To Play Music

(This was orignally published at The Green Room (http://sidestageimprov.com/thegreenroom/tubas-and-trumpets) with much better design.)

We spend a lot of time talking about improv teams as “ensembles”, often without really appreciating what that actually means. To most theater owners and/or directors, it conjures an image of cohesive uniformity. We like to think of it as a homogeneity – a team that is unified to common purpose, internally reliant, and trusts each other complicity. All of this is true, but how do we get to that point? The classical approach is to take your team, stick them together for long enough, and have them spend time until they develop bonds. This works, and is how a great many number of friendships form, so it should hold true for improv teams as well. This doesn't explain, however, why some teams seem to just “work” and others don't, and also takes a “fingers crossed” approach to team dynamic.

We know that successful teams are built on commitment, but there appears to be a magic spark that makes some teams fun to watch and others, less so. We also know that successful organizations have diversity, or rather the “right” kind of diversity. Large enough groups (let's say, the Navy or the US) need maximum diversity to account for their large size, but small groups (say a three-man improv team) have no way of representing every possible demograph in it's population. How do we put humans together in a way that they can function together, and more than function, succeed? Bands, as it turns out have been doing this for centuries. You have orchestras with every possible instrument present, all the way down to duets of every possible variation. Billy Merritt refers to the “Pirate, Robot, Ninja” classification, but this doesn't really indicate “how” people play. Everyone has a tone – a voice – about how they improvise. This is really about (using this band analogy) what kind of instrument each person is. Here's a brief overview of the common instruments, and combining the right ones is what makes groups “sing”, where right really only means “complementary voices”.

Flute – highest voice in the band (excluding the sub-flute piccolo); flute is technically a woodwind despite the fact that it is made of metal (usually brass or an alloy of copper and/or silver). Flute parts are typically fun, bouncy, bright, cheerful, and delicate. In solo parts, they can be buried by the band unless they are given opportunity to soar. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=be1jJCH32OU) Most flautists are female, and this type of player also tends to be female. This player's voice carries the melody, so is a voice that carries the game and the engine of the scene, but doesn't carry power or oomph with it.

Clarinet – mellow, high range woodwind and reedy. Often carries the melody, but is excellent at providing fill and mood. When soloed, it very commonly does so in jazz music – again it's high range combined with a delicately reedy sound can make this an instrument easily overshadowed if not given room. There are usually a lot of clarinets in a band, and when put together, they can do some very amazing music. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LpSqykddUo) As an improviser, this person can be very easily overlooked because they rarely shine. Tasked with supporting the central voice, yes-anding ideas, and filling in information they may not always get laughs, but what they do provide is essential.

Oboe and Bassoon – I've combined both here because many times bands may not have these instruments. Few arrangements require either instrument and they don't have an essential role in most non-professional organizations. Also, most groups don't have more than one of each, to give you an idea of how rare they are. Both instruments have the potential to have gorgeous musical lines, but other more prolific instruments can drown them out. The oboe is a high, haunting and bucolic sound. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL7CDcVQjbM) The bassoon, known as the “belching bedpost” is low, bass reed sound. Warm, friendly, and supportive of other similar parts in most arrangements. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnF9_bouEdY) A hall mark of both instruments (and players), is the finicky-ness of their sound and the intelligence both require. These players will very commonly find themselves waiting for opportune moments to add perfect additions to melodies and harmonies.

Alto Sax – there are a number of different saxophones, but this is the one that you're thinking of when you're thinking of a saxophone. Also a woodwind despite its brass construction and reed used to generate sound. This instrument can be very loud very easy and sounds jazzy, funky, and bright. When given solos, it is very common in jazz or Broadway type songs, or does well in harmony and counter melodies. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKRtUL-klhc) This player is loud and big – imagine heavy characters or premise heavy initiations. This is an improviser who may be light on finesse, but will be heavy on energy and play.

French Horn – a high brass sound that is regal, haughty, and soaring. Quartets of these instruments can be gorgeous and solos are marked by being soaring and big affairs. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC3tMN-ofqM (pertinent section begins at ~3:45)) These improvisers are probably seen as being arrogant or cocky. We might interpret this as a negative, but even these roles have their purpose in shows and scenes.

