Thursday, November 21, 2024
You Offer Free Classes?
There are some questions I get a lot, and rather than trying to re-explain what my thinking every single time, and also just for clarity, I've decided to just write a post about it. If you're just reading this because, that's cool, but otherwise, you're probably here because I pointed you here.
I've been an improv teaching instructor for a very long time; I taught my first ever longform class in San Diego (a short, four week class out of a dance studio in La Mesa) in 2012, after having coached longform in San Diego (the Stage Monkeys San Diego) since 2009. I've blessed to have been invited to teach at over 20 different improv festivals and/or theaters, as well as being a faculty member of three different improv schools since 2013.
All that to say, I believe in the power of improv instruction, I have faith in what good classes and good teachers can do. Even just coaching can be game changing for some improvisers, and I say this as someone who has probably logged more free coaching hours than absolutely anyone (4 years of SMSD, 2 years of Keystone in Chicago, plus a handful of one-offs, favors, or spec coaching over the last 15 years). I'm priveleged in that I have had regular, good paying employment that has allowed me to take classes without a significant impact to my own finances, as well as being able to sacrifice my free time to teach others - something I know not everyone can do (nor, honestly, should they want to).
I cannot however, ignore the inherent financial burden that improv has. The craft on it's surface is free, and truly, if you and some friends just wanted to do scenes in your garage, the absence of scripts, props, sets, costumes, tech and the ready availability of relatively cheap books and just a huge wealth of free online resources (videos, articles, blog posts (hello!), PDFs, and Reddit threads) make the *initial* barrier to entry essentially non-existent. To keep getting better though, requires time and a lot of money, money that you will almost definitely not make back doing improv. As of the time of writing, an improv class at one of the Big Three theaters costs (on average) $343. Even the next tier down runs, on average, $223/class, and these prices are fairly consistent nationwide. And, it should be pointed out that this is only for one class level, and most programs require 5 levels of classes, and in many cities it is considered expected that improvisers will take classes at all the schools available. Similarly I have seen individual workshops vary wildly, from $25-$100+ for a single 2 or 3 hour session with a visiting or specialty instructor.
I'm not here to debate the economics or capitalism of improv education, certainly I would not want to argue against being fairly compensated for my experience and my time, and theaters generally use their training centers as the primary engine for operations. Effectively, the training center (and bar) subsidize being able to do shows, and this isn't a novel or groundbreaking observation. This is just to give background on why I'm having this conversation, because to get "good", and, hopefully, get on teams, perform in shows, and participate in the improv community, you will eventually have to pay money. And probably a fair amount of it.
Bill Arnett always said that he'd be glad to give away his exercises, because when you're hiring him, what you're getting is his eye and his mind, and the exercises are just tools to either diagnose a problem or train a solution. I regularly see posters on the improv Reddit ask "do I *really* need to take improv classes?", and the short answer is generally no (excluding graduation requirements for auditioning, or other similar rules) but the long answer is that a good teacher (or coach/director/whatever) who is experienced and knows what they're doing can make your work so much easier and so much better. You occaisionally buy fundamentals (e.g. how the Harold works, which knowing that is like learning to conjugate verbs in a foreign language, which is to say, it's standardized and essential to communicate) but you really buy efficiency and insight.
(This is of course, ignoring conversations about if teachers actually are earning their keep or how much work is expected from students, but there's only so much space.)
I've taken, as an attempt to rememdy this problem, offering usually two spots in any workshops I teach, for free, first-come-first-served, no questions asked, whenever I can. (There are some theaters that already do things like this, awesome, and some places where the theater doesn't have the infrastructure to do it - like improv, it's a process not a product.) When I do this, I eat the cost personally, which I can do because I have the luxury of a traditional career and I think the long term gains outweigh the small money loss.
If I've sent you here, it's probably because you've asked some variant of "so can I take the class for free?", to which the immediate answer is "of course, that's why it's there." Now what I think some people are really saying is "I can afford it, I'd just rather not", to which I would argue is not the point of the free class. I'm attempting to level the playing field for improvisers who want to get better, who want the benefit of improv instruction but can't afford it (for whatever reason).
I can't answer the question of if it's appropriate for you, if you're "needy enough". I really want to trust improvisers to do the right thing, to be good citizens of theater. I'd encourage you to ask yourself the question "would it be a hardship for me to pay for this class?" If the answer is yes, please take a free slot and I look forward to seeing you in class. If the answer is no, I'd ask that you leave a free spot for one of your fellow improvisers who could use it.
As an addendum, I don't expect any other teachers to follow suit, everyone has their own finances to worry about, but I know a lot of schools that offer scholarships (either full rides or discounts) for different students. I also know there are some organizations that offer what are essentially grants to pay for (or offset) the cost of improv classes, and I'd encourage anyone to look at what you have available in your situation or area.
(If you're reading this and you run a theater or festival and you want me to come into town and do cool stuff, shoot me a message! I will always work with people to figure out how to make a trip work; I would rather me not make as much and be able to offer my considerable experience than just sit at home.)
Wednesday, September 13, 2023
One Score
Today (assuming you're reading this date of publication, and if not, let's just pretend), marks twenty years that I have been performing improv, a considerable milestone, given that I never really expected to still be making things up for this long.
 |
| Portrait of the artist as a young man, 2004 |
 |
| First San Diego show, ca 2008 |
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| Minus Winston, Chicago, 2008 |
I ask these questions, because I feel like I am always at odds with getting my own teammates to come to shows and rehearsals. The last two years of producing, I've seen an increase in the "ah,
dang". This phrase is always followed by someone telling you that they
have double booked themselves and have to back out of a show they were
"so looking forward to" and previously "can't wait for", but they're
sure everyone else is "going to crush" and "kill it" without them. But
you should definitely "let [them] know how it goes" because they are
"definitely there next time". It's also said by teammates who "know
you'll break legs" and "meant to let everyone know" before that they
can't be there tonight. (This is also occasionally followed by a domino
of other teammates who "also won't be there tonight", and then one brave
soul who asks the immortal question: "who is actually coming tonight?")
 |
| With Charles Webber, ca 2015 |
I'm absolutely blown away by the number of teams that seem to have great chemistry, a strong group identity, and real potential who are filled with people who continue to act like individuals rather than members of a group.
Relatedly, I see a lot of what I call "switchboarding": the practice of relatively young
improvisers being on 50 different teams simultaneously; seemingly hoping
that one of them will somehow become a great team. You make the community you're a member of, and when you make little investment in your projects, you can expect little return. And I say this knowing that I was one time someone who was on too many things, because it feels great to be told yes.
What I've noticed motivates improvisers a lot is "community", which is a term that I think means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. For some people, it just means like minded people, for others it fills a social need for friends, and others talk about it in reference to encouragement and collaboration. There's probably a whole 3D spectrum that most people would fall on, but one strange pattern I've seen is that if you get at least six improvisers together for at least 24-48 hours, it's only a matter of time until someone suggests an artist camp or commune. And this always sounds great in theory: living to do improv with your friends, no other concerns. But communities are sometimes defined as much by who is excluded as who is included, and any improv commune would rapidly be broken apart by arguments over who would be co-residents.
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| Effectively Merit Badge, ca 2016 |
All this to say, at the end of the day I think improvisers want to be thought of as 1) smart and 2) funny. They want that intelligence and humor to be respected by their fellow improvisers, and the esteem of their peers might be the most highly sought goal. They want the adoration of an audience that fills the house with laughter. And maybe most importantly, they want the power to walk away. A show every week is great, but what's even better is getting to do your craft when its convenient for you.
Of course, there's also that yearn to get back the high you got the first time you hit a joke. An even bigger high the first time you had a great show, and higher again when you found a team you could jive with regularly. And I've never fully gotten back to the highs in the past, but quitting is even less of an option. What in the hell would I do with all my spare time?
"Sometimes you chase the dragon, and sometimes the dragon chases you."
Happy improvising everyone, hope to see you around the circuit.
Friday, May 22, 2020
Can You Make It Up and Make It Good?
In the last installment of the blog (that honestly was published two weeks ago, but could have easily have been a year ago), I talked about the resistance of improv to criticism - which in this case isn't the gripes about improv culture, but is the aesthetic artistic analysis and evaluation of the value of a piece of improvised theater.
