Patience and Spontaneity

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Almost without argument, one could say that the heart of improvisation is in spontaneity; by it's very definition, improv is merely theater that is performed without a script, therefore, to paraphrase Huey Lewis (and the News), the “Heart of improv is still unplanned.” That's just the name of the game, as soon as you start planning stuff, and honestly trying to achieve what you've planned, it's no longer improvised theater, it's just plain theater. Improv teachers go to great lengths to achieve spontaneity and true artistic inspiration (because this is what improv really boils down to – you can do anything you want, so you need to be free to do anything you want.) Most of what is done, especially to beginning improvisers, is in the name of speed: Story, Story (Die), Dirty Hand Randy, New Choice, etc. are probably some of the most truly improvised games (at least in the short form sphere) because they are intended to move so quickly that the player doesn't have time to plan. You either just let your brain run wild and with abandon, or you get left behind.

The problem with this is it is essentially a crutch we hand to people: just move quickly and it will be improvised. The problem here is that experienced players don't need that crutch anymore – they are capable of stepping on stage and acting without thinking or pre-planning, only they have been trained such that they will step on stage and run so quickly through even the most complicated transactions that they don't really improvise any more. Generally speaking, this kind of speed is okay in the slam, bam, thank you ma'am world that is shortform, where the emphasis is not on artistic exploration but on entertainment, and where that kind of energetic, fast-paced scene work thrives especially well in “games”. But as you move into long form (where you do a scene that may last three minutes still, but you may have to come back to, or make run an entire thirty minutes (I've seen it done, nonbelievers)) that no longer has the gimmicks (or referee or MC to bail you out) that kind of speed works to your detriment.

Longform requires more patient, discovery-based improv, and as my mother and I can attest, you just can't enjoy the sights when Dad is driving past them at 70 miles per hour (a condition which I now believe may be genetic – sorry passengers). Give a group of new-to-longform improvisers a scenario (any scenario really), and they will be done with it in a blink. Give the same scenario to experienced improvisers, and they will take their time exploring every single, tiny moment, and not just tediously waiting for the next big thing to happen, but really enjoying themselves in the pace of normal life. This is where really improvisation lies: moving slow enough that you can actually enjoy and discover things about your partner, scene objects, or environment. A shortform improviser flows from his head, while a longform improviser flows from everything.

I saw some improv last weekend that definitely fits this bill: no one would argue that these were energetic improvisers, capable of editing with abandon, and fast, too. In thirty minutes they probably did 20 independent scenes, but it wasn't entertaining. Sure, the dialog was improvised (at least I hope it was, scenework that bad had better not been written out ahead of time and approved) but it was just manic (well that and nobody was working together, but that's a subject for a different essay all together). My point is this: scenes don't have to fly by and ninety eleven miles an hour to be interesting or even improvised. The easiest way to get yourself out of a “pre-thinking” mode is to truly focus on only the last thing that was said. All improv really should be is a series of reactions to different stimulus, just true, honest reactions. And that's the whole point of using speed as a training tool in the first place. Quick thinking, and just react. And don't rush, or you'll miss all that pretty scenery.

National Treasure

 Back in 2004, I used to write movie reviews for the USM student newspaper, the "Student Printz". Because I occasionally feel lazy, and it seems a shame that all of five people ever read these, I've decided to repost them here, in the original versions that I emailed to my editor, Noel, all those years ago.
At some point, the “green-lighters” in Hollywood will have to figure out that having Jerry Bruckheimer as a producer is not a sure-fire way to make a good movie. For example, “Coyote Ugly” – mediocre, “Pearl Harbor” – mediocre, “Pirates of the Caribbean” – excellent, and “National Treasure” – mediocre. “National Treasure” is like a distilled “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, such that the entertainment is watered down and the history concentrated for effect. Obviously built on the well tried formula for a family movie, “National Treasure” succeeds only as far as this formula will go, which means a few laughs, some mindless chase scenes, and a long, drawn out history lesson.

The movie is about Benjamin Franklin Gates (Nicholas Cage), the current descendent of the family Gates, which for the last 180 years has been searching for a treasure that was buried by our forefathers during the American Revolution. The treasure was started during the time of the Egyptian Empire, and as time progressed, the treasure was captured by different groups and expanded upon until the Knights Templar discovered it. This order slowly smuggled it over to the New World, where the Free Masons hid it from the British until such a time that it could be given to the entire world. But Gate’s former partner, Ian Howe (Sean Bean), intends to take the treasure for himself. Gate’s only option is to try and beat Howe to the treasure with the help of his nerdy sidekick Riley Poole (Justin Bartha) and a National Archives curator, Dr. Abigail Chase (Diane Kruger).

Now, I will even go on record to say when I first saw the trailers for this movie, I was groaning at the thought of a pitiful quasi-“Indiana Jones” movie. Even though that’s pretty much all that was accomplished, I was surprised to find that “National Treasure” was not as god awful as I previously took it for. Granted, the movie should have been wrapped up in ninety minutes instead of 120+ and nearly every plot twist is either to match the formula for an action movie or to prevent making the movie a history channel special on early American History. Regardless, Sean Bean and Harvey Keitel (as an FBI agent) are excellent, even in this cut and dry script and the rapport between Gates and Riley is often the only entertaining dialogue on camera. And in what was probably a last minute script change, the final treasure changes from “believing in your dreams” to some actual gold. If they hadn’t changed this part of the script, the corny factor would have shot through the roof and made the movie unbearable.

Provided you don’t mind the formula of the action movie, chances are you’ll really enjoy “National Treasure”. Sure the entertainment is mindless and the plot just a yard short of ludicrous, but when did that ever stop a movie from being worth a watch? “National Treasure” is entertaining enough, and if you just sit back and relax, you just might learn something.

Long and Short

I love shortform versus longform arguments – they usually fall down along these lines: shortform is popular, but shallow and hokey, and longform is more complex, but elitist and condescending. My friend has a great analogy that I'm going to invoke here, which is that shortform is like Lady Gaga, and longform is like Miles Davis. Now Lady Gaga (or really any large-scale, arena rock, top 40 artist) is “quick, fun, and the masses love it”. Lady Gaga is a far-out character in her own right, she has, it can be argued, built a majority of her following on her ostentatious and outrageous approach to fashion and self. (Fine, complain about the inherent chauvinism in that sentence if you must, but Gaga has built an empire on being a strange weirdo as much as Katy Perry has on being the bubble-gum girl next door, or any rapper in history has on being a from-the-hood “gangsta”.) Gaga's music (like Perry or Kings of Leon, et al) is not complex – it is fairly derivative and repetitive, but damn if it isn't catchy (I spent the better part of a week in a waiting room for a court case the summer that “California Girls” hit big, and damned if I didn't hear Perry crooning about melting Popsicles once an hour, and still enjoyed it.)