Trumpet – the biggest carrier of melodies, especially so in marches (e.g. John Phillip Sousa); the trumpet is brassy, bright, and bold. It can do subtle, but it isn't it's strength. When used traditionally the trumpet plays to it's power, energy, and liveliness. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLMVB0B1_Ts) This improviser does melody and power – strong initiations, big characters, bold moves, and speed.

Trombone – also known as “the one with the slide”, trombones are known for power. A common joke in bands are as to how loud the default playing volume of a trombone is. The biggest difference is the slide; notes are reached not by clicking down keys or valves, but by sliding the tube longer and shorter. As a result notes may ooze into each other – this is done for purposeful effect in jazz numbers using glissandos, or if players get sloppy, entirely by accident. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaPmysTfVFI) Because this plays in the tenor voice range, it carries well, and will be commonly found initiating but may play more outright comedic characters. An improviser playing like a trombone may have a little “sloppiness” in their play – a kind of fun funkiness.

Baritone – this one is a low, angelic “small tuba”. Baritones often play bass lines in arrangements, but will sometimes have lovely solos or countermelodies. The instrument can also be known for silly, goofy, playful parts – voices that mimic clowns or baffoons. Played well, it fills a needed middle tone in the ensemble. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjvuYlNLLtY) Improvisers playing as baritiones are often fun, silly, have an emphasis on play and funny but may not always “shine” in scenes. Baritones are a comfortable, consistent, reliable presence in scenes, often doing the hard work in small scenes to keep them grounded and stable.

Tuba – the lowest voice in the band; strong, bold, but often a slow, plodding voice. Tubas rarely get solos, mostly because the precision and speed required is hard to pull off in the instrument, instead it can be found doing low pedal tones or oscillating bass tones in marches and the like.(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4Rul-qYAGQ) Tubas as improvisers are doing the hard work; towing the line in scenes to keep them grounded or give them gravitas. They maintain the reality of scenes and keep them with a pulse and heart.

Percussion – the metronome, the beat, the thrumming backbone of the band. This includes snares, bass drums, cymbals, chimes, bells, marimbas, and all the fun “toys” that add so much little touches to music. Precussion instruments are interesting in that a single one cannot provide all of what is typically needed in a large ensemble (excluding drum kits), but instead have to highly work together to produce rhythm and beat. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDXVgqmaYJk) As improvisers, expect these people to maintain tempo in games and dynamics, to provide edits, and off-stage color. Usually more unassuming players are precussion, but they deliver powerful one-liners and buttons for scenes in addition to small color in large group scenes.

Strings – strings are very common in orchestras, but for our purposes, we are assuming all our instrumentation is only for a modern sit-down concert band. In that concept, strings are uncommon except for very specific arrangements, and then only for a very specific purpose, like the bass guitar in Horner's “Coming Home from the Sea” or the harp in a number of Christmas arrangements. Strings are delicate, full bodied instruments that provide rich melodies, harmonies, and bass lines to orchestras, and we are assuming that violins, violas, cellos, and basses are all a part of this category. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCmqArxZ2GQ) Why lump all of these together? Quite simply, if we use this system as a method to categorize people, we will undoubtedly run into people that don't easily fall into one of the instrument categories, and this is our “everyone else” group. If you have a person on a team that doesn't quite jive with what other people are doing, that seems to be playing by their own music, they're probably a string instrument living in a wind band world. They don't sound “right” because the accompaniment is “wrong”. They're not bad players, they just need other string instruments to complement them appropriately.

A knowledge of the instruments and their accompanying player personas allows for easy ensemble building – some instruments do not naturally go together (though there are some nice tuba/flute duets, these are niche, rare, and gimmicky). Also, some instrumentation doesn't fit the music well; I've had a dream for some years of having a large jazz combo, but having the instrumentation re-written to concert instruments. Saxes become clarinets and bass clarinets, tenors and baritone saxes bassoons, trumpets as french horns, trombones as baritones. Though this would be interesting to hear, it's more akin to the strange “IPA with Sriracha cream” gimmick beers that pop up in San Diego from time to time. They'd be interesting to try, but you wouldn't buy a keg of it. My long time duo, Mike and Chris, works because Mike is a trumpet, and I'm a trombone. Our two brassy tones complement each other. Small groups (duos, trios) need very well balanced instruments – brass go with brass, woodwinds with woodwinds, basses with basses, etc. Larger groups need and can handle more diverse parts.