One of the things to get out of the way at the top is that any criticism of improv must endeavor to divorce itself, as much as possible, from personal judgements about the producers of the improvisation. A significant pillar of the practice of Neo-futurism, which, like improv, traffics exceedingly close to the reality of the performer(s) lived experience, and receiving feedback on a piece that is incredibly personal can feel like receiving feedback on the person themselves. This is not the aim of criticism, and shouldn't be, perhaps outside of the acknowledgment, for example, of the influence of H.P. Lovecraft's xenophobia and racism and the types of stories he wrote and how he wrote them. In general though, I'd argue most of the themes that we tackle in improv don't require us to know a lot about the lived experience of the performers to understand what they're doing on stage, at least not the way we are typically teaching and directing it. And at the very least, the immediacy of improv precludes a broader understanding of context, in that we're already coexisting in this context.
We should instead focus on trying to evaluate the relative merits of a piece of work as compared to other improv shows. Since that article, I've been trying to find examples of criticism to see where we're at, before figuring out where we're going. More specifically: what do we as creators of improvisation and, ideally, consumers of improvisation need to know in order to "appropriately" dissect improv in order to judge it?
Improv is unique in that, unlike most of other art forms, has very few enthusiasts or buffs that aren't also performers. (That this is likely due to most improv theater's business models being built primarily around making significantly more money off a student than an audience member is a discussion for another time.) We don't have fans in the same way that sports, film, music, or even furniture has fans: interested followers who partake in discussion and consumption but not deed.
And those contributions aren't insignificant, for while we might listen to Martin Scorsese's opinion of filmmaking, the academic critiques about what makes film "good" really fall to an adjacent class of user; to do something different runs a heavy risk of an incestuous ouroboros of self-indulgence (which, one could argue, improv already has). If you want to do improv for other improvisers, be prepared for a different kind of feedback and support than if you try to get the general public interested. A non-improviser likely wants some different experiences from a performance than an improviser does. Conversely, an improviser not only wants different things, but is also like to ignore some things simply because of how we're trained. We already know roughly how the process is, so we don't or can't "see" the things that might be glaring to other people.
If we consider the question of critique as "what is the most significant thing about this work" (which is, as it turns out, what the average audience is also interested in) through the lens that understands that the work is fleeting and discretely temporary, then the question becomes "what is the most significant thing about the kinds of work this group can produce". This makes our job easier, in a sense. We can look at individual shows or scenes not as the end-all-be-all, but as evidence towards what can be produced.
Since we largely sell a "process", visible in real time, to an audience, we really can only talk about that process primarily, and the ultimate product secondarily. I don't remove the final product from the equation entirely, because if we look back retroactively on shows, all we can truly remember is what we saw and heard (and felt) and that becomes the product. And, consequently, if we look at a tape of a great show, we're seeing that product of what we saw on stage: words, emotion, scenes, we can no longer view the process. The sudden schism between process and product may be why improv shows lack entertainment value (often) when viewed on tape. Those two diametric elements are now divorced, and in doing so, the product now lacks immediacy, presence, and risk.
As I've been wrestling with the nature of critical improv theory recently, I've been working from the angle of what are the limitations - knowing the boundaries and the conformational hindrances are how we can hopefully begin to describe just what the hell it is we're doing all the time.
One of the things to get out of the way at the top is that any criticism of improv must endeavor to divorce itself, as much as possible, from personal judgements about the producers of the improvisation. A significant pillar of the practice of Neo-futurism, which, like improv, traffics exceedingly close to the reality of the performer(s) lived experience, and receiving feedback on a piece that is incredibly personal can feel like receiving feedback on the person themselves. This is not the aim of criticism, and shouldn't be, perhaps outside of the acknowledgment, for example, of the influence of H.P. Lovecraft's xenophobia and racism and the types of stories he wrote and how he wrote them. In general though, I'd argue most of the themes that we tackle in improv don't require us to know a lot about the lived experience of the performers to understand what they're doing on stage, at least not the way we are typically teaching and directing it. And at the very least, the immediacy of improv precludes a broader understanding of context, in that we're already coexisting in this context.
We should instead focus on trying to evaluate the relative merits of a piece of work as compared to other improv shows. Since that article, I've been trying to find examples of criticism to see where we're at, before figuring out where we're going. More specifically: what do we as creators of improvisation and, ideally, consumers of improvisation need to know in order to "appropriately" dissect improv in order to judge it?
Improv is unique in that, unlike most of other art forms, has very few enthusiasts or buffs that aren't also performers. (That this is likely due to most improv theater's business models being built primarily around making significantly more money off a student than an audience member is a discussion for another time.) We don't have fans in the same way that sports, film, music, or even furniture has fans: interested followers who partake in discussion and consumption but not deed.
And those contributions aren't insignificant, for while we might listen to Martin Scorsese's opinion of filmmaking, the academic critiques about what makes film "good" really fall to an adjacent class of user; to do something different runs a heavy risk of an incestuous ouroboros of self-indulgence (which, one could argue, improv already has). If you want to do improv for other improvisers, be prepared for a different kind of feedback and support than if you try to get the general public interested. A non-improviser likely wants some different experiences from a performance than an improviser does. Conversely, an improviser not only wants different things, but is also like to ignore some things simply because of how we're trained. We already know roughly how the process is, so we don't or can't "see" the things that might be glaring to other people.
If we consider the question of critique as "what is the most significant thing about this work" (which is, as it turns out, what the average audience is also interested in) through the lens that understands that the work is fleeting and discretely temporary, then the question becomes "what is the most significant thing about the kinds of work this group can produce". This makes our job easier, in a sense. We can look at individual shows or scenes not as the end-all-be-all, but as evidence towards what can be produced.
Since we largely sell a "process", visible in real time, to an audience, we really can only talk about that process primarily, and the ultimate product secondarily. I don't remove the final product from the equation entirely, because if we look back retroactively on shows, all we can truly remember is what we saw and heard (and felt) and that becomes the product. And, consequently, if we look at a tape of a great show, we're seeing that product of what we saw on stage: words, emotion, scenes, we can no longer view the process. The sudden schism between process and product may be why improv shows lack entertainment value (often) when viewed on tape. Those two diametric elements are now divorced, and in doing so, the product now lacks immediacy, presence, and risk.
As I've been wrestling with the nature of critical improv theory recently, I've been working from the angle of what are the limitations - knowing the boundaries and the conformational hindrances are how we can hopefully begin to describe just what the hell it is we're doing all the time.
Friday, May 1, 2020
This Is Not A Review of the Hit Netflix Special "Middleditch and Schwartz"
"I'm excited that so many people are being introduced to Longform Improv thanks to a Netflix special," says my friend Elaine on Facebook. She's talking about "Middleditch and Schwartz" (which for brevity's sake I'll abbreviate M&S), a series of three comedy "specials" that the streaming platform has administered to us, here in the absolute depths of the monotony that has become the current coronavirus pandemic. I only put 'special' in quotations, because for those of us in the longform improv world, a duo doing a one hour set isn't in itself truly special; for many improv theaters across the US, that's a pretty standard weekly occurrence, perhaps outside of the set length. Indeed, the general consensus of my improv friends on social media (~75% of the people whose posts I regularly see) is that there is rising hope that once we can do shows again that audiences will come flocking out to see what the apparently underground local scene is like, a regular regret among local community leaders. (Indeed: in 2018 my parents came to Chicago for the weekend, and we went to see the Second City MainStage show the Friday they got in. When they told their AirBnB host, he, a lifelong Chicago resident in the Lakeview neighborhood, asked 'What's that? Is that new?', of a venerable 50+ year pillar of the Chicago and national comedy scene occupying four floors of an entire city block in Oldtown.)
I have doubts that people will come out, not the least of which is that M&S looks a lot less like the kinds of improv shows that improvisers hold up as paragons of virtue, in the way that some people talk about Cook County Social Club or Parallelogramophonograph or Beer Shark Mice are revered, and a lot more like two already modestly famous actors doing a pretty funny show. I guess if you're already famous (or improv famous), it might make more opportunities for you to hock your show at various festivals and theaters (or possibly Netflix).
This isn't truly a review of M&S - I'll only say that it is very funny, is definitely improv, but isn't an example of what I would show students of what kind of show they should aspire to; for example, at least a few times every show there is an onstage negotiation about who is present, what their names are, and what is happening. Those things come up in typical shows, but it happens often enough here that it feels less like an honest "oops" and more like careless, thoughtless play. Most of the show is really just watching two men goof around with each other playfully, which may or may not be your kind of improv. End of "review".
More than anything though, we don't get to review or think critically about an improv show, and certainly not write about it. There are precious few reviews of improv shows, and the problem is a product of the lack of critical theory we have in popular culture for discussing improv in a critical light.