Now, the converse is that longform is more like Miles; its “complex, difficult, and there are a lot of people that can't appreciate it.” Miles probably never wanted (or intended) to create art that stood on the shoulders of his own persona, and probably just wanted the music to stand on its own. But his (very valid) point is that longform has (at the very least) the perception of being kind of art for art's sake. In another word: masturbatory. I've spent a number of nights in longform shows where I'd wager somewhere between 25-50% of the audience was other improvisers, or improv students. (At some shows, it may be even higher.) I've also spent nights in shortform shows that were completely occupied by people who weren't just non-improvisers, but had never been to any improv show before. Miles Davis' Kind of Blue (the best selling jazz album of all time) has only sold 4 million copies, whereas Gaga's The Fame has sold over 12 million, Kings of Leon's Only by the Night has sold 6.2 million, and Katy Perry's Teenage Dream has sold 5.5 million, in addition to 30 million copies just for the singles (outside of album sales), and is only the second artist in history to have an album spawn five singles (behind Michael Jackson).

Now the argument of Gaga v Davis is a (unfortunately) very manifest one, which is that longform tends to be a little self-obsessed. Self-important, even. Some of the more well-known longforms are very artistic, can be very “modal jazz”, obtuse, and self-aggrandizing, such as the Harold, which is such a dense form, that it is surprising that anyone ever does it well. But to make the assumption that all longform is weird and onanistic is to miss the point of longform – it is not impenetrable by nature, but by nurture. Longform is more complex than shortform, both for players and audience, and can be quite difficult, but can also be very deep, meaningful, and painfully entertaining. I have seen countless shortform shows that are just as self-important, self-aggrandizing, boring, and dense as I have longform shows – it's not the form that makes the show, it is always the improviser that makes the show. If you have elitist, vapid, and over-wrought players, you're going to have an elitist, vapid, and over-wrought show, regardless of whether you're doing “Freeze Tag” or the “Three Mad Rituals”.

Now, let's go back to music briefly. Fine, Gaga outsold Davis by 8 million copies, even with Blue having a 50 year head start. But let's compare: remember those numbers above for a bunch of the current big artists? Well, they don't even score on the list of the best selling albums – Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon is considered one of the best albums ever made, and has sold a whopping 50 million copies world wide, and is the second best selling album of all time (behind MJ's Thriller). And Moon is no Fame – it is very artistic, groundbreaking in sound design as well as songwriting, uses interview clips to break up songs, and is a dense (and also entertaining) album, yet still outsold Gaga more than 4 times over.

This tells me that audience's don't care about art/entertainment so much; “I may not know much about art, but I know what I like”. Sure, you may get some people who'd prefer to watch a few games than invest in a whole involved piece, but the fact remains that well-executed trumps for-the-masses every time. Look at movies like Kazaam to see something that was intended to be easily accessible, lowest common denominator popcorn fare, and is universally reviled. (As a fun project, go look at the lowest scored films on Metacritic, and, sure, you'll see Date Movie, but you'll also see Adventures of Pluto Nash (with Eddie freakin' Murphy), which also has the dishonor of being one the biggest flops in movie history. That list is a veritable rouge's gallery of cinematic failure in commercial film-making aspirations.) It is not by virtue of the medium, but the artist that makes the art impossible to watch.

The Grudge

Back in 2004, I used to write movie reviews for the USM student newspaper, the "Student Printz". Because I occasionally feel lazy, and it seems a shame that all of five people ever read these, I've decided to repost them here, in the original versions that I emailed to my editor, Noel, all those years ago. 
Horror long ago became the bastard child of cinema: the desire to make truly frightening movies like the original “Night of the Living Dead” or “Psycho” is consistently traded off to put together movies that are designed to just jump out at you to scare you. Indeed, it seems that moviegoers are almost masochistic; these types of horror movies do surprisingly well in the box office and Hollywood does not hesitate to keep coming up with new ways of saying ‘Boo!’ “The Grudge”, the newest such entry into the fraternity of scary movies is certainly no exception. Without a doubt “The Grudge” will succeed in making most people jump, but it really just falls short of being truly frightening.

“The Grudge” follows the story of Karen Davis (Sarah Michelle Gellar), an American social worker living with her boyfriend in Tokyo. When one of her coworkers fails to show up for work, Karen is asked to cover her patient for a day. Karen arrives at the house only to find her patient all alone and the house in a complete state of disarray. She is hardly in the house for more than an hour before she hears strange noises coming from a taped up closet in the house. She opens the closet only to find a little boy, a book and a black cat. She’s manages just another few minutes before she runs into something far scarier than a spooky little boy: a ghost composed of enough hair to clog a manhole cover. Her brush with the ghost prompts Karen to unravel the mystery behind the strange occurrences in the house.

The story is told in a nonlinear style, not so much to give us new or necessary information or help advance the plot, but instead just to provide more opportunities for ghosts to kill people in different ways. Among the many victims in the movie are the couple who purchased the house, the patient’s daughter, and a police officer trying to find out how three of his partners died while investigating a murder in the house. The only story necessary to the plot is the one involving Peter (Bill Pullman), who is directly tied to the formation of the curse, and is the only one who doesn’t die from the “grudge”. The movie is a bit of an oddity: being based on a Japanese movie is pretty standard, but this is the first one to be directed by the same director from the original, Takashi Shimizu.

“The Grudge” has all the familiar horror conventions and enough of them to make the movie pretty scary: plenty of dark rooms, corners for ghosts to hide behind, and enough ghost fodder who are more than eager to go investigating strange noises. Japanese ghosts are nothing if convenient though: they call you on the phone to let you know they’re coming, they visit you at your workplace, and they even stash bodies in the attic for the police to find. Though the plot tends to drag in a few places, the scary and spooky events are paced well enough to at least keep you entertained.

“The Grudge” succeeds rather well as your typical October scare fest, but more than likely no one will remember it when they’re making their movie list next Halloween. Once you figure out how it’s pulling your strings, it loses its potency dramatically. If you’re in the mood for a good scare this October, “The Grudge” should meet your needs sufficiently, just don’t plan on being honestly frightened.

I Hate Improv Class

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(Author's note: I wrote this essay around February 2009.)

Since moving to San Diego, my once weekly fix of improv with my long form group has yet to fully satiate my improv hunger. I decided to sign up for classes at the local improv house. It's a short-form in the style of Comedy Sports kind of place, and even though I don't particularly want to do that kind of 'prov again, I was so hungry to do some improv, any improv, I was willing to go back to “class one” again. Additionally, I'm hoping that I can get a place performing at the theater regularly when it's all over with, and get some stage time and start building a group of improv friends to hang out with. (What can I say? I'm lonely.)

I signed up for classes no problem (though, to my surprise, almost the same price as a session of classes at the iO in Chicago, and only six weeks instead of eight), and as I was driving to the theater, I noted a distinct knot in my stomach. I was nervous. I was dreading going to class - I was honestly afraid of getting up on stage and making a damn fool out of myself. Now, I have never been afraid on stage. I have proudly stepped on to many stages and have been animals, people getting sexually molested, doing the sexual molestation, and inanimate objects (that are being used for sexual molestation). But this class, and as a matter of fact, every single class or workshop I have ever taken, I feel nervous right before the first one. I am constantly afraid that this class is the one where I will completely screw up, and no one will ever want to improvise with me ever again. And, I would argue that this nervous feeling has gotten worse the longer I've been doing improv.

While most people would say that after they've been doing it longer, they've gotten more comfortable because they're more experienced. For me though, I feel that the longer I've been doing improv, the less of an excuse for screwing up I have. When I took my first class at the iO in Chicago, I was bold as hell (probably too much, my teacher Andy had me rope it in a little bit) because at that point I could have screwed up, and just said: "Oh well, I've only done improv at college". Now though, if I screw up, people can only say: "I thought this guy did improv in Chicago!"