At the end of the day, our objective is “ensemble” and playing together. Well made music requires more than a single note, we need chords. Multiple notes built to go together, where the pieces work in concert towards a common goal. All groups end up with stylistic choices that define their show, it's what makes two different teams that do the “same show” (e.g. harold teams) have performances that feel different. This isn't a side effect or accidental – this is part of the built in, secret sauce that makes live performance unique. More importantly, this is what makes our team work important. How the parts fit together and what everyone contributes makes team. As the clothes make the man, the instruments make the band.

Books and Shirts

The Upright Citizen's Brigade Theatre (UCB) published an improv book recently, though more likely than not, if you're reading this blog, you already know that. This book was obviously groundbreaking in a number of ways: one, the first book to completely encapsulate a theater's approach to improv (as opposed to a person), and from a theater that is very much having a moment right now in the improv zeitgeist. It also was a book that was years in the making, and was the first one to propose to be a toolkit that could completely guide an improviser all the way from neophyte to functional. But I think the biggest thing about the book was more than the content of the book itself – it was that nearly every improviser I knew pre-ordered it and started reading it right away (and also posted a picture of themselves reading it with a cup of coffee). This happened again very recently with the TJ & Dave book, although apparently to a lesser degree.

I'm a bit of an improv bibliophile; I have improv books occupying over an entire shelf, and going back to the 60's. Improv books actually come out pretty often, but this was the first “big” one to come out while improv is on such a huge swing. The interesting thing about improv books is that they are a static, tangible totem in a craft that is absent such adjectives normally. We don't create things that can be shown or kept in perpetuity. Even our improv shows, when recorded, never quite recreate the experience of watching it live. This is kind of one of the magic sauces of improv, that live is what people truly come to see.

The downside is that we have very few totems that we can hang on to as a community; outside of a cluster of improv books (and even fewer really great ones), the TJ & Dave movie, a few team, theater, and festival t-shirts, we don't really have anything that we can hold in our hands. Even most of the great philosophy and writing is mostly in the land of the easily shared, but also easily forgotten digital (like this blog!). Improv is dangerously ephemeral.

I had a student ask me a great question recently: “what is improv?”. Some context as to why this is a great question is that she was explaining to her sister what the classes were about and was looking for a response to give her that described what we were doing. What we do may seem obvious to us as improvisers, but it's always worth remembering to think about what we look like to our audience, and the uninitiated. How would you describe improv to an alien that had absolutely no frame of reference? Hell, how do you describe the majority of what we do even to people who've seen “Whose Line”? (Which, on a related note, can we all bow our heads for a moment and thank God that a show like “Whose Line” exists and was relatively well played on ABC Family, because seriously how would we describe what we do to our families otherwise?)

The answer I gave my student is that it is “theater that is unscripted and unrehearsed”, which is a definition I rather like in that it is accurate, fairly all-encompassing, and concise. But it's not really a precise answer. It does say what we do, but doesn't really give you an idea of what that looks like. I always liked the poetry of the iO description of the Harold – saying that it was like a jazz band, which again, nails the artisanal, flexible, and complicated nature of it, but still doesn't really tell you much. You could of course recall its scene/game/scene structure, but that tells you even less about it. My student's follow up question is: “is it always funny?”, which we as improvisers I think have matured enough to be able to say the truth, which is: most of the time, but not always. But more importantly, that it doesn't have to be.

What is improv? It's something we can't write out easily. It can't be described in a sentence that fully captures what it looks like, what it means, and what it is composed of in a single sentence. This is its inherent beauty. We get to participate in something that we can only share by being present, in the moment with each other. Our entire art is a summer memory, fondly recalled.