1. At a Q&A following a screening of "Rio Bravo" (1959, dir. Howard Hawks) in the halcyon days of this past February, Michael Phillips said that the basis of critical thought boils down to three questions:
In improvised theater, for better or worse, most shows would probably answer 'be funny', 'sometimes', and 'depends on how funny it was and how often you're coming to shows'. I've been in a few shows where we tried really had to "tell a coherent story" or "leave no loose threads" and those felt like quantum leaps from the other 90% of shows we did where we didn't even know who the cast was going to be until five minutes before showtime, and the stage plan was "let's do X form" (abandoned three minutes into the set because someone forgot or didn't know what the form was). My point here is not to spend an article knocking how casually we treat improv and how 90% of improv shows are 'meh' to 'nah' (see previous posts and also every improviser's social media ever), but to remind us that if we're going to think critically about shows, there's dearly little purchase to make a case on other than "yeah, funny".
2. Tied into #1 above, improv as a culture has a problem when it comes to what we care about and what we value. If you were to go through classes and read books and try to remove yourself from the macro culture, you'd probably believe that improv is all about mastering the craft, treating your fellows like 'artists, poets, and geniuses', forging interpersonal connections, getting out of your head, facing your fear, and aspiring to art over being funny. If you've done improv for some time, you know that's partially true, but it's mostly false. Being successful in improv is about being funny. Full stop, period, end of sentence. I've sat in auditions where whether someone was good at improv could be a tiebreaker, but at the end of the day, we cast the funniest people, end of story. Even Mick Napier of the Annoyance, the self-proclaimed watcher "of more improv auditions than anyone, ever" has said on multiple occasions that the people who get cast are the funniest. Improv values being funny as absolute currency, good anywhere, and to a lesser degree fame (see any festival ever) and to a lesser degree still whether or not the practitioner owns/operates an improv theater or festival. And that's it. Funny, Fame, Fiefdom. Again, not a gripe about the system that we all occupy and cannot change, but it's difficult for us to square up a craft that believes whole-heartedly one thing on paper, but rewards something completely different in practice. (For evidence, read every improv book ever, which probably has a chapter titled "Don't worry about being funny".)
3. The other glaring problem is one of repeatability; I can review M&S (I won't, but I could. Someone else already has so read them) because it exists in a state that can be reviewed identically by anyone with a Netflix account. Same goes for "Trust Us, This is All Made Up" (The TJ and Dave DVD) or Asssscat (for the record, I looked up how many S's are in it), episodes of "Whose Line is it Anyway?", and a small handful of tapes or uploads of teams (for my money, the tapes of Trophy Wife and 3033 are the gold standard). But for a lot of improv shows, they exist in that moment, and that moment alone (and outside of a few notable exceptions above, no regular audience member is going to watch a single-camera 25 minute video of an improv team playing on a Wednesday night) and then they're gone forever. Being critical of an improv team would require watching several shows to get a feel for the "average" output of the team, and while we as practitioners might, a "reviewer" probably won't. And your average audience member is probably only coming to see a show once, maybe twice a year? Have a bummer, and you've probably lost them forever.
4. The logical extension of the above is "which show(s)" are they going to watch? In my other theater life, I'm constantly writing press releases, begging press (and honestly anyone - are you a member of chamber of commerce? I'll comp you) to come give our production some ink. When they come, they come on opening weekend. This makes sense; if we're only running for three weeks, we'll get a few inches of copy for our second and third weeks, but what do we do for an improv show? I've had a few shows that ran regularly, but most of them have "open-ended" runs with an inconsistent schedule. If I get some press, how the hell are they going to write about a show they watched that will be next Thursday, the following Friday at 11, and the last Sunday at 7pm, and will run at least through the end of the month, but we're still waiting to hear from the theater manager if we'll get any spots in the following two months? And are reviewers supposed to come on opening night of a team? Most teams last a handful of months, are vague reconfigurations of other teams, have inconsistent casts ("hey ya'll I'm going to miss tonight because I have another show at Z theater, break all the legs!"), and are part of "three great teams for you tonight" so which version of your show are they supposed to review? If I was an improv reviewer, I'd wait until a team had been around for 6 months before I even considered coming to see them, or they had a definite end to the run.
5. And what do we want to critique? We don't have sets, costumes, props. usually no music, little lighting design, and our forms are often incomprehensible to an average audience or are simplified versions of extant genres or contexts ("Come see our Improvised Beach Movie show!"). So when a critic does commit some type to an improv show, they often rely on just describing the performer's appearance, which feels at least a little weird and mostly un-necessary. They way we teach improv is probably about 70% writing, 25% acting, and 5% directing, so just what in the hell should we be talking about once we get past "it was funny"? Well, we obviously still have to explain what improv is, so that's good for about a paragraph or two. Maybe worth devoting a paragraph to whether or not it is "silly", "serious", and/or "playful", and maybe another to whether or not the players have chemistry together, but if you're an improviser, you're probably nodding your head and thinking "that's what improv is". We wouldn't expect a critical analysis of "regular" theater to say:
6. Last one, promise. There are no independent reviewers of improv who are also knowledgable students. If you live in a city that has a lot of improv, like NY, LA, Chicago, maybe Austin(?), you might be fortunate enough to have a critic that frequents comedy shows, but (at least here in Chicago) mostly when I see columns dedicated to a non-theater, non-standup performance, it's usually the scripted SC MainStage or ETC shows. In most environments, theatrical critics won't spend their time on an improv show unless it has Fame or a significant word-of-mouth behind it, not when traditional theater is much more "accessible" and is always clamoring for reviewers (and, see all the above, is easier to discuss and dissect than an improv show because of the nature of how theater has organized itself). And then, your theater reviewer probably hasn't done improv, so they probably don't know what they're looking for. Among improvisers, you're either actively doing it or have left it to move into other industries (either your "regular" job or to deal "real acting/writing/directing"). If you've left it, you either left on good terms with improv, or bad terms, and if the latter, you probably never want to see improv as long as you live. If you left on good terms or are still actively doing it, you can't talk about improv critically from inside it. Write a bad line (or hell, even a mediocre) line about a production, and that person/group/theater may never work with you again, and if you don't believe me, just know that all improvisers hold grudges, and their memories are long. Every community has people that are persona non grata to someone, and if they make decisions, they are gone. And obviously, you can't review your own shows - and if you're playing six times a week, you probably don't have time watch anything else anyway (seriously, just try to invite an improviser to an improv show).
Add all those problems, and you have an enterprise that resists review and critique, even from an artistic level. I hope that one day in the future we'll have enough language, distance, substance, and clarity to analyze it as an art form that seems to see itself either above or incapable of criticism. Maybe some hard critique will help in pushing it into the next wave. In the meantime, may I recommend the Netflix comedy special "Middleditch and Schwartz"? It's very funny, and the best example of what improv looks like right now.
I have doubts that people will come out, not the least of which is that M&S looks a lot less like the kinds of improv shows that improvisers hold up as paragons of virtue, in the way that some people talk about Cook County Social Club or Parallelogramophonograph or Beer Shark Mice are revered, and a lot more like two already modestly famous actors doing a pretty funny show. I guess if you're already famous (or improv famous), it might make more opportunities for you to hock your show at various festivals and theaters (or possibly Netflix).
This isn't truly a review of M&S - I'll only say that it is very funny, is definitely improv, but isn't an example of what I would show students of what kind of show they should aspire to; for example, at least a few times every show there is an onstage negotiation about who is present, what their names are, and what is happening. Those things come up in typical shows, but it happens often enough here that it feels less like an honest "oops" and more like careless, thoughtless play. Most of the show is really just watching two men goof around with each other playfully, which may or may not be your kind of improv. End of "review".
More than anything though, we don't get to review or think critically about an improv show, and certainly not write about it. There are precious few reviews of improv shows, and the problem is a product of the lack of critical theory we have in popular culture for discussing improv in a critical light.
1. At a Q&A following a screening of "Rio Bravo" (1959, dir. Howard Hawks) in the halcyon days of this past February, Michael Phillips said that the basis of critical thought boils down to three questions:
- What was the creator trying to say?
- Did they say it?
- Was it worth saying?
In improvised theater, for better or worse, most shows would probably answer 'be funny', 'sometimes', and 'depends on how funny it was and how often you're coming to shows'. I've been in a few shows where we tried really had to "tell a coherent story" or "leave no loose threads" and those felt like quantum leaps from the other 90% of shows we did where we didn't even know who the cast was going to be until five minutes before showtime, and the stage plan was "let's do X form" (abandoned three minutes into the set because someone forgot or didn't know what the form was). My point here is not to spend an article knocking how casually we treat improv and how 90% of improv shows are 'meh' to 'nah' (see previous posts and also every improviser's social media ever), but to remind us that if we're going to think critically about shows, there's dearly little purchase to make a case on other than "yeah, funny".