A failure on stage is almost always the result of no support, etc. But I can't fault new players for messing up. A flub now will definitely support the theory that I have no business doing this. As a result, I find myself working ten times as hard for everything, just to keep my head above water (it also doesn’t help that I’m a bit of a perfectionist, and I’ve only liked maybe 5% of all the improv I’ve ever done). I feel the need, the absolute life-ending need, to prove myself every time I’m around a new group, and especially a new teacher/coach. I hate improv class for the exact opposite reason that people take classes: wanting to prove that I’m good enough. I’m a student! Shouldn’t I feel comfortable enough to make mistakes in class?

Unfortunately, I now wear my Chicago improv tutelage like a weight around my neck.

The Summer

 

Back in 2004, I used to write movie reviews for the USM student newspaper, the "Student Printz". Because I occasionally feel lazy, and it seems a shame that all of five people ever read these, I've decided to repost them here, in the original versions that I emailed to my editor, Noel, all those years ago. 

Though Hollywood is not known for consistently releasing good movies, most visitors of the Cineplex can at least look forward to the summer movie crop for some big budget, special effects-ridden movies to break the summer heat. Usually, even with a big budget, the movies can actually surpass the “eye candy” mark: the summer is where we got movies like Back to the Future, Star Wars, American Pie, Men in Black, Spider-Man and Raiders of the Lost Ark. But this summer, we were instead treated to not just a few, but an entire slew of empty Hollywood spectacles. While copious special effects can still leave an amazing movie (a la The Matrix), there comes a point when you need some meat with your popcorn.

For example, the summer opener, Van Helsing was little more than 2 hours of loosely strung together special effects and a hefty price tag ($175 million). The acting was mediocre to bad, and the plot was so bad that it seemed to have been written over a few hours. Two weeks later was the even larger budgeted Troy, starring Brad Pitt and Eric Bana, which was without a doubt modern cinema at its worst. First, you have really neat characters, with long, well explained back stories, then set them in a really neat story, and two and a half hours later, all you’ve done is a few short action sequences. With everything the movie had going for it, they ended up saying absolutely nothing, and doing next to nothing.

Of all the special effects extravaganzas, The Day After Tomorrow was without a doubt the most enjoyable, yet still ended up being very disappointing. Directed by Roland Emmerich (of Independence Day), the movie details the events of a storm spanning the entire globe, therefore requiring special effects for nearly half the movie (and not always good FX either). The characters were fun to watch and the plot was interesting, but the movie was so similar to Independence Day that it seemed as though we weren’t seeing anything new.

Perhaps the worst movie all this summer was Catwoman, which was basically a ninety minute movie whose sole merit was a scantily clad woman (in fact a male body double). The film showed complete ignorance of the source material (that is the DC comic character Catwoman). The director had the absolute brilliance to use the exact same song anytime Catwoman was about to do anything and make sure that Halle Berry wore the most form-fitting outfit for no particular reason. The real down side is that Berry was actually played a man (not kidding) during all the action and fight scenes.

The big word to sum up this summer at the movies would be disappointment. Though Hollywood did deliver with a few good movies we were all looking forward to (like Shrek 2 and Spiderman 2), nearly everything else from start to finish fit in the apparent summer movie theme of lackluster entertainment. This summer’s movies were almost all big budget special effects let downs, unoriginal adaptations and astonishingly unfunny, lame “comedies”. Though we can’t expect Hollywood to deliver funny, entertaining, special effects blockbusters all the time, summers like the past one remind audiences just how bad Hollywood can be.

The Worst Show

(Author's note: I originally wrote this article in August 2008.)

I recently had a very bad show. Bad and then some. And excuse the hyperbole, but it was quite possibly the worst show I have ever been a part of, which is saying something. What went wrong in this show, you ask? Well, what can go wrong in any show? People not listening to each other, ambiguous people, relationships, and locations, focus issues, low energy, direct and indirect denials, and an all around lack of playfulness. That this show was an iO graduation show, and that it is supposed to showcase everything we have learned in the last year (improv-wise) is itself perhaps telling.

Of course, the only thing worse than a truly horrendous show, is the backlash immediately after it. Because while a horrid (I will, in fact, use every synonym for bad I can think of) show lasts only twenty five minutes (despite the fact that it feels longer), the ripples of it can last much, much longer. This was one of those shows that everyone just sort of hangs their heads afterwards, and one that everyone knows was just bad. Even that one guy in every group who can find something positive about nearly every show (it's usually me). A show so atrocious that everyone immediately starts trying to come up with ways to fix it.
Let's run through the usual list: switch coaches, find a new practice time, required "hang-out/non-improv" time to achieve group trust/synergy, radical form changes, and a list of basics/guidelines/fundamentals/rules/commandments for what will make good shows.

It's interesting to point out that improv groups are much like bureaucracies: they are always fighting the battle they just lost.

This brings me to my point, and one that is especially resonant given that just seven days earlier, we had what was probably one of the best shows I had ever been in. Improvisation is a risky business. Perhaps the riskiest. Nothing is guaranteed, and every time you step on stage, you could easily be stepping on to your worst show, ever. Improvisers constantly tout that their artform is the purest, and the most interesting, because anything can happen. This is true, but to paraphrase a great scientist, the door swings both ways. This is the lure of the unknown, and the reason why improv is so interesting. Shows can be transcendental, entertaining, and intriguing.

They can also be boring, mind numbing, and unwatchable.

To paraphrase someone else, we deal in the unknown, friend. This is our business, and it is challenging, unique, and unpredictable by its very nature. We love it for the same reason we hate it.

So how do we deal with shows then? Can we do all the things mentioned above, and achieve success? Sure.

Can we not do any of the things mentioned above, and achieve success? Why not?

Sometimes we just have bad nights, things don't click, a smidgen of anxiety or apprehension slow a show down, and things just go awry. Not anyone's fault; just the name of the game.  When these shows come along (and they will) the only thing you can do is just keep on truckin'. Learn from your mistakes, keep working hard, and don't get too down.

Relax; after all, it can't get worse than rock bottom, right?

The Rule Breakers

When I was in high school, I tried out for the part of drum major for the band, which was an altogether fun experience – I didn’t get it, but it was fun nonetheless. One of the things I learned for the tryouts was how to spin a mace. A mace, for the uninitiated, is the long pole, about five feet in length, with a large silver orb on the top of it. The mace is largely ceremonial, probably its only original purpose was to be a shiny object sticking above a marching formation so that the members can keep rhythm. Somewhere along the way though, some drum major got tired of just holding this thing, and after probably attempting to use it as a sword, decided to start spinning the thing around. Modern drum majors will almost always be seen spinning this ungainly monster of a baton (or sometimes two) causing it to dance, spin, and fly through the air to the delight of the crowd.

The band director who was showing how to do mace-work (his term) explained that there are two approaches to mace spinning: an east coast and a west coast. The east coast, he explained, was all about performing the mace-work with ultimate precision; every single move should be text-book perfection according to the east coasters. The west coast he summed up with a simple mantra: “Hey, check out what I can do.” The west coast wasn’t concerned with doing things according to any “official” pattern; instead they did their mace-work for fanfare and showmanship (and a heavy dose of one-upmanship). In other words, do things so unbelievable that no one else can copy you. The east coast was like a game of Horse, and the west coast was an “And 1” tape. It wasn’t until I was in college that I realized that this didn’t just apply to mace-work, but to everything – music, food, scholarly pursuits. Maybe it’s the weather.