They Who Shall Not Be Named

In mid-October, for about 6 hours, the San Diego Impov Collective (SDIC), a Facebook based page for members of the SD improv community, was on fire.  Normally, this would be considered a good thing - high traffic, lots of links, click throughs, comments (and comments to comments), and activity, but as with most conflagrations, heat and energy also indicate destruction.  The origin of this facebook post is multi-varied and long-term, and a story that could fill several blog posts (and has, on this particular blog).  I wish that I could have archived that entire post and everything attached to it, if only for posterity, though it truly would do no one any good should someone ever view that archive in the future.  One could also point out how quickly it devolved into name-calling, attacks on individuals, attacks on people's performative capabilities (all on both sides), and (most importantly), a grave misunderstanding of the underlying issues.

Like the young boy who sticks his finger in the dyke, we fail to understand and appreciate the real problem and instead just focus on going about our day-to-day and fixing only the current crisis.  The central problem in San  Diego is, quite simply:

SAN DIEGO HAS AN US VERSUS THEM PROBLEM.

We have basically two improv communities in town; one with people from one theater, and one with everyone else.  Again, I'll try to not get into particulars as to why this is, or who is at fault, or even to name names.  You'll just have to trust me that this thing exists, and we live under the shadow of it every day in improv in this town.  And, quite frankly:

IT SUCKS.

I miss my friends, some of whom I have known as long as I've lived here.  I miss getting to share in their triumphs and shortcomings, joys and sorrows, and just sitting with them shooting the shit at 2am over crappy food.  But as I was looking through all of the comments, some very passionate, erudite, and thoughtful about the issue (others...less so), I was struck by how much two groups of people who live in the same town and practice the same goofy, fringe artform don't know each other.  It's easy to pick fights with strangers or the "other", it's hard to do so when people are familiar.  We'll always have more in common than what makes us different, regardless of religion, race, sexual orientation, politics, nationality, birth state, class, education, gender, age, or devotion to bizarre theater that you can't fully explain to your coworkers. (It should be pointed out that none of the previous denominations were selected in any particular order, nor should their inclusion or exclusion of other groupings be representative of any percieved or actual status.)

The causal post is gone now - deleted into whatever magic archive all our supposedly "deleted" posts go to for Mr. Zuckerberg or his designated associates to read for their own amusement.  But the underlying root isn't, and certainly the memory of what was said (or wasn't said) will probably linger for some time. (I for the record, stayed out of the fray, an operand largely driven by 1) not wanting to go down the rabbit hole again and 2) the benefits of having a job where access to Facebook is largely impossible.)  But this doesn't change the fact that when you have two groups of people who don't know each other, conflicts easily arise, and not knowing someone else is everyone's fault.

VIIF Report

The approach to Granville Island from downtown Vancouver is on a 4-lane causeway over what is named, with what would be considered British meiosis, False Creek (which is far too wide to be a creek, and is, as it turns out, only a small bay cutting into the heart of Vancouver).  The Granville Street Bridge (which helpfully reminds you in crayon written messages on the periodic street lamp poles) pulls away from downtown to reveal Vancouver's picturesque quality: misty mountains feel comfortingly close to the city center and tall egg carton style apartment buildings fill the skyline, twinkling with green glass windows.  The only truly distinguishing buildings are the BC arena (where the Cannucks (hockey) and White Caps (FC) play) and the Telus Science Center, an Epcot shaped dome at the far end of False Creek's quayside.

Stateside, a bridge like this would likely not even have a pedestrian allowance and any walkers would probably be seen as potential jumpers rather than commuters, but in Vancouver, there is a steady stream of impossibly attractive people walking back and forth, dressed in the standard local attire of a rainproof jacket with attached hood.  For visitors to the Vancouver International Improv Festival (VIIF), this bridge will become a familiar crossing to reach Granville Island proper.  Once down on the far side of the bridge, a small walkway winds down under the bridge, and a short walk underneath it's gargantuan cement canopy leads to the entrance to the island.  Warm, red neon letters state where you are, with a helpful smaller neon sign reminding you that this is Canada.  It's here on the island that the VIIF is taking place - five days of workshops, shows, and fellowship, distributed among what seems to be an improbable number of working theater spaces.