2. Tied into #1 above, improv as a culture has a problem when it comes to what we care about and what we value. If you were to go through classes and read books and try to remove yourself from the macro culture, you'd probably believe that improv is all about mastering the craft, treating your fellows like 'artists, poets, and geniuses', forging interpersonal connections, getting out of your head, facing your fear, and aspiring to art over being funny. If you've done improv for some time, you know that's partially true, but it's mostly false. Being successful in improv is about being funny. Full stop, period, end of sentence. I've sat in auditions where whether someone was good at improv could be a tiebreaker, but at the end of the day, we cast the funniest people, end of story. Even Mick Napier of the Annoyance, the self-proclaimed watcher "of more improv auditions than anyone, ever" has said on multiple occasions that the people who get cast are the funniest. Improv values being funny as absolute currency, good anywhere, and to a lesser degree fame (see any festival ever) and to a lesser degree still whether or not the practitioner owns/operates an improv theater or festival. And that's it. Funny, Fame, Fiefdom. Again, not a gripe about the system that we all occupy and cannot change, but it's difficult for us to square up a craft that believes whole-heartedly one thing on paper, but rewards something completely different in practice. (For evidence, read every improv book ever, which probably has a chapter titled "Don't worry about being funny".)
3. The other glaring problem is one of repeatability; I can review M&S (I won't, but I could. Someone else already has so read them) because it exists in a state that can be reviewed identically by anyone with a Netflix account. Same goes for "Trust Us, This is All Made Up" (The TJ and Dave DVD) or Asssscat (for the record, I looked up how many S's are in it), episodes of "Whose Line is it Anyway?", and a small handful of tapes or uploads of teams (for my money, the tapes of Trophy Wife and 3033 are the gold standard). But for a lot of improv shows, they exist in that moment, and that moment alone (and outside of a few notable exceptions above, no regular audience member is going to watch a single-camera 25 minute video of an improv team playing on a Wednesday night) and then they're gone forever. Being critical of an improv team would require watching several shows to get a feel for the "average" output of the team, and while we as practitioners might, a "reviewer" probably won't. And your average audience member is probably only coming to see a show once, maybe twice a year? Have a bummer, and you've probably lost them forever.
4. The logical extension of the above is "which show(s)" are they going to watch? In my other theater life, I'm constantly writing press releases, begging press (and honestly anyone - are you a member of chamber of commerce? I'll comp you) to come give our production some ink. When they come, they come on opening weekend. This makes sense; if we're only running for three weeks, we'll get a few inches of copy for our second and third weeks, but what do we do for an improv show? I've had a few shows that ran regularly, but most of them have "open-ended" runs with an inconsistent schedule. If I get some press, how the hell are they going to write about a show they watched that will be next Thursday, the following Friday at 11, and the last Sunday at 7pm, and will run at least through the end of the month, but we're still waiting to hear from the theater manager if we'll get any spots in the following two months? And are reviewers supposed to come on opening night of a team? Most teams last a handful of months, are vague reconfigurations of other teams, have inconsistent casts ("hey ya'll I'm going to miss tonight because I have another show at Z theater, break all the legs!"), and are part of "three great teams for you tonight" so which version of your show are they supposed to review? If I was an improv reviewer, I'd wait until a team had been around for 6 months before I even considered coming to see them, or they had a definite end to the run.
5. And what do we want to critique? We don't have sets, costumes, props. usually no music, little lighting design, and our forms are often incomprehensible to an average audience or are simplified versions of extant genres or contexts ("Come see our Improvised Beach Movie show!"). So when a critic does commit some type to an improv show, they often rely on just describing the performer's appearance, which feels at least a little weird and mostly un-necessary. They way we teach improv is probably about 70% writing, 25% acting, and 5% directing, so just what in the hell should we be talking about once we get past "it was funny"? Well, we obviously still have to explain what improv is, so that's good for about a paragraph or two. Maybe worth devoting a paragraph to whether or not it is "silly", "serious", and/or "playful", and maybe another to whether or not the players have chemistry together, but if you're an improviser, you're probably nodding your head and thinking "that's what improv is". We wouldn't expect a critical analysis of "regular" theater to say:
The play featured complete sentences, scenes where the plot advanced, actions, emotions, and during one particularly pivotal moment, themes and subtext. The actors even memorized their lines!That's what I expect already, and critical theory needs to be rooted in "how is this different" from other examples, and "is it worth watching". The bottom line is, we're just not good at using words to analyze just what we're doing.
6. Last one, promise. There are no independent reviewers of improv who are also knowledgable students. If you live in a city that has a lot of improv, like NY, LA, Chicago, maybe Austin(?), you might be fortunate enough to have a critic that frequents comedy shows, but (at least here in Chicago) mostly when I see columns dedicated to a non-theater, non-standup performance, it's usually the scripted SC MainStage or ETC shows. In most environments, theatrical critics won't spend their time on an improv show unless it has Fame or a significant word-of-mouth behind it, not when traditional theater is much more "accessible" and is always clamoring for reviewers (and, see all the above, is easier to discuss and dissect than an improv show because of the nature of how theater has organized itself). And then, your theater reviewer probably hasn't done improv, so they probably don't know what they're looking for. Among improvisers, you're either actively doing it or have left it to move into other industries (either your "regular" job or to deal "real acting/writing/directing"). If you've left it, you either left on good terms with improv, or bad terms, and if the latter, you probably never want to see improv as long as you live. If you left on good terms or are still actively doing it, you can't talk about improv critically from inside it. Write a bad line (or hell, even a mediocre) line about a production, and that person/group/theater may never work with you again, and if you don't believe me, just know that all improvisers hold grudges, and their memories are long. Every community has people that are persona non grata to someone, and if they make decisions, they are gone. And obviously, you can't review your own shows - and if you're playing six times a week, you probably don't have time watch anything else anyway (seriously, just try to invite an improviser to an improv show).
Add all those problems, and you have an enterprise that resists review and critique, even from an artistic level. I hope that one day in the future we'll have enough language, distance, substance, and clarity to analyze it as an art form that seems to see itself either above or incapable of criticism. Maybe some hard critique will help in pushing it into the next wave. In the meantime, may I recommend the Netflix comedy special "Middleditch and Schwartz"? It's very funny, and the best example of what improv looks like right now.
Wednesday, April 22, 2020
Doom is a Mood
As the world has retreated to its own various holes and out of public spaces due to the potentially significant (and catastrophic) coronavirus (Covid-19), we've necessitated that only jobs and enterprises deemed "essential" have been permitted to continue operations. The list of such essential activities seems to swing fairly wildly from 'no duh' (healthcare, public transportation, grocery) to 'huh?" (WWE, dry-cleaning (no knocks on dry cleaners, but I can't imagine there is much of a need for many suits or ballgowns right now)), but it does seem that the line is holding that most live entertainment - here namely improv - is finding itself to be "un-essential" against in the light of potential morbidity and mortality. Not that I could really imagine what improv would look like at present, were it to continue; a team of eight 24-year olds wearing masks and pretending to drive or conduct job interviews while 50+ patrons (half of which are the prior/next team(s)) sipping BYOB IPA's laugh behind the footlights just feels surreal.
As a result, it seems that this might be one of the longest stretches for most improvisers to go without doing improv. Sure, there are some Zoom jams, some online classes that may fill the gaps - but based on my own experience, and what I've heard from others, these will always be stop-gaps to satisfying the itch, and we're all counting down the days until we can do our Crazy 8's and Harolds in spaces with other warm bodies, preferably a nice hot crowd. For me, I realized last week that this is now the longest gap I've had from doing improv since 2005: the summer and fall immediately after I graduated college and before I moved back to Hattiesburg. And if the lockdown goes as long as the estimates are looking (based on a number of sources, some official and and some not, I'd wager there won't really be an "improv show" until August, and it'll probably be weird), this might be the longest I've gone without really doing improv since I started doing it in 2003.
I'm not sure if everyone else is taking the opportunity to evaluate or reflect on what improv "is" and what their place is in it. Over the last ~17 years, it has been a hobby, avocation, occupation, tool, social outlet, frustration, and aspiration. Through it, I've made some of the best friends that I've ever had; ones that let me crash on their couch, ones that I only see three times at year at festivals, and ones that I've seen get married and start lives with each other. It has also been a crucible through which I have seen some of the worst in people, and discovered which ones are irresponsible, immoral, unethical, and unprofessional, and under what circumstances they are willing to sacrifice their principles for the thing they "love" in favor of a spell of slow doom giving in to their basest instincts. At the risk of this sounding too dramatic ("The worst is not, So long as we can say, 'This is the worst'), I've also known the quietly diligent, the easily talented, people who have no friends but colleagues, and people who've only come to the table for a snack, not the whole feast.