In improv there is still those two different rules of thought, what I like to think of as the rule-followers and the rule breakers. A rule follower is always trying to improve upon an idea: that form worked mostly, except for this, so let’s fix that for next time, or that didn't work at all, let's scrap the whole thing and go in a new direction. Followers are about form and technique, so they focus on drilling basics and fundamentals and attempting to follow the rules. These would be the same rules that were published in “Truth in Comedy” many, many years ago and have since become more of a burden on the improv world than they’ve helped. Mick Napier denounced them in “Improvise”, and there are even rumblings all throughout the iO that the rules are not all they’re cracked up to be. The problem? The rules are largely negative in their wording (e.g. “Never ask questions!”) and they make improvisers think too much. “Oh, am I doing this right?” “Is this following the rules enough?” Give a man a rule, and he will do his best to follow it.

Except of course, for the breakers. Rule breakers cast aside simple notions like classes, workshops, and improv books in favor of a more customized approach: “Watch what I can do.” Even the greatest improv teacher in the world can only take you so far and at some point you have to be ready to come to a Zen level of connectedness with form, technique, and structure. At risk of sounding any more western (or Californian, heaven forbid) a “one-ness”. All improvisers are, for lack of a better term, artists, as the outcomes on stage are the result of our unified point-of-view and interpretation of the world around us.

The rules do have their place; they are the foundation for a basic appreciation and understanding of the art – but don’t be afraid to spin improv in your own way and maybe show it off, all the while screaming: “I dare you to follow me!”

The Chi-Connection

I don't think I need to tell you this Chicago is at the very least, one of the undisputed, reigning champions for improv. This isn't to discount what's going on in various other ports of call – every city I've visited has at least a couple of people doing great, challenging work – but I think everyone can agree that Chicago is the epicenter of what's going on. Now I'm an outed, unabashed Chicago-phile, and a lot of people may think that's just a strange knee-jerk reaction to this mecca of improvisation. This is not the case however, and my reasons for loving Chicago improv is also the reason that I love a lot of other place's improvs, but also one of the reasons that San Diego has been a troubling, frustrating city to do improv in.

Now a little background: when I was in Chi-town doing improv, I was also going to grad school at the same time. These two educations I was receiving simultaneously is, hyperbole aside, probably the single most important thing that has ever happened to me in my life. What was great about both of those schools is that while we did focus on specifics needed in each basic education, both had teachers that encouraged and espoused critical, independent thinking. It is not merely enough to teach students what is now – we must also teach them how to find the next what is. In grad school, emphasis was placed on analyzing problems and errors in judgment, or science, or ethics (or sometimes all three) and thinking about what they mean in the bigger picture, and my improv education taught analysis, creativity, self-reliance (and how to intersect all three). What I got out of the combined experience was the capacity to reason independently. I've found this exceedingly important as I remember a lesson my high school science teacher taught: there are two types of people who will not excel in this world, those who can't follow instructions, and those who can only follow instructions.

San Diego has been a tremendously frustrating city because the majority of the improvisers “in power” have no interest in innovation, and actively discourage other improvisers from independent work. An actual lesson that one of these teachers gave: some people try to continue doing improv outside of the theater after completing workshops, but no one ever finds any success, so don't even bother trying.

(While we're on this subject, two actual things I have been castigated and admonished for: “doing other projects”, and “motivating and inspiring players” (direct quotes). The first is because that theater doesn't endorse anyone else doing anything not within its own walls, and because they don't trust players who may have questionable allegiances, whatever that means (and also because you're trading on the implied authority of the first theater in other projects). The second is because, as it was explained to me, when I started doing longform in the SD, I motivated and inspired a lot of these previously shortform only improvisers into wanting to do more longform. That however came at a cost, as those players were now skipping regular rehearsals and showing up for shows tired due to conflicting interests with their other projects. Neither of these things are made up, because no one could make up that kind of logic.)

Now if a particular theater wants to run itself like the KGB, stamping out perceived enemies of the state who just want to do more improv, there's not much anyone can do to stop them, but I can still object to the attitude they take, especially towards younger, newer improvisers. This kind of discouraging, negative, and selfish view towards the craft stifles creativity, originality, and invention, not to mention breeding bitterness and animosity. As teachers, we have an obligation to encourage and engender improvisers to find and embrace the cutting edge. Teachers in Chi/LA/NY don't take a “go away, this is mine” mentality, they understand that the craft is more important than the individual (and also if you're good, you don't need to be defensive) but also that the next generation of improvisers are the ones who will solve the next piece of the puzzle. Try new things, see what works and what doesn't, build on what's been previously discovered, and add your contribution to the growing archive of knowledge – that's what science has done, and that's what most improvisers have done too.

If we are not teaching and – dare I say – inspiring and motivating our students and fellow players into pursuing more work, we are doing a grave disservice to them, not just as improvisers, but as teachers and human beings too. We are gravely failing our charges by not promoting independent work. Self-reliance and independence are noble character traits, not criminal trespasses.

(And to the teacher and coach who told me to not bother trying, the group I started just celebrated it's fourth year.)

I Do

I originally wanted to write a column about “improv coach pet peeves” (which is a topic I may still write about later), but everyone I talked to pretty much gave the same general answer as the biggest irritation in coaching a group – a flightiness, or lack of commitment to a group. Now one of the reasons that I'm hesitant to write about what makes coaches upset is that it's not a very “nice” topic, one that may put improvisers in a defensive or upsetting space in regards to the team/coach relationship, but I have noticed that that same pet peeve is actually quite common among team-mates and not just from coaches or directors, which makes me think it's something that bothers all improvisers, be it your peers or otherwise.

I was listening to an “Improv Obsession” podcast recently with Jimmy Carrane (who also hosts the “Improv Nerd” podcast and wrote “Improvising Better”) and the interview turned at length to the state of commitment when it comes to teams. The issue is the “over-commitment” of players to many teams, to the point where they may be doing improv multiple days a week, sometimes multiple times a day. The issue comes from an over-extension to multiple groups and a dilution of the time spent doing non-improv to inspire scenes. Jimmy invokes the venerable UCB as an example of a team that made the decision to move to New York as a team, and constantly renew their commitment to each other and the work their team was doing, generally really doubling down on their own work, and mourns the fact that he doesn't see another team capable of reaching those heights. I see a lot of passion in my fellow improvisers, folks who drive four hours on a weekday to watch improv in LA, who buy every book, take every workshop, people who I'm not even sure have real jobs, but I have to agree that while our passion is enormous, it's also a little crazy. We love improv something fierce for sure, but if improv was a woman, we don't marry that girl, we instead try to impetuously pick up every single woman we see.

