on to the Level 3. I will take a class with Jennings every chance I get. Plus, I like playing with these people. I hope they all take the class.

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