It's gotten me thinking a lot about "improvisers" as a class, and the various ways in which we've categorized ourselves in relation to each other: owners, for instance, those who have legal and administrative custody and stewardship of the business. (It dawned on me that some improv theater owners never seem to start an improv theater with the intention of presenting an improved product, service, or manner of business - only the desire for them to be the ones providing it.) But improv theater owners are not monoliths, because improv theaters are not typical business ventures. The theater does not have many "employees" in the traditional sense, and instead the line is very blurry between an employee (someone who is paid to perform work) and a customer (someone who is paying for work to be performed).
Instead, improvisers often straddle (and co-occupy) many lanes during their "career" from an audience member watching a show, to a student paying for classes/workshops, to a performer not being paid for providing work that people have paid for, to (preciously rarely) a performer being paid for work that people have paid for, to being paid to be a teacher. Even the traditional "staff" at a theater are a mix of people doing work for intern credit, being paid hourly, drawing a traditional salary (oftentimes supplemented by additional pay for teaching and coaching), or merely volunteering their time (as happens regularly during festivals).
As a result, the improvisers at theaters get (justifiably) cranky at theater management who make decisions or rules; it's because everyone lives in a soupy middle zone of employee and customer (an employstomer, if you will). None of them are shareholders (people who hold legal and financial stake in an enterprise) in an official sense, but don't we all feel a rush of joy when a new theater opens or an extant one moves into a new space and an equal crushing blow when one closes or a team is cut? Every employstomer is responsible for simultaneously supporting and being supported by a business they have zero say in.
A lot of writing and thought has been given over the last five years or so to what a community is, and how to cultivate and foster its growth. Of course, communities are interesting in that they can (and often do) span multiple theaters, and really more cleanly defined by who isn't in them. Communities are groups of people with a common geographical, cultural, or value set, so to say the Chicago Improv Community is an amazingly amorphous description to define a group of people who've never been in the same room together - I know there's probably a thousand improvisers here I've never met and never will meet, and somehow they and I currently have enough in common to have the same general needs and goals.
To underline though: not all owners are bad. People don't become inherently bad because they sign a lease or have to make decisions. Not all decisions work for all people all the time, and leadership is about making tough decisions sometimes. True leaders are those that are there for the high times as well as the low; who have values and are willing to risk things for their values. Anything else is a term paper. Leadership in improv must come with the understanding that your customer, employee, and colleague are often the same fucking person. To be in our global improv community necessitates understanding the strange interconnectedness we all apparently have.
I don't know what improv will look like when it comes back. A friend asked me today: 'what's the first meal you're going to have when the quarantine is over?", and I stumbled at the simplicity of the question. It's folly to assume that the current state of affairs will have a clean stop and one day we'll all restart our Level 1's and Main Stage shows. The question 'when will be your first improv show back' is multiple parts: 1) when will we have a full rehearsal again, 2) when is the first show we can sell tickets to, 3) when is the first show that'll be packed, and 4) when will it be "business as usual", as well as another dozen subquestions that'll each have to be answered one step at a time, and the change will be so gradual that we probably won't notice right away that we got back to normal.
Maybe a better question is, what will our relationship(s) with improv look like when things get "back to normal". Will there be the same glut of shows, will we be so casual with our practice (and I mean practice here more in the sense that a doctor or lawyers have a practice), and will we still tolerate and endorse the same shallow negligence as before?
Do we miss improv now?
Will we remember that we missed it when it's back?
As a result, it seems that this might be one of the longest stretches for most improvisers to go without doing improv. Sure, there are some Zoom jams, some online classes that may fill the gaps - but based on my own experience, and what I've heard from others, these will always be stop-gaps to satisfying the itch, and we're all counting down the days until we can do our Crazy 8's and Harolds in spaces with other warm bodies, preferably a nice hot crowd. For me, I realized last week that this is now the longest gap I've had from doing improv since 2005: the summer and fall immediately after I graduated college and before I moved back to Hattiesburg. And if the lockdown goes as long as the estimates are looking (based on a number of sources, some official and and some not, I'd wager there won't really be an "improv show" until August, and it'll probably be weird), this might be the longest I've gone without really doing improv since I started doing it in 2003.
I'm not sure if everyone else is taking the opportunity to evaluate or reflect on what improv "is" and what their place is in it. Over the last ~17 years, it has been a hobby, avocation, occupation, tool, social outlet, frustration, and aspiration. Through it, I've made some of the best friends that I've ever had; ones that let me crash on their couch, ones that I only see three times at year at festivals, and ones that I've seen get married and start lives with each other. It has also been a crucible through which I have seen some of the worst in people, and discovered which ones are irresponsible, immoral, unethical, and unprofessional, and under what circumstances they are willing to sacrifice their principles for the thing they "love" in favor of a spell of slow doom giving in to their basest instincts. At the risk of this sounding too dramatic ("The worst is not, So long as we can say, 'This is the worst'), I've also known the quietly diligent, the easily talented, people who have no friends but colleagues, and people who've only come to the table for a snack, not the whole feast.
It's gotten me thinking a lot about "improvisers" as a class, and the various ways in which we've categorized ourselves in relation to each other: owners, for instance, those who have legal and administrative custody and stewardship of the business. (It dawned on me that some improv theater owners never seem to start an improv theater with the intention of presenting an improved product, service, or manner of business - only the desire for them to be the ones providing it.) But improv theater owners are not monoliths, because improv theaters are not typical business ventures. The theater does not have many "employees" in the traditional sense, and instead the line is very blurry between an employee (someone who is paid to perform work) and a customer (someone who is paying for work to be performed).
Instead, improvisers often straddle (and co-occupy) many lanes during their "career" from an audience member watching a show, to a student paying for classes/workshops, to a performer not being paid for providing work that people have paid for, to (preciously rarely) a performer being paid for work that people have paid for, to being paid to be a teacher. Even the traditional "staff" at a theater are a mix of people doing work for intern credit, being paid hourly, drawing a traditional salary (oftentimes supplemented by additional pay for teaching and coaching), or merely volunteering their time (as happens regularly during festivals).
As a result, the improvisers at theaters get (justifiably) cranky at theater management who make decisions or rules; it's because everyone lives in a soupy middle zone of employee and customer (an employstomer, if you will). None of them are shareholders (people who hold legal and financial stake in an enterprise) in an official sense, but don't we all feel a rush of joy when a new theater opens or an extant one moves into a new space and an equal crushing blow when one closes or a team is cut? Every employstomer is responsible for simultaneously supporting and being supported by a business they have zero say in.
A lot of writing and thought has been given over the last five years or so to what a community is, and how to cultivate and foster its growth. Of course, communities are interesting in that they can (and often do) span multiple theaters, and really more cleanly defined by who isn't in them. Communities are groups of people with a common geographical, cultural, or value set, so to say the Chicago Improv Community is an amazingly amorphous description to define a group of people who've never been in the same room together - I know there's probably a thousand improvisers here I've never met and never will meet, and somehow they and I currently have enough in common to have the same general needs and goals.
To underline though: not all owners are bad. People don't become inherently bad because they sign a lease or have to make decisions. Not all decisions work for all people all the time, and leadership is about making tough decisions sometimes. True leaders are those that are there for the high times as well as the low; who have values and are willing to risk things for their values. Anything else is a term paper. Leadership in improv must come with the understanding that your customer, employee, and colleague are often the same fucking person. To be in our global improv community necessitates understanding the strange interconnectedness we all apparently have.
I don't know what improv will look like when it comes back. A friend asked me today: 'what's the first meal you're going to have when the quarantine is over?", and I stumbled at the simplicity of the question. It's folly to assume that the current state of affairs will have a clean stop and one day we'll all restart our Level 1's and Main Stage shows. The question 'when will be your first improv show back' is multiple parts: 1) when will we have a full rehearsal again, 2) when is the first show we can sell tickets to, 3) when is the first show that'll be packed, and 4) when will it be "business as usual", as well as another dozen subquestions that'll each have to be answered one step at a time, and the change will be so gradual that we probably won't notice right away that we got back to normal.
Maybe a better question is, what will our relationship(s) with improv look like when things get "back to normal". Will there be the same glut of shows, will we be so casual with our practice (and I mean practice here more in the sense that a doctor or lawyers have a practice), and will we still tolerate and endorse the same shallow negligence as before?
Do we miss improv now?
Will we remember that we missed it when it's back?
Saturday, February 9, 2019
Quod Aliis Revelare Illud Moderate
Just a heads up that this post isn't about improv, and it's not about pop culture either; it's a personal one for me, so if that's not your bag, no worries, probably just keep on keeping on. If you choose to read on, caveat emptor, and don't say you weren't warned.
I had a best friend growing up; for the sake of maintaining some degree of anonymity, I'll call him "Ray". Ray was my absolute best friend; there never was a time that I didn't want to go to Ray's house, or play with Ray, or just be with Ray. Ray wasn't rich, but everything Ray had felt like just fun; he made every video game, movie, Lego set, or whatever, just cool by sheer virtue of his participation in it, and I, in turn, felt cool by sheer virtue of my proximity to him. One day, I insisted that Ray come over to my house to play Legos - I had come up with some story or adventure or some other nonsense that needed Ray to "make it". He didn't really want to go, but eventually I begged and pleaded enough that he did come over, and after that play date, he didn't speak to me again for three years. I had pushed our friendship too hard from him (though maybe squeezed, as in "blood from a stone" is more apt), and he didn't want me in his life, hanging on like a tick, any more.
I had a different friend in San Diego; he was the first friend I made out there, and I'll call him "Arnie" this time, and I really liked Arnie. He was a little younger than me, but we had similar interests and likes, and we got along real well. Over the two-ish years that he and I hung out though, we started having friction occasionally - things I told to him in confidence he would turn around (almost immediately) and share with other people, and he would never apologize or even seem to recognize a transgression. Eventually, he got a girlfriend and a new set of friends, and we had a (shouting) fight, and we didn't speak for three years, and not even once since then.
I used to work at a movie theater, and one day my parents came to see a movie, and one of my coworkers came up to me and said "your parents are so nice, why aren't you nice?". I was hanging out with a new friend in SD one Friday night, and I told him we probably wouldn't ever hang out again because I could tell he was starting to get tired of me. And sure enough, about a week later he got moved onto a different team and we haven't spoken since. And another SD friend of mine, who I'll call "Matthew" and I started out as very good friends, but over the course of 8 years of friendship we became barely more than colleagues, as I learned I couldn't trust him as a friend, and also that I was always going to be his "backup friend".
I need to break this up a little bit by saying that I have maintained a few friends; my best friend in college, JP (actual name) and I were near inseparable until he had to switch schools senior year, and my other best friend Noel (also actual name) and I lived together for about a year and a half after school.
What I have learned over ~35 years of life is that I am trouble for the people around me. Not in an Inspector Gadget, Mr. Magoo, physical peril kind of way, but in an eventual intolerable way. I'm never "not enough", and I'm always "too much". The real me is pushy, eager, but mostly just not "cool". He likes the right things, but never in the right way, and he likes the right people, but never correctly. He gets old for people, real fast, and I don't think anyone could ever tell you why, just that the real me isn't "right" and is off, just a little bit. The real me isn't wrong for any of the things he does, just the manner in which he does them. The real me wants people to like him, and really wants people to think he's a good guy, but he just can't do it. And I absolutely hate the real me. The real me has cost me so many friends, buds, acquaintances, friendlies, contacts, girlfriends, and a million other small, amicable relationships, because the real me is an absolute garbage fire. He just rubs people the wrong way, and most people don't want to deal with that. 99% of people want someone who is fun to be around out of the box, not someone who will always be the fourth friend.
My spirit animal will probably always be Pete Campbell from "Mad Men". Try as he might (and he really does) to be like Don Draper, he never will be. He'll get close, but in the end, he'll always rub people the wrong way.
The other thing that I have learned over ~35 years is to shut my mouth, stay out of people's way, and avoid overstaying my welcome. In friend groups, I have learned to very carefully measure the temperature of the room to know when my presence is about to reach people's tolerance limit. And most importantly, I never show the full, real me, because he won't earn people's affections. I have become Zelig-like, in my skill of matching and imitating the local flavor of the group and hiding the real me behind a screen of acting like everyone else is. And you can get pretty far with most people by mostly staying out of the way and matching their collective energy. I don't share more than a little of myself with anyone (currently only my friend Laurel bears the onus of my trust), and keep all my comments banal and tepid. Chances are if you've met me, I've never let you see the real me, because the real me drives people away and I hate that about myself.
I have come to despise phrases like "be yourself, everyone else is taken" or "live your best life" or "follow your bliss", because they only work if the big, bad, scary "U" on the inside is the kind of monster that other monsters get along with, and we humans are mostly social creatures. We're only thriving if we have trust and community to rest inside of, and for me, that person would be the first person voted off of every island, for no other reason than "we just kind of don't like him". This isn't an invitation for people to try to get to know me either. Every single person that I have let in has wished they stayed outside. We all have something wrong with us, sure, but for me, my defect is that I'm just not that likable. The real me doesn't deserve friends or companionship, but hopefully the me I wear everyday is at least tolerable.
As a parting note - I don't even think I know who the real me is anymore. I've buried, compartmentalized, neutered, and flattened all the parts of the real me that I possibly can. I probably haven't been the real me since maybe 2012, and seven years later I'm still trying to keep the rough edges sanded away enough to warrant others' sustained rapport, and the easiest way is to keep myself from persisting with people for too long.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to stop before you get sick of reading this.
I had a best friend growing up; for the sake of maintaining some degree of anonymity, I'll call him "Ray". Ray was my absolute best friend; there never was a time that I didn't want to go to Ray's house, or play with Ray, or just be with Ray. Ray wasn't rich, but everything Ray had felt like just fun; he made every video game, movie, Lego set, or whatever, just cool by sheer virtue of his participation in it, and I, in turn, felt cool by sheer virtue of my proximity to him. One day, I insisted that Ray come over to my house to play Legos - I had come up with some story or adventure or some other nonsense that needed Ray to "make it". He didn't really want to go, but eventually I begged and pleaded enough that he did come over, and after that play date, he didn't speak to me again for three years. I had pushed our friendship too hard from him (though maybe squeezed, as in "blood from a stone" is more apt), and he didn't want me in his life, hanging on like a tick, any more.
I had a different friend in San Diego; he was the first friend I made out there, and I'll call him "Arnie" this time, and I really liked Arnie. He was a little younger than me, but we had similar interests and likes, and we got along real well. Over the two-ish years that he and I hung out though, we started having friction occasionally - things I told to him in confidence he would turn around (almost immediately) and share with other people, and he would never apologize or even seem to recognize a transgression. Eventually, he got a girlfriend and a new set of friends, and we had a (shouting) fight, and we didn't speak for three years, and not even once since then.
I used to work at a movie theater, and one day my parents came to see a movie, and one of my coworkers came up to me and said "your parents are so nice, why aren't you nice?". I was hanging out with a new friend in SD one Friday night, and I told him we probably wouldn't ever hang out again because I could tell he was starting to get tired of me. And sure enough, about a week later he got moved onto a different team and we haven't spoken since. And another SD friend of mine, who I'll call "Matthew" and I started out as very good friends, but over the course of 8 years of friendship we became barely more than colleagues, as I learned I couldn't trust him as a friend, and also that I was always going to be his "backup friend".
I need to break this up a little bit by saying that I have maintained a few friends; my best friend in college, JP (actual name) and I were near inseparable until he had to switch schools senior year, and my other best friend Noel (also actual name) and I lived together for about a year and a half after school.
What I have learned over ~35 years of life is that I am trouble for the people around me. Not in an Inspector Gadget, Mr. Magoo, physical peril kind of way, but in an eventual intolerable way. I'm never "not enough", and I'm always "too much". The real me is pushy, eager, but mostly just not "cool". He likes the right things, but never in the right way, and he likes the right people, but never correctly. He gets old for people, real fast, and I don't think anyone could ever tell you why, just that the real me isn't "right" and is off, just a little bit. The real me isn't wrong for any of the things he does, just the manner in which he does them. The real me wants people to like him, and really wants people to think he's a good guy, but he just can't do it. And I absolutely hate the real me. The real me has cost me so many friends, buds, acquaintances, friendlies, contacts, girlfriends, and a million other small, amicable relationships, because the real me is an absolute garbage fire. He just rubs people the wrong way, and most people don't want to deal with that. 99% of people want someone who is fun to be around out of the box, not someone who will always be the fourth friend.
My spirit animal will probably always be Pete Campbell from "Mad Men". Try as he might (and he really does) to be like Don Draper, he never will be. He'll get close, but in the end, he'll always rub people the wrong way.