I'm here as part of the International Ensemble, an assemblage of ~2 dozen improvisers broken up into two teams (Bravo and Echo) who spend 4 days rehearsing and performing together.  Applicants to the ensemble submit as an individual, and, if selected, get to rehearse with players they've likely never worked with before, doing forms and shows they've likely never encountered before.  My team (Echo) has players from Vancouver, Atlanta, Winnipeg, Toronto, Edmonton, and Portland and represents a deep roster of modern improv talent and experience, filled as it is with regular performers, teachers, and theater heads.

The first thing I notice about my fellow ensemble players is the high level of familiarity they have with each other.  In contrast to the states, Canada thrives on two big factors that significantly drive the greater national community.  The first is a festival culture that has largely eluded the US up to this point.  Improvisers regularly travel to a number of similarly sized improv festivals both in and out of country, probably fueled not in the very least by a travel and vacation oriented culture that the US seems completely adverse to - as if we can work ourselves to death and productivity simulatenously.  But the second factor is probably the most significant: the Canadian Improv Games.  Every year, high school improv teams from around the country attend this competition, all united under a common banner from the time they entered secondary school.  Because of this, Canadian improvisers have often met and seen each other's work since the time they were 15 and have deep running ties and friendship to each other.

Stepping into the lion's den is a little un-nerving for me for a little while.  I won't cast aspersions and assume that I was going to be better than the Canadians that make up the majority of the cast, but I'm rattled by how easy it seems to be for them, and how professional they are.  Trying to step into a conversation with a dozen people who have known each other for a decade already is an uphill battle for everyone, except the Atlanta extrovert on my team who easily seems to slide into the right groove.  The work is challenging; 5+ hours a day spent rehearsing, in a blend of workshop, laboratory, practice, and class.  But the challenge is exhilerating too - a large group doing new work requires patience and perserverance and the learning curve feels tilted up to the heavens in a way that I haven't truly felt in a long time.  And I can't speak too little about the work ethic I see on display here; a dedication to care and diligence that I see far too rarely back home.

The festival feels huge (I amtold that 138 total improvisers are performing in the festival over 5 days) but intimate at the same time (there seems to be a veritable army of volunteers doing a litany of tasks, but I continually see the same rotating array of them).  The latter I think is due highly to the concentration of events - most improvisers are staying at the Ramada on Granville Street (an amazingly hospitable hotel that gives it's residents free umbrellas and has intimately close walls in the hallways and stairwells) and all the shows are on the island, so the festival quickly gains a camp-like atmosphere.  There are frequent Facebook posts on the performer's page asking if people want to get breakfast every morning, or to let everyone know of an outing to watch the Blue Jay's game at a pub near the old Olympic Village.  And despite the large sandbox feel and often 100+ member audiences, I start to form proximity driven friendships with people, in only the way summer camp (or good festivals) can do.

The festival is overseen by Allistair Cook, a dryly funny and self-deprecating improviser who seems to eschew the spotlight at every turn.  He takes a deeply personal care over the festival; I never see him on a walkie-talkie or cell phone, but I still see him everywhere: checking in on the ensembles at the beginning and end of every day, holding court in theater lobbies, and personally ferrying people to and from party or performance venues.  He seems to keenly know when his presence is needed, and when to allow the festival to run its course.  What I think really contributes to a very warm atmosphere is a bipartisan representation of the Vancouver improv scene - I know that Instant Theater, Blind Tiger, and Vancouver TheaterSports people are present based on the t-shirts I see, but the festival doesn't feel like the property of any company, it feels like it belongs to anyone, and represents everyone.

I see some truly outstanding performances; my personal favorites are an improvised TedTalk (TedXRFT, from Edmonton) and a duo that performed an entire set in gibberish (Chris & Travis, from Vancouver) that really demonstrate a high bar for improvised performance.  My two shows are excellent, the kind of warm, fun improv that I think exemplifies the spirit of experimentation that the VIIF is trying to accomplish.  My last night is relatively uneventful, a short appearance at the closing night party for a drink in a room that looks like a Nickeloden TV show's vision of a basement from the 90's (located at an unmarked door somewhere in SE Vancouver - where I can't really tell you because we take a short bus ride to get there in a vehicle that gives out Wurther's, has a disco ball, and plays 80's music).  I leave for the airport on Sunday morning, the festival a blur that I'll need a few days to still fully process as I slowly spin out of the orbit of this oustanding festival.