Any discussion of commitment when it comes to an extracurricular activity is always couched in a very delicate territory. For nearly all improvisers, the player is making a balance between improv and other elements in their life such as family, work, and health, and those things generally do (and necessarily should) remain a higher priority. As such, conversations about it can be touchy in some cases, but it should also be noted that what we're talking about here is less about “can someone make time for improv” and more about “why is our attention so divided”. (Although I do notice that groups tend to be more accommodating to those who can't seem to find time over those that take their improv pursuits seriously. Let's meditate on that.) I find however, that those two elements are quite intertwined – two sides of the same coin. They all boil down to the fact that there are so many hours in the day (and in our lives), so how do we prioritize? And more importantly, why can't we settle down?

1. We'll start with a fairly non-toxic idea, and that is that improvisers have fairly broad interests, and we may need multiple groups to fulfill some of those needs. For example, not every improviser is into improv musical stuff, so some players need that team as an outlet that others won't. Conversely, people in an improv musical group probably just want to do musicals, and may not be the best fit for some slow, two person mono-scenes (not to mention cast size constraints). So very simply, having a couple of groups to have different ways of working the muscles doesn't seem so bad, akin to using different equipment at the gym.
2. The most obvious reason to me is a relatively new term “Fear of Missing Out” (FOMO), and its a fairly new idea – the product of being overly connected with Facebook and Twitter and the fact that generally the only things posted are good news. As a result, it can leave a feeling that everyone is always having a better time than you. (If you hadn't heard the term before but have experienced it, doesn't having a name for it make it feel less “bad”?) I do think that a lurking sense of FOMO makes improvisers feel that they need to do everything, because they don't want to miss out on some great playing opportunity. Related to this is a “don't put all your eggs in one basket” mentality. A lot of players I know wouldn't commit to one group, because they don't want to invest everything if there's a possibility it won't work out. Together they reflect the same issue: it's easier to live a life of disappointment (in that you may never have a successful team) than to risk it on a single bet. Unfortunately, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: the less likely team members invest in their group, the more likely the group won't succeed.
3. There's also an issue with vulnerability – it's no surprise to anyone at this point that more meaningful scene work requires a degree of acting, which requires a degree of vulnerability. A raw, tapping of the emotion is needed to create something more than “Five Things”. The high bar we aim for when we shoot for “improvised theater” requires brutal honesty. Now, we're aware of that, and that it's necessary, but we're attempting to shortcut the process. Instead of opening ourselves up in one place and really baring ourselves to one group of people, we diversify our investment in multiple groups, thinking that we won't have to reveal so much of ourselves (which is scary) while still increasing our skill.
4. In this “golden age of improv”, one would think that a lot of people take the craft very seriously, but this is not always the case. Sure there are those who view improv as just a hobby – a fun thing to do every once in a while, and not one to relentlessly strive for. And it is easy for those people to get swept up in the jet-wash of more passionate players. But even among people who seem to indicate strongly that they are interested and enthusiastic players, I find players who don't seem to think that rehearsals are important. Improv is intoxicatingly deceptive in its simplicity – it can seem so easy to do, but is exceedingly challenging to do well. If you have players that won't acknowledge that, then those same players will constantly put other activities over practices (and sometimes shows, if those shows are seen as less urgent). One other thing is at play here, and that is the issue of pay. I think we all realize that you don't make money doing improv, very few do; we do improv because we love to do it, and we are always in relentless pursuit of the craft. Nonetheless, I (quite recently) had a player who claimed that because we weren't paying her, we were a low priority. Unfortunate. A passion and an attitude of cheerful service can't be taught and if players don't have it, we just have to keep lighting the way and hope they find it.
5. We all want roughly the same thing out of improv, be it to be the next Bill Murray or Chris Farley, get on SNL or movies, or become the next TJ & Dave, it all boils down to wanting to become comedic actors, and ones that hopefully get paid for what they do, or at the very least respected for their accomplishments. I think that is a powerful motivator, we know what the objective is, and we want to get there already. We have a goal, and we are always desperately scratching at that objective. This is endemic to our culture here in the U.S., where we have over-glorified the idea of “busy”. We canonize the productive, and especially those who are productive at an early age. As a result, we don't enjoy the ride of learning (and living), we just grumble that we haven't reached the finish line already. And resultingly, and not surprisingly, the effect is that we have a tendency to sell each other out at any moment for individual gain. A show or group comes along that has more clout, and players jump ship in an instant in the constant pursuit of fame or notoriety.
6. That people are kind of scattered shouldn't be a surprise; look for example at Netflix. This great tool has revolutionized and epitomized modern media consumption (of course the DVR in general trail-blazed, but Netflix did a plus one to that idea by adding a library of shows as well). You miss a TV show, no worries, you can watch it whenever you want – even shows that you missed multiple seasons of can be easily caught up on whenever its convenient (hello sick day). This has materially changed the way shows are built as a result, and exactly how that's changed is (unfortunately) outside the scope of this essay, but suffice it to say, it's unlikely a show like Mad Men would have survived in an age of having to be home at a certain time in front of the TV set to catch it (I still remember having to program a VCR for my mother if we were going to out of the house when “Buffy” was on). This is, of course, great, and I don't think anyone would want to return to those days, but it is undeniably changed the way we view everything. We don't make hard appointments for things anymore, and we've evolved into a culture of people that is easily distracted, and can't be bothered to commit to even a TV show unless we can watch it whenever we want – where we can gorge on twenty episodes in a day and then not watch it again for a month. The mere fact that we try to meet every week seems to reduce the urgency of presence, we trade into the idea that we can catch up whenever. The idea of “we practice every week so I can miss this one” very obviously mis-underestimates the craft – a pilot wouldn't say “I fly the plane from Chicago to Denver every week, so I'll let my co-pilot do everything this time and I'll phone it in”, so why should we?
7. One of the assumptions that Mr. Carrane makes about commitment is that the UCB gang were all friends, and I think that is an important distinction against modern groups. We all have fairly lofty goals (see #5), and a lot of times I think we approach achieving them from a fairly cut-throat approach. We don't necessarily make participation choices from the viewpoint of “what will be fun” or “what do I want to do”, but more from the perspective of “what will have the most prestige” or “what will give me the most recognition”. We do multiple groups because we want more networking or notoriety (a status of “omnipresence”, a kind of esteem by way of ubiquity), and we don't commit hard to groups because we approach improv like a business or a task to be conquered, and not like the UCB folk did, which is as friends with a mutual goal. I see over and over again teams filled with casual acquaintances, and I don't think a new revolution in improv can start without that.

I wouldn't want to begrudge someone the opportunity to do lots of improv, because practice will make you a better player, but at the same time we need to be aware of the consequences and effects our choices make. If we treat improv like a series of drunken bar hookups, we shouldn't be surprised at the ultimate community product.

I'm not sure if this list is complete - it might be - but it's worth noting that it's probably a combination of factors that ultimately influence how much you can rely on your fellows.   More importantly, knowing what the potholes are and why they occur is the first step to learning to handle them.  Ignoring them, however, is a recipe for failure.  Nothing great has ever been built without total commitment.

I was taught that a good rule of thumb for selecting team-mates is to find people you “wouldn't mind being stuck in an elevator with”, but that rule tends to overlook the commitment issues it seems that a lot of people are encountering. Differing and conflicting levels of commitment from players will un-erringly result in disagreement, conflict, and disappointment. Knowing that you can count on your fellows and that everyone is equally invested in the end product is obviously central to success. I think a better rule of thumb is to pick people you “would happily go into an elevator with knowing you're going to be stuck together”. And knowing that no matter how long you're in the elevator together, you are, at the very least, in it together.