The other thing that I have learned over ~35 years is to shut my mouth, stay out of people's way, and avoid overstaying my welcome. In friend groups, I have learned to very carefully measure the temperature of the room to know when my presence is about to reach people's tolerance limit. And most importantly, I never show the full, real me, because he won't earn people's affections. I have become Zelig-like, in my skill of matching and imitating the local flavor of the group and hiding the real me behind a screen of acting like everyone else is. And you can get pretty far with most people by mostly staying out of the way and matching their collective energy. I don't share more than a little of myself with anyone (currently only my friend Laurel bears the onus of my trust), and keep all my comments banal and tepid. Chances are if you've met me, I've never let you see the real me, because the real me drives people away and I hate that about myself.
I have come to despise phrases like "be yourself, everyone else is taken" or "live your best life" or "follow your bliss", because they only work if the big, bad, scary "U" on the inside is the kind of monster that other monsters get along with, and we humans are mostly social creatures. We're only thriving if we have trust and community to rest inside of, and for me, that person would be the first person voted off of every island, for no other reason than "we just kind of don't like him". This isn't an invitation for people to try to get to know me either. Every single person that I have let in has wished they stayed outside. We all have something wrong with us, sure, but for me, my defect is that I'm just not that likable. The real me doesn't deserve friends or companionship, but hopefully the me I wear everyday is at least tolerable.
As a parting note - I don't even think I know who the real me is anymore. I've buried, compartmentalized, neutered, and flattened all the parts of the real me that I possibly can. I probably haven't been the real me since maybe 2012, and seven years later I'm still trying to keep the rough edges sanded away enough to warrant others' sustained rapport, and the easiest way is to keep myself from persisting with people for too long.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to stop before you get sick of reading this.
Monday, January 28, 2019
'Where are my improvisers at, and what are ya'll doing?': Results of the 2018 Improv Census
In 2018, an improv census (hereafter referred to as “census” or “survey”) was conducted using Google Forms to administer, collect, and analyze data. The census was opened officially on July 22 2018, though there were two entries prior to this from trusted parties assisting in test driving the question set. The census was officially closed on January 5, 2019, though the last entry was made on September 5, 2018. The census’ original goal was to analyze two primary goals: 1) assess the demographics of the improviser(s) filling out the survey and 2) assess behaviors and preferences of serveyants.
In response to 1), the survey asked questions regarding age, education, city size, improviser role, style, length of improv tenure, amount of improv education, requirement to complete a training program to perform at a home theater, and existence of a sexual harassment policy at a home theater. In response to 2) respondents gave information about how often they were performing, rehearsing, learning, and watching improv as well as reasons for taking or not taking classes. An early draft of the questionnaire included a question regarding gender (male, female, prefer not to answer) for demographics purposes. This question was vetted through two individuals - a cis, straight, white male and a cis, queer, non-gender - though the latter thought the question was fine, objections by the former led to the removal of the question as the probative value of the demographic information was circumspect, and basically, not worth the trouble. A question regarding race was considered, but ultimately rejected on similar grounds.
The survey was not password protected, so it is entirely possible for respondents to complete the survey multiple times; additionally all information was collected anonymously, so all responses are considered as accurate as the individual(s) completing the survey. The survey was advertised using various Facebook improv groups including encouraging respondents to also invite friends, teammates, and fellow community members.
A total of 218 respondents completed the survey; the breakdown is as follows:
AGES
0% were less than 18, 5% were 18-24, 31.7% were 25-34, 32.6% were 35-44, 19.7% were 45-54, and 11% were 55 or older.
This is a reasonable cross-section of improviser ages, though in the opinion of this author, a greater than expected percentage of improvisers aged 45 and older is incredible, especially given complaints of ageism in certain improv communities. This makes the upper end very respectable in representation. The lack of under 18 improvisers likely reflects lack of access to these improvisers and/or their lower representation in Facebook groups and shifting cultural technology preferences.
CITY SIZE
17% of respondents were from cities >3 million in population (according to the most recent U.S. census data, defined as New York City (NYC) and Los Angeles, CA (LA)), 36.7% from cities 1-3 million in population (according to the US Census: Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas), 28.9% from cities 500 thousand to 1 million in population (examples provided: San Jose, Austin, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Detroit, Boston, Seattle, Denver), and 17.4% from cities less than 500 thousand (examples provided: Omaha, Raleigh, Miami, Cleveland, New Orleans). Overall, this is a decent spread through various community size; obviously city population does not directly correspond to “improv density” in any given community - for example Chicago probably has as many large improv “institutions” as does NYC or LA despite a population disparity; and Austin has more such “institutions” than San Diego, despite a inverse population proportion. The biggest deciding factors for community size are length of time since initial establishment and population and tastes/preferences of surrounding environment. (It is no surprise that communities that have a higher than average population of young, educated individuals with disposable income and free time are more likely to generate permanent communities in an artform that necessitates those attributes). Nevertheless, for a survey such as this, it ensures a fair representation of city size and gives an idea of what kinds of communities are being represented. One comment did note that the SF and San Jose cities have a lot of overlap, a factor which will need to be considered in future iterations for assessing “city size”.
EDUCATION
2.3% of respondents held a high school diploma (or equivalent) or had not yet done so, 13.8% had completed some college, 43.6% had a bachelor’s (or equivalent), 6.4% had completed some graduate work, 31.7% had a graduate or advanced degree, and 2.3 % had completed a non-college technical/trade certification. There are no real surprises in this data; certainly none that would dispel the image of the “default” improviser as a college educated, middle class white male.
The “high school” group was mostly older - typically 35-54, generally had been improvising for longer than 5 years, mostly saw less than 2 shows a month, typically played with 2 or more teams, uniformly had taken more than 100 hours of instruction, and generally pays more than $36 per workshop. The “trade” group was uniformly older - >35, has little festival participation, generally does not take classes due to time constraints, and typically plays on only one team. The “college group” almost uniformly plays at theaters with a sexual harassment policy, has (in almost all cases) been improvising for more than 2 years, about 50/50 does/does not do festivals, generally has taken more than 100 hours of instruction, and will almost certainly be taking class again next year (time being the biggest hurdle). The “graduate” group tends older, has been improvising for less time, shares a 50/50 festival attendance, either performs very regularly or very little, and will almost definitely be taking class next year. The “some college” group is a mixed bag, age-wise, forms the bulk of the staff respondents, sees a lot of shows each month, plays a lot, and is mostly interested in keeping skills sharp and learning new skills. The “some graduate” group is more interested in new schools and famous teachers and nearly uniformly plays at theaters with a sexual harassment policy. This last group has the fewest uniting factors of any other education group.
TIME IMPROVISING
0.5% of respondents have been improvising for less than 6 months, 1.8% for 6 months to 1 year, 10.6% 1-2 years, 13.3% 2-3 years, 15.1% 3-5 years, 27.5% 5-10 years, and 31.2% >10 years. The biggest discovery here is that in future surveys, the goal posts for each category should be moved to find a more probative selection criteria. There’s no real surprise that most improvisers have been improvising for a long time, especially among those that use Facebook to connect and collaborate with other improvisers.
ROLES
91.7% of respondents indicated that they are performers, 40.4% students, 39.9% teachers, 30.3% coaches, 22.5% theater front-of-house type staff, 14.2% theater artistic staff, and 5.5% theater owners. Overlap here is due to the fact that the survey permits multiple responses to this question, generating a number of “multi-hypenate” roles (performer-coach-owner).
SEEING SHOWS
13.8% of respondents do not see any shows in a typical month, 42.2% see 1 or 2, 29.8% see 3 or 4, 8.7% see 5 to 10, and 5.5% see more than 10. The “no show” group tends to be older (35 and up), tends to be educated, typically has been improvising for more than 3 years, either performs very little or a lot, has generally taken >100 hours of class, mostly takes classes for famous/reknowned people, and will either be taking a famous person’s class next year or will not be taking workshops. The “more than 10 group” tends a little younger, a little less time improvising, generally plays at multiple theaters, with multiple groups, almost blanket rehearses at least twice a month, and doesn’t really take a lot of classes.
FESTIVAL ATTENDANCE
36.9% of respondents do not do festivals, 48.4% do 1 or 2, 10.1% do 3 or 4, and 4.6% do 5 or more. The “no festival” group tends to not be a member of any teams and will generally be taking classes in any given year. The “five or more” group tends to be well educated, plays at multiple theaters and on multiple teams, has uniformly taken more than 100 hours of education, is very skill oriented for classes, and will definitely be taking classes next year. Unanalyzed in this survey is how many respondents currently have a festival located in or near their primary city of residence.