Not Emotions

For a lot of us, the word emotion when it comes to improv is a scary one with a lot of panicking connotations. Most of the modern improviser are logical, right brained ones, a product, most likely, on an emphasis on game play. Game play is by it's very nature analytical requiring the ability to identify and amplify “unusual things”. Even game heightening, though necessitating a finesse best exemplified in ways that math cannot quantitate, can be broken down into a series of moves – that the UCB improv handbook reads like a science textbook is no accident. Combine this with the fact that most “comedy nerds” are comedy historians raised typically on static, witty comedy programming and you have a recipe for the typical improviser – smart, word-based, unphysical.

As a result, improv spends a lot of time on workshops about “emotions”. We're trying to remove improv from being a purely intellectual exercise into one that respects that it is a performative, acting experience. For new improvisers, the idea of emotions feels absolutely terrifying – I know that I feel a knee jerk response to avoid emotion workshops when I see them offered. Our western society frowns on the idea of “emoting”. Emotions are seen as being volatile, unpredicatable, and mercurial, which are not viewed as valuable in a society that likes consistent, objective, and reliable. Emotion also carries with it the “actor” connotation – which is to say big, theatrical emotions. This baggage presupposes that all “emotions” must operatic or at least soap operatic. We assume that to “emote” is to be melodramatic, which is the other incorrect assumption about emotions – namely that they must be maudlin or depressing.

Other synonyms also fall short; “feelings” for instance, conjur up ideas of either new-age frufruism or being on the psychiatrist's couch. Terms that equally do not achieve what we want: “sensitiveness”, “vibes”, “sentiment”, “sensation”, and “inspiration” all either fail to fully describe what is happening when we “act”, or go to far. This inaccuracy in terms makes it difficult to describe and to teach people how to do them.

If you've watched a really good improv show (or TV or movies), you've seen people playing humans, which is what makes them interesting and engaging entertainment. If you've taken enough improv workshops, you've probably also noticed an identical-ness in the way we teach two “separate” ideas. Namely, that we teach people that playing characters and emotions are distinct, discrete concepts, but in reality they are nearly the same thing. Both concepts talk about commitment to ideas, point-of-view, and being affected. This gut-reaction stuff is about being more human, playing more than just ourselves, occupying fictional spaces on stage as though they were actually happening is: (drum roll) acting. (Another scary word.)

I think we can roll all of this stuff up into a single unifying concept. These are all just “states of being”. You, as yourself, is a state, where you as a cowboy is a different state. Angry is another state, and angry cowboy is another different state. States make you reactive (and sometimes even proactive) rather than “bulletproof” as a state. If you've followed me so far, let's evolve this into chemistry. All elements are constantly in search of making complete electron shells, 8 being the ideal number for those of you keeping count at home. Those elements on the far right are called the noble gases because they don't react with anything, because they have completed outer electron shells. The entirety of the rest of chemistry in pursuit of completing those shells, either by gaining, losing, or sharing outer electrons with other atoms to get to the magic 8 number.

What I'm preferring to think of emotions as now are “valences” - valence states being the difference in atoms to make molecules. Valence, in operative improv terms, being the difference in self to achieve something else – either something lost to another, gained from anther, or shared with another. How much valence dictates how different from ourselves the state is. This doens't really change how we do things, and doesn't change the necessity for being human and reactive but hopefully may give some solace of a new term to people wh oneed something that feels less terrifying and more analytical.

Investments and Easy Riders

Around this time last year, my old improv team, the Stage Monkeys San Diego (SMSD), celebrated our 5 year anniversary. It was an amazing milestone for a team that started doing longform in San Diego when no one else was doing it, and when most people didn't even have faith that it could be done. Now this team isn't celebrating a six year anniversary this year, because about eight months ago it died out. This doesn't come as a true surprise – most improv teams don't last more than a few months, so a team that runs for 5 years is really like 50 in improv years.