Close Encounters of the Longform

I was speaking with the director of one of my short form groups a few weeks ago, and we started talking about how much we both want to see and do more longform in San Diego, and I confessed my love of longform; namely all the different kinds of forms and how they’re all useful, and how I want to see more groups capable of improvising beyond form. I didn’t realize it, but I was actually being interviewed, in a way. He asked me about different forms that I knew, how long it would take to do them, etc. Then, he asked me to teach his group some longform. He didn’t know anything about longform, and I said I would love to teach some workshops on longform. When I asked which one he wanted me to teach, he replied with the words it seems everyone would love to hear, but no one really wants to hear, “Whatever one you think is best.”

I’m certainly not an expert by any means on longform. I’ve seen a bunch of it, taken a bunch of classes, and asked as many questions of performers as possible, but that doesn’t mean I know everything about it. (I asked one of the Cook County Social Club members what their form was after a show, to which he replied “It’s not so much a form as it is a style.” Good luck to any other group trying to replicate their show, but no improviser should ever get their hopes up for cloning success.) Now, I do have a real love for longform – I love the things that it’s capable of doing, by being free to really run, and I love the philosophy associated with it that improvisers can actually be artists and make something on-the-spot and meaningful. But I was suddenly saddled with representing longform to a longform-naïve group, and hopefully making it interesting enough to make them want to do it again. Essentially, I was given two hours to introduce longform, conceptually and functionally. The one thing I can applaud the iO with teaching me that was more important than just how to improvise was how to yearn for expression, but heck, it took me a year of being there and almost a whole other year to begin to comprehend that concept. How do you convey that kind of mindset and teach a group how to longform in two hours? I feel that the two are intertwined: you can’t really do a Harold until you appreciate the “Theatre of the Heart”, and you can’t full comprehend formic creation until you’ve done a few by the book Harolds.

Now, that crisis avoided (by sheer virtue of probably being unable to convey it), now I have to decide which form to teach. Which form sums up the entire longform experience? Which one is the ultimate in inspiring creativity and play? Which one has the most room for artistic expression? Which one is easy? (I do only have two hours here, people.) Not to mention I want one that will allow everyone the chance to experiment around with it a bit (so Shotgun! and Dinner for Six are out) but also won’t require any special new skills (so long Armando, Orlando, and Eavesdropping). One that isn’t too complicated (sorry Close Quarters and JTS Brown), but that also fits the style of this particular group (Living Room, Deconstruction; gone, gone). Of course, there’s always the mainstay of the Harold, but I always feel like people who haven’t seen a few already seem a little daunted by the Harold.

These two crises now in full place, I thought about it in this way: if a group of aliens from another galaxy descended on to earth after hearing about longform but only having done shortform and only had two hours to learn before they had to return home, what would you teach them? What single longform structure and philosophy could you give them that they could take back to their home planet so that they could start exploring longform on their own? I spent a year studying in Chicago, and I only now just feel like I could go to some completely unknown place and inject new thought about improv.

Of course, I know that this will probably not be my only chance to teach improv to this group, but I can’t shake the feeling that this is my one chance to really get this group started off down the right track. This single ideological shift can change everything, if I can just get the points across right. After all, I really could teach any form (that is to say, there’s nothing stopping me), but I don’t want to teach just form – I want to teach the mysterious force about long form in general that I am so enamored with.

Our Scenes are Our Children

I still remember the first scene I ever saw that I actually knew was going on too long. It was Fall of 2004, we were playing a game of "Stand, Sit, Kneel", and after a minute or so of some intermittent laughter, the scene suddenly went decidedly unfunny. This isn’t to say that all the sudden someone was getting raped, or there was talk of killing puppies - it just ceased getting laughs. And it wasn’t that it just became unfunny, it (even worse) became uninteresting, and unwatchable. And gradually the audience began to tune out, and very quickly a feeling of panic swept over all the performers.

Everybody wanted the scene to end, but we also distinctively wanted the scene to have just one more laugh to end on. I was the one in charge of the bell during this little fiasco. Afterwards, I silently cursed myself for letting a scene run WAY too long, and also for not saving my fellow improvisers.

Generally, only very rarely will a scene pop up that is this bad, but boy when they do, they can easily cripple a show, especially if they come near the end. And they don’t always have to be three minute fiascos; I’ve seen thirty second scenes that have already gone on too long (though they often feel much longer).
It’s too easy and by definition wrong, to say that a scene was just doomed to failure from the beginning. (How depressing is it to hear that? That statement says that no matter what you did or how hard you worked, you wouldn’t have succeeded anyway.) As a general rule, a random combination of any number of performers from all across the universe should never be the death knell for a scene. This is because the basic dogma of improvisation is to just let any two people interact and enjoy the sparks that fly from basic human interaction.
It shouldn't be the premise; the previous scene's premise was a Boy Scout leader and two scouts at a strip club. Sure, maybe a premise that is a little too SNL, but certainly no one can say that that scene can't be funny or at least interesting to watch. And any postulating post-show with your fellow improvisers will undoubtedly prove any idea can become a funny scene (or course the difference here is the amount of time you have on stage versus the bar).

Here, though, the real question isn’t why it failed, but more why it failed so hard. And as a result, when and why we edit. As improvisers, we are all taught a basic rule, that all scenes have the potential to be great. If we can just be patient and follow all the improv rules we have learned, every scene can be a winner (hence all the talk of performers and premises). At the same time, we know that not every scene will work; something which we prove all the time in the laboratory of the stage. But just like any great theory, it’s still hard to say that this one is unproven (see the previous bar comment). This firm holding to this very basic rule of improv is what makes us hold on to scenes for dear life. Even good ones. If we take the time to get on stage with each other, we feel the need to explore each scene all the way out, often well past the edit point.

The other problem is part of our basic programming that we get from watching T.V., reading books, etc. We want to logically end our scenes. A big laugh, a logical conclusion to the plot, a change of heart in a character, or at a cliffhanger. Sure this is all well and good, but we operate in a universe where those things are not guaranteed, or even possible sometimes. So instead of holding out to tie up our work perfectly, or hanging on to our scenes like they are the only ones we will ever have, remember your primary obligation: to your fellow performers.

But possibly remember the even more basic tenet of improvisation: nothing is planned or pre-written, so who says you have to keep doing anything if you don’t like it?

The Interpreter

Back in 2004, I used to write movie reviews for the USM student newspaper, the "Student Printz". Because I occasionally feel lazy, and it seems a shame that all of five people ever read these, I've decided to repost them here, in the original versions that I emailed to my editor, Noel, all those years ago.

Sometimes the distances that actors and actresses travel in terms of characters is monumental. Take “The Interpreter’s” primary stars: Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn. It was less than a decade ago that Kidman was following George Clooney around trying to disarm nuclear weapons in “The Peacemaker”, and not that long ago that Penn’s Spicoli was ordering pizzas to Mr. Hand’s class in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”. “The Interpreter” shares this kind of idea: it’s a classic feeling film, very personal, small cast with a Hitchcock-like plot of a geopolitical who dunnit. But in modern times, this classic kind of movie is much more of a supercharged tale of revenge and political suspense.

“The Interpreter” opens up with Silvia Broome (Nicole Kidman), a United Nations interpreter, going to the U.N. general assembly sound room late at night to retrieve some personal items when she hears a conversation regarding an assassination on President Zuwanie, the genocidal leader of the small African nation of Matobo. The Secret Service dispatches Tobin Keller and Dot Woods (Sean Penn and Catherine Keener) two agents with Foreign Dignitary Protection. As they investigate the possibility of assassination, they turn up an enormous amount of dirt on Broome, who used to be a revolutionary in Matobo following the death of her parents. Keller may not believe her at first and has more mounting suspicions, but there are definitely dark hands at work leading to mysterious masked men and ruthless assassinations of President Zuwanie’s only remaining opponents.

The melting pot of New York City and the global unity of the United Nations building act only as a stage for dual plot of both personal and global struggles for forgiveness and revenge. Both Broome and Keller have semi-dark histories of loved ones lost to tragedy, which focus both of their current efforts to try and save people. These interpersonal struggles act to mirror the bigger plot as to whether or not Zuwanie should be assassinated to better the people of the nation he has oppressed.

A movie with a plot about political turmoil would have been traditionally treated as a sufficient film, but apparently someone felt that additional, deeper subplots were necessary to drive the concept. Though the presence of these subplots never brings the film to a “halt”, they do serve to drag the plot down to a “yield”. This isn’t helped at all by a possible romantic interest between Keller and Broome. What really drives this movie is the international turmoil, as it is far more interesting than morbid lists Broome’s brother kept of dead Matobans or Penn’s constant look of pensive severity. This film is greatly benefited by strong supporting cast, including Keener and Jesper Christensen as a Dutch ex-mercenary and security officer to Zuwanie.

“The Interpreter” sums up to being a pretty good movie – not necessarily “fun”, but definitely interesting and exciting. The theme of pacifism is an interesting complement to a film that highlights some of America’s biggest contemporary fears as well as some neat action sequences. You can always count on a movie like “The Interpreter” to make you feel good: the good guys win, the bad guys lose, and hopefully the world is made a better place. At least until next week.

Character Arrested Development

I still occasionally get emails from my old college improv troupe, and I'm always excited to read ones where they're discussing improv theory; I love it primarily for nostalgia, but also because I like reading how the philosophies of people I trained and performed with have evolved. For a lot of college troupes in the hinterlands, each group is its own little microcosm of improv exploration, and as a result, they're generally limited to things they learn through books on the subject.
 

My favorite pops up like clockwork once a semester: the "character development" email. It goes like this: "we had a rough show, we need to work on fundamentals, so next week we're going to go over character development." But why do we pick character development over things like scenework, being "in-the-moment", or a bajillion other skills? It's the improv scapegoat. Had a bad show? It was probably bad character development. Why? Because I have no idea what it means, so I probably don't have it. It's a term that falls into the same category of "process development", "synergy", and "paradigm shift" of abstract things that sound great on paper, but have no real definition. I don't even remember how the term entered into our vernacular; I've never read it in a book or heard any teacher use that exact term anytime since. It was always just there.

For years, I broke the term down to define it. "What is character development?" someone might ask me on an improv game show. "Why, it's the development of a character arc throughout the course of the scene!" I would answer proudly. While it's true that that kind of character development (which is probably more likely to be called emotional development, scene development, or some other such acting term I'm too ignorant to know) is important, that's not what's meant by character development. The problem with trying to do it that way is we get a bunch of scenes where person A is trying to change person B in three minutes! 

Our character development practice became, every semester, two hours of scenes about breakup, love, or death. They were boring and uninteresting, and we would immediately go back to doing other things the next week.
What we all meant (but were unable to articulate, and, even worse, unable to teach) was creating rich, unique characters. Characters that were more than just a funny voice or a strange bodily affliction. What we wanted was to create characters that the audience would be interested in long enough to want to see a character arc.  (Something compounding the problem: improv shows like "Whose Line" rarely, if ever have richly defined characters.  Their scenes tend to, unfortunately, be just a funny voice or strange bodily affliction.)

So if we're not trying to negotiate a character change, what is character development actually supposed to be? The now-me, on the same gameshow, would answer "creating a character on the fly that can survive on his/her own in the universe we've created". What you need to take away is this: a character needs at minimum, two things to survive. One, a point of view, and two, a want. The other stuff (occupation, mannerisms, etc.) is good, but you've got to leave that to be discovered. And most importantly, just relax in the scene and remember that this is the universe that your character inhabits and to try to react as that character would.

A Philosophy of Teaching

It was in "Truth in Comedy" that Close, et al, told everyone that an improviser was actually a number of different roles rolled into one: actor, director, writer, editor, sound man, special effects, props, and scenery (and realistically caterer and producer as well).  It's really no wonder this craft is so difficult to master, and that so many of us become permanently enthralled with it - to improvise is not just make a few laughs, it is to do a near overwhelming amount simultaneously.  But it is not only very difficult to master, it's sometimes very difficult for beginners to do successfully at even a minimal level.

Most improv is taught in a very top-down method.  Typically, throw people into things with a little explanation, and then tweak things as needed to get performers into a desired state.  In fact, I'd wager that every teacher I've had has taken this approach.  It's just easier, since there are so many things that have to be juggled at once, to let the human naturally fill in the gaps of the performance than to force a player to have to think about everything all at once.  I think of this as a holistic approach; even though a smart instructor will know to break down certain skills or simplify scenework to narrow a student's focus, it's still necessary for a pupil to be developing a number of skills concurrently.  I believe the result here is why I am constantly teaching (and learning) active listening as a basic skill.

This is quite different from other arts/crafts/skills; I remember learning to drive and first learning street signs, right-of-way, and blind spots before being allowed behind the wheel of a two-ton steel death machine.  Artists learn composition and point-of-view before painting the Sistine Chapel, woodworkers learn how to cut straight lines before building a house, and you learn to read by first learning sounds - you don't jump from "c-a-t" to "Anna Karenina".  When I was first learning to play an instrument, you start with a few notes, then you play "Mary had a Little Lamb", then scales, then time signatures, then space chords, and eventually you work your way up full orchestral pieces.  I think of this as a reductionist approach - where the focus is on building individual skills before putting them all together.

The reductionist approach is easier for learning complex skills, so why don't we approach teaching improv in that manner?  Quite simply actually: "Mary had a Little Lamb" is fucking boring.  And even more importantly, the basic principles of improv, like "no planning", translate into the uninitiated as "you don't need to practice this, you just get up and do it!"  The seemingly low entry requirements are a welcome encouragement for neophyte players, but also make it difficult to focus the naive to work only on skills for the first few lessons.  Or, is it maybe better to throw new players completely into it right away?  Screw basics, just give them the piano and the sheet music for "Flight of the Bumblebee", and let them figure it out on the fly.  Watching an experienced player rip through something difficult effortlessly might make you think you could, but new performers have to learn the scales first.

Personal Statement

When I applied for grad school, I had to write a personal statement, so naturally I chose to write about superheroes. To this day I believe that this essay is the primary reason I was accepted.

Batman and Superman. To many, they are the two most well known comic book heroes in the world. But to me, the represent the dichotomy of humanity: what we would like to do, and what we can do. While it would be great to be able to crush coal into diamonds in our bare hands or fly across the planet in the blink of an eye like Superman, mere mortals are not capable of such feats. Instead, we must be like Batman, and do everything we can to do some good in this world. To me, I’ve always seen science through the eyes of Batman: still dreaming, but dreaming about what good we can do now, with what we already know. This is why when the majority of my classmates went the way of research, I went the way of analytical work.

I have always been interested in science; even in high school, I was one of the few students who were actually interested in pursing any form of science beyond graduation. I took every science course offered and was always at the top of my classes. I was respected among my teachers as being a very capable lab student. When it came time to attend college, I chose chemistry over other sciences because I felt that chemistry offered a many more opportunities for direct use of its principles in every corner of the world and in everything that we do. Also, my father had been a chemistry student and I always appreciated his analytical abilities and felt like that was a trait that I wanted to learn.

In college, I worked hard to learn the basic scientific principles I would need later, and I always became a student that my fellow classmates relied on to be a leader in the lab groups. My hard work made me eligible for the senior honor’s program at the university, and my research in unnatural amino acid synthesis gave me the opportunity to become familiar with a number of analytical methods well beyond the scope and duration that the regular class laboratories allowed.

Since graduation, I have been employed at an environmental testing company in the organic analytical department. I have been solely responsible for the volatiles analyses we conduct, and as a result I have learned an enormous amount about the maintenance and operation of the gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer as well as about the ability to analyze problems and figure out their solutions.

I believe a master’s degree in forensic science will give me the knowledge I will need to be an effective and positive addition to this growing field. It is my dream to continue to use my knowledge of chemistry and my analytical disposition in new and exciting ways, and I feel that forensic science is the best way for me to do that. Most importantly, I don’t feel that I have learned enough yet to be as effective as I could be and continued education will undoubtedly be the best course to take. As for specifically selecting the University of Illinois at Chicago, UIC consistently came up at the top of lists when I searched for forensic science programs as well as being recommended by the criminal justice faculty at my undergraduate university. And while a number of universities may offer forensic science master’s degrees, UIC has the added benefit of a big city experience. I have resided in Mississippi for nearly my entire life, and while I have definitely enjoyed my experiences, I would love the chance to live in different part of the country and in a different kind of environment.

I selected forensic science because I enjoy its practical applications as well as the tremendous good it can do in using our knowledge of science to protect everyone. As I gradually developed as a scientist, I came to understand what I enjoyed the most about chemistry: using a set of clues to solve a problem. Everyone enjoys a good mystery and I enjoy solving them.

Pieces of the Whole

I overheard one of the local improv teachers here give the following advice to a student: “shortform is for the audience, longform is for the improvisers”, which is a very distressing argument for a teacher to make and is, while very ignorant, one that comes up time and time again as an occasionally legitimate argument against longform improvisations: longform is a artistic device where nothing happens.

The AV Club published a very interesting article that explored the modern style of storytelling in some of the more “acclaimed” programming (e.g. Breaking Bad, Luck, The Sopranos). The way seasons, and in some cases, entire shows are divined now to reward sustained and completist viewing of seasons – the emphasis has shifted the emphasis to how an episode fits into the greater picture of the show. This is very similar to the way we think longform should work: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A great longform piece is enriched by the order and placement of the pieces therein, elevating it in meaning and purpose. But this means that we may sacrifice making those parts worthwhile in name of focusing on the “bigger message”. This precocious, and dare I say pretentious approach to creating is what threatens to drag any unit of art down.

Shortform's strength is also it's greatest weakness: a slavish amount of attention heaped on a single game, that comes at the expense of fitting it into the fabric of the larger piece. Shortform is as guilty of being shortsighted as longform is of being farsighted in this respect. We spend an inordinate amount of attention in a Harold trying to say “the something” that we can potentially hobble the entire production. This slavish devotion to perfection in the piece is an admirable and lofty goal, but the focus must always be on the present. The great improv questions of 1) if this is true, what else is true, and 2) if this is true, why is it true suddenly become more about the entire act of improvising, rather than just tools to play good scenes. (Del even said that the end is in the beginning.)

An over-attention to detail, one that is meticulous, even compulsive and obsessive, can derail attempts to be experimentative and explorative, stagnating innovation. The entire piece should be reflective, not the scenes. The scenes should be concrete, and something should happen in each and every one of them. These concrete blocks build on each other to create something meaningful – hollow, empty bricks build nothing of significance.

So how did we get here? Well, I have to agree with the AV Club's conclusion that “creating a lengthy, layered narrative is really fucking hard.” People like that teacher up there have no doubt seen some improv group that got in their own way of having fun in the moment and got caught up in being profound, which groups will do as they learn to master the craft. You see those kinds of shows in an audience mostly full of improvisers, because improvisers are far more forgiving of an ambitious move that completely fails than a typical non-improviser audience would be. But you don't get to the point of being able to tell deeper stories by refusing to take the risk.

A Writer's World

In An Evening with Kevin Smith, Smith said something along the lines of “the writer creates his ideal world when he writes.” For him then, he said that apparently in his ideal world, people have endless conversations about pop culture and relationships. By that same token, in Tarantino’s world, violent criminals wax philosophic and then maim each other, and in Scorsese’s criminals try desperately to keep a clear conscience in the face of doing bad things for family. Pretty cool actually. The writer allows us a brief peek into not how he sees the world, but how he wishes the world could be.

I’ve read and heard a number of times, from countless sources, that the improviser is more than just an actor in a play. The improviser is the actor, director, editor, stuntman, costume designer, set designer, and writer all in one, doing every conceivable action simultaneously. Well, if we’re technically writing our play, in the moment, then by extension of the previous corollary, then we are also showing the audience our ideal world (albeit a mutually agreed upon and group derived ideal world). This is one of the things that propels improv from just jokey stuff into a much more meaningful experience. Or as Jason Chin once said, “You have to have an opinion about what you’re talking about.” It’s not enough to merely explore mousetraps (very basic scenes; I mean, how many scenes can we have about mousetraps?) we need to explore what mousetraps are symbolic of (I don’t know, stifled domestic life?) but also to have an opinion about it. The audience doesn’t necessarily have to agree with it, but that’s okay, because stuff that you’re opinionated and passionate about makes for great improv.

Now, what I’ve said is no big revelation. I haven’t exposed any great mysteries about improv, or art, or life (not the least of which because I don’t presuppose to have any). But here’s what is important; the first rule of writing is “write what you know”, so the improv corollary is “improvise what you know”. It’s not really a big surprise that most improv pieces revolve around relationships and superheroes; look who is improvising them. When I was playing with my college group, we invented and modified a number of games to make them more superhero-esque. Why? Because were a bunch of comic book nerds. That’s what interested us. My San Diego group, the Ugly Truth, struggled for a little bit when we tried to experiment with more slow, dramatic improvised scene work. Obviously, things weren’t going well because we weren’t improvising what we liked. Show me an improv group that is struggling with a new form or technique, and I’ll guarantee that they’re doing something they don’t enjoy.

Without a doubt, I’m a big advocate of fun first when it comes to improv. A group that is enjoying what they’re doing will be immensely more watchable than a team that is doing something meaningful and hating every minute of it. Or rather, we’re not all Scorsese or Tarantino, some of us are just Smith. Find, as a group, what you enjoy, are passionate about, and interested in, and the rest will follow suit.