REHEARSING AND PERFORMING
63.4% rehearses at least twice a month, 19.9% doesn’t, and 16.7% is not a member of a team. 14.2% performs less than once a month on average, 32.6% performs once or twice, 28.4% performs 3-5 times, 21.1% performs 6-10 times, 3.7% performs 11 or more times. This latter group tends to only have a bachelor’s, has generally been improvising for less than 5 years, is definitely a festival goer and will definitely be taking classes.
10.1% of respondents do not currently perform (this mostly consists of staff and students), 43.6% play at one theater, 31.7% play at two, 9.6% play at three, and 5% at four or more. 17.6 % are not a member of any teams, 24.1% are a member of 1, 28.7% are a member of 2, 20.4% is a member of 3, 9.3% is a member of 4 or more. The “4 or more” group sees and plays a lot, and will almost definitely take classes, excepting time constraints.
TRAINING CENTER, SH POLICIES
62.8% of respondents play at a theater requiring completion of the training program to perform; 37.2% do not. 73.7% of respondents report that their home theater has a sexual harassment policy, 6% reply in the negative, and 20.3% are not sure or don’t know. 23.8% report that their home theater’s sexual harassment policy includes a 3rd party contact, 25.7% reply in the negative, and 50.5% are not sure or do not know. This is impressive and heartening to know that most theaters have adopted a policy regarding sexual behavior, which really should be considered industry standard at this point. The number that do not know is not surprising; even in communities with long term, well-established, and well-published programs there will always be those that “miss the memo”. Of course, some theaters may just not be making their policies a visible part of their indoctrination process. 3rd party contacts remain a minority procedure for theaters, owing to: lack of near universal/general adoption (what I think of as a domino effect), limited resources, insufficient community accountability (local pressure), or lack of “seeing the need”.
WORKSHOPS AND TRAINING
0.9% have taken less than 10 hours of training, 2.3% 11-20, 3.7% 21-40, 6.9% 41-60, 4.2% 61-100, and 72% more than 100 hours of training. This isn’t exactly surprising; given a 5-level, 8 week, 2 hour course, this “typical” training requires 80 hours of class time to complete (the current iO program requires 168 hours of class!). 100 hours could merely represent more than one training center completion, but which can also iinclude workshops, camps, intensives, weekends, and drop-ins. Future iterations will attempt to draw some of these boundaries better to be more probative and better sort responses.
0.9% of respondents will pay a maximum of $20 for a workshop, 8.7% $21-35, 20.6% 36-45, 29.4% $46-75, 19.7% $76-100, and 20.6% essentially have no upper limit. 14.7% typically pay <$20, 18.8% $21-35, 32.6% $36-45, 20.6% $46-75, 6.4% $76-100, and 6.9% >$100. Workshop pricing is, obviously, subject to local pricing ceilings reflecting the local economic environment of the city and the people improvising in it, in the same way that a cocktail in Omaha may cost $7 but a similar one in NYC may cost $20, as well as local flavor and history. A community that historically has paid little would likely have entrenched resistance to price bumps, unless outsize value (fame, time, exclusivity) was attached to it. It is also not unreasonable to assume that some people may have equated classes and workshops for the purpose of this question. The author is only aware a small handful of workshops that cost more than $100 per person.
Nonetheless, assuming the data is an accurate representation, the $100 group has some limited in common, excepting: they tend to be a multi-hyphenate performer, be more educated, to have taken more than 100 hours of class, and will be taking more class in the future.
12.8% of respondents did not take any class last year, 6% 1-4 hours, 11.9% 5-10 hours, 19.3% 11-20 hours, 18.8% 21-40 hours, 13.8% 41-75 hours, 7.8% 76-100 hours, and 9.6% more than 100 hours. 9.6% plan on taking no instruction next year, 9.6% 1-4 hours, 17.4% 5-10 hours, 20.2% 11-20 hours, 21.6% 21-40 hours, 11.5% 41-75 hours, 3.2% 76-100 hours, and 6.9% more than 100 hours. These divisions appear to adequately divide the group into manageable chunks. Generally, most people are planning on taking the same amount or more classes next year as they did last year, which may represent optimism, but is also reflective of the types of respondents who frequent Facebook groups; if you are the type of person going to those places, you’re also probably taking classes a lot.
For those that took classes last year, the primary reason was to keep skills sharp, followed, in order, by: learn from a famous teacher, learn a new skill, study at a new school, start improv training, and the class was offered for free. For those taking a class next year, the primary reason is to keep skills sharp, followed, in order, by: learn a new skill, learn from a famous teacher, study at a new school, social, and free class or new to improv (tie). What’s notable is how little social influences play in signing up for class, and how much the respondent group values skill honing.
For those not taking class next year, the primary reason is time constraint, followed, in order, by: price, lack of interest, and in a three-way tie, nothing new to learn, no teachers worth taking, or all available classes have already been taken. Notable is how much time and money are barriers to instruction, and perhaps a minority view of the lack of classes for people past a certain education point.
TYPES OF IMPROV
A question about types of improv done allowed the opportunity for free form typing, which was only included in-case there were some styles that were overlooked that were not easily classified as shortform, monoscene longform, traditional longform, musical, narrative, or deconstructive longform. This was, but bluntly, a nightmare. Despite there being a fairly broad categories represented, some improvisers just can’t resist wanting to be “different”. This category also allowed for some multiple check-boxing, meaning following totals will exceed %100
Narrative: 44.6%
Shortform: 41.3%
Traditional Longform: 70.5%
Music: 23.9%
Deconstructive: 34.9%
Monoscene: 30.3%
Notable additions that were utile and will be added to future lists (along with subsequent removal of “add whatever you want”): clown (1.5%) and corporate training (0.5%). Narrative is maybe the only surprise here for its prevalence, it is nice to see this type of improv well represented. The other entries all feel generally predictable.
COMPLAINT HANDLING
14.2% of respondents indicated that their home theater is “outstanding” at handling complaints/problems, 28.9% “good”, 21.1% “fair”, and 8.3% “poor”. The remainder say that they do not have an opinion and/or a home theater. No significant trends could be ascertained from the “poor” group. The “outstanding” group could only be relied on to have taken a lot of classes, continue to take classes, and to perform and see shows. It is doubtful that the cause/effect relationship would associate these factors.
ONGOING EDUCATION
When asked what the most important ongoing education topic is, respondents gave the following in descending order: diagnostics/toolbox/getting out of your head, scenework, emotion, acting, game, characters and form (tie), and directing/coaching. The option was also open to type in answers, notable ones in descending order: none/all (4), career/business/corporate (3), narrative (2), and bias/music/history (three-way tie). It is worth repeating that in 2018, among those who are regularly already taking classes (and have taken a lot of classes) that scenework and diagnostics are by far still seen as outstandingly critical subjects for ongoing education, in a category that often includes teachers and coaches, as well as staff, owners, performers, and students. Which part of the “chicken or egg” order remains to be seen.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
The author acknowledges that some comments indicated that some questions were difficult to answer, due either to limiting language, or limiting mental construction for what can be seen as a “western-centric” or “traditional” theater organization, with full knowledge that are probably as many ways for administering a theater culture as there are theaters.
At the end, respondents were given the opportunity to include comments of any kind, the most common refrain had to do with inclusion/diversity/representation of minorities, women, ages, and disabilities. This may be addressed in future iterations. Three other notable thoughts: how much experience should someone have before teaching, a lamentation that support has not followed onto social media, outside of just posting about shows, and why did you pick one school/why do you study at multiple schools? In the category of interesting questions to ask in the future: do you pay performers, how much do you charge audience members, and what is the primary obstacle keeping you from advancing in improv?
In general, this survey shows the utility of conducting such assessments of improviser demographics, behaviors, and reasoning in a manner that is inexpensive, easy to administer, and anonymous to respondents. The last reason is perhaps the most important in that it allows unfiltered and honest responses. The data collected, when properly categorized, can be helpful to owners, teachers, and plank holders when making administrative and logistical decisions that affect teams, theaters, and communities. Increased interest in what has become known as #metoo-related endeavors (i.e. sexual harassment policies, responses, and conduct) as well as inclusion and diversity remark on the possible need or at the very least significant import of having related data gathered on a large-scale and anonymous level.
Ultimately, the data is only as useful as it’s relative statistical significance, and future iterations (which will also help track trends) will need greater reach and response from other pockets of improvisers to help elucidate interests, desires, and representation among all improvisers, regardless of location, time spent, and role(s).
These results represent a good first step in quantifying improviser demographics and behaviors and are, to the author’s knowledge, the first such survey ever conducted of improvisers. Certainly improvisers are still active in performing and learning, but future surveys will be needed to track trends and evolution of improviser resources.
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