Graduation Shows

Ah, the graduation showcase: the time honored final send-off for the recent graduates of an improvisation training program. It’s kind of like prom for improvisers; everyone gets dressed up, really nervous, some people kind of don’t even want to do it, but in the end, you’re glad you went. Afterward, everyone shakes hands, high fives, takes pictures, and then hits the bar. These showcases offer a unique opportunity for an improviser’s friends and family to finally get to see what their junior improviser has been up to every week for a year. It also affords a special chance for the senior improvisers to see the new crop and start picking who will get picked to go on to the main stage.
It’s this last purpose that can make the graduation show one of the most emotionally wrenching times for the members of that class. Let’s face it: if you are even remotely interested in doing improv, then you are heavily invested in getting a spot on the main stage. Main stage means more practice time, stage time, prestige, and presumably the chance to hobnob with the experienced folks in hopes of teaming up with them. It’s usually seen as more than just a stepping stone: it can easily be the big “break” that leads to all sorts of stuff. And for this reason, your fellow classmates will gladly slit your throat if it means they get picked over you. (For a bunch of comedians, improvisers take this stuff very seriously.)
The iO (formerly Improv Olympic) shows have a big leg up on the local program in that there are multiple shows, instead of the one (Duhn, duhn, duhn). What’s strange is the kind of overnight kind of switch that occurs with your classmates; these are people you joked with after class, grabbed a beer with, saw improv shows with, but just as soon as the specter of getting picked for a team settles in, all bets are off. Suddenly everyone is only interested in performing the best show (which is often interpreted as “the kind of show that gets you noticed”). Suddenly this one show becomes the end all be all. I have provided the following time line to get you familiar with the insanity, which is primarily applicable to those who have eight weeks of shows:

1. Two weeks before your first show – there is a flurry of emails between the members of a group. Everyone is heatedly arguing for a coach, practice time, etc. and everyone just generally seems to have their panties in a bunch. Also, a group of people will want to go see the current round of graduation shows (“To see what to expect.”), and another will adamantly oppose seeing the show (“I don’t want to get distracted/nervous.”) You also discover that Gmail can actually keep an email string with 300 replies active. Those guys are amazing.
2. First two shows – people are exceedingly nervous about performing, mostly because they want to impress the people who will ultimately pick them for teams. After they get off stage, they realize that none of the people who are picking are even there. Strangely, no one seems nervous about performing in front of family and friends.
3. Third and fourth shows – these will be the worst two shows you will perform. The early excitement over performing has passed; everyone gets a little sloppy when they realized how good that other team is. Everyone seems to say “Why should we even bother? That whole other group is going to get picked!”
4. Fifth, sixth, and seventh shows – these are progressively the best shows you will ever do, as everyone is slowly finding their respective grooves, figuring out the games/forms, and actually starts to have a good time.
5. Eighth show – this will, contrary to logic, not be your best show. It will be sort of like your third best show. At this point, everyone has just kind of given up worrying about the whole damn thing, and is really just having a good time. Plus, everyone realizes this is the last time you will ever perform together (Expect lots of hugging, picture taking, and making plans to get together and practice). (Improvisers love making empty promises like these. It says something about our mindset that we do an art form that necessitates a non-planned, free-wheeling attitude. That is, we’re as a whole unmotivated.) Also, this is the show the recruiters are watching.
6. A Week-ish after your last show – you find out who gets picked, and who didn’t. Generally there are no surprises. You also discover that you still talk to the people you actually enjoyed improvising with, who may or may not have been the “best” ones in class.

Now, that all having been said, I did go to graduation show this week (and did see the recruiters sitting in the time-honored recruiter spot: the back row, with a clip board). The graduation show serves as an interesting case, though: it is a show after all, but then again it kind of isn’t. There are some people who will never make a team, some will move afterward to some other city, others may drop out entirely; but the real purpose of the graduation show is to give your friends and family an opportunity to come see what you’ve been doing – to watch you be funny, and put on a good show. The graduation show isn’t supposed to be groundbreaking; it’s supposed to be polished enough to feel good about and for all your friends to see just how freaking funny you are. A graduation show should be simple, because it’s easier to show off your talent that way. I make this last point because improvisers tend to overplay things when they’re trying to show off; they want to do the hardest form, the craziest games, and play everything hard core because they feel like they need to blow people away. (The lesson here: that never works.)
So, to my fellow graduates (and soon to be graduates): Enjoy yourself, ignore the man in the back row, play with abandon so your friends can laugh at you, and for god’s sake, give the emails a rest.

Improv Birthdays

I celebrated my birthday last week – now a semi-proud member of the late twenties crowd, I feel that my life has perhaps finally started taking off (or maybe that’s all the cake talking). Birthdays are fun because we place so much value on age; someone who is 50 is considered to be refined, whereas a 30 year old is considered to be struggling in adolescence, and a teenager is still seen as having “his whole life ahead of him”. Some of it is societal, you must be 16 to drive, 18 to vote, 21 to drink, but after 21 the years all kind of blend together – just a mesh of experiences with no real markers other than the ten divisible years. One of my coworkers has even taken to calling me “old Chris”, because I’m now 3 years older than her (for the next two weeks, anyway). Even she is bemoaning turning 24 (heaven forbid) because she sees 23 as the last year when nothing is really expected of you (this coming from a Master’s graduate with a husband, a three-year-old (ages again!), and a mortgage).

But what’s great about birthdays is everyone celebrating not only reaching that next mile marker (level sounds a little too D&D), but also celebrating what you have accomplished, and what you will accomplish. I have noticed however, that improv is quite the opposite. As improvisers we tend to be a little myopic about our own accomplishments. We only see how far we still have to go, instead of how far we have come. (On the other hand, improvisers tend to gladly celebrate the accomplishments of others. I guess that makes us the most complimentary group on the planet, right?)

Bill Arnett has already written a fantastic essay which I will only link to here (http://blogs.iochicago.net/bill/wordpress/p?=38), where he talks about how we mature as improvisers. (I feel I must link over to Bill’s stuff every once in a while, a) for being one of the largest influences on my improv philosophy, b) for being so damn smart, and c) for putting up with my constant pestering in what has rapidly become a J.D./Coxian a la “Scrubs” dynamic.) But what I think is important is that Bill even has to smooth some feathers over, because as students and performers of improv, we lose sight of what we’re doing and get bogged down in the tedium of mastering the craft.

I never hear anyone talk about how much they’ve improved, only what could have been done better. And while I am a big proponent of pushing yourselves, it’s also important to step back every once in a while and remember just how good you’re doing things. And this is why, this September, I plan on celebrating my improv birthday. I want to celebrate just how much better I am than when I started back in 2003, I want to celebrate the good scenes I’ve had, and every single good friend I have made while doing improv. I choose to celebrate because I want to proud of the work I’ve done up to this point. Were there bad scenes? Sure. But I had a lot of fun, and I really hope that if you’re improvising that you’re having fun too. The only unfortunate part is, I can’t remember the exact day that started doing improv (it was sometime in early September, this much I know for sure), but I want everyone else to think back to the first time they stepped on stage and became the Pillsbury Doughboy (my first scene ever; a game of “Party Quirks”).

So my experiment for everyone is this: figure out what your improv birthday is, and celebrate the shit out of it. I will be six improv years old this year, and by god I want to see what I’ll be like when I can finally take the car out of the driveway.