Why do improv teams die out? Well there are obvious reasons: people get too busy, lose interest, better teams take all the slots, or the work becoming sloppy or careless are the commonly espoused reasons. But these aren't causes of teams falling apart, they're the symptoms. The center of the circle that connects all of those things is commitment. Commitment is the currency that all teams spend, and when the bank account runs low, that's when teams dissipate.

Where does the commitment come from? It's a product of each team member – the member's make periodic deposits into the group's commitment bank account and these deposits must be made routinely. An account cannot survive on debits alone. Okay so great, teams need commitment from team members, which is great, but surely we've all been part of teams where everyone says how committed they are to a group or a project or a team, and those teams are usually the first ones to expire. True deposits are made from sacrifice, and all teams periodically require it.

This isn't virgin or animal sacrifice, it's a sacrifice of time. We don't often think of time as something that we spend in this way but it is, and time is the one thing we can never get back. You can only spend it once, and on only one thing at a time. What we choose to spend our time is a critical consideration and one that shouldn't be taken lightly, ever. (This coincidentally, is a good life lesson as well as a good improv lesson). No doubt you've had some people on your teams that seem un-committed; they show up for practices (usually) and shows (usually), but they seem generally absent from the team (symptoms may include: being on phone constantly, leaving early, showing up late, etc.). In game theory, these people are referred to as “free riders” or, to use the movie title, “easy riders”. All teams can suffer a certain percentage of these people will with no serious ill will and no fatal effects. But every easy rider needs someone else to make sacrifices on their behalf, because they are not making deposits and are enjoying the withdrawals.

Every successful team will be made of people making equivalent sacrifices for each other. You'll often hear these people refer to their teammates as “brothers”, “sisters”, or “families”. Everyone on the team is making periodic deposits into the team's account – making those sacrifices of time for the sake of the group. In an ideal world, everyone is making equivalent deposits, just since it is the duty of every person to make it happen; “many hands make light work”. Jane Jacobs' “The Life and Death of Great American Cities” essentially summarizes that neighborhoods (read: improv teams) fail because the people who populate them fail to actually “live” in them. Neighborhoods populated only by people “just passing through” are ones that are destined to perish. Successful teams (really successful ones) have everyone fully dedicating their time to each other continuously (making many deposits gives you more money to spend).

Some teams and their members refer to things like “team bonding time”, which for all intents and purposes is equivalent to the phrase “quality time”. This is a clichéd idiom with a basic underlying premise – that it is possible to “plan instances of extraordinary candor, plot episodes of exquisite tenderness, engineer intimacy in an appointed hour” [1]. Despite a lot of training, workshops, books, and blogs (like this one!) all dedicated to the principles of improvisation – namely that it requires patience, finesse, and being present – we are continually intoxicated by the promise “capturing lightning in a bottle”. More specifically, we assume that capturing said lighting means that we can force a storm to come rather than understanding that sometimes we will catch lighting, but mostly we only catch sparks that we will have to grow into lightning. In general though, there is no substitute for physical presence. All the promises, practices, and “group hangs” make no difference when members are unwilling or unable to dedicated (read: sacrifice) time to each other. Time is, and always will be the most valuable asset we can ever have and give to each other.

[1]http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-the-myth-of-quality-time.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&region=CColumn&module=MostEmailed&version=Full&src=me&WT.nav=MostEmailed&_r=0

Improv Bubbles

In the 1630's in the Netherlands, Tulips (recently introduced into the kingdom) suddenly became status symbols; seen as having very high value. Some adult bulbs, such as the Viceroy, became so valuable that they started to be traded at 3,000 to 4,150 florins (where the average income of a skilled craftsman was 300 florins a year). The entirety of the Dutch populace became involved in the trade and sale of tulip bulbs. As the value of the bulbs increased, many became rich in what many economists and historians see as the first speculative bubble. Everyone imagined a market for tulips would last forever, and people speculated wildly on their prices, hoping mainly to resell them for profit. Then, on February 5, 1637, the price of bulbs dipped for the first time and the bubble had burst. By May 1, the price had completely plummeted and the economy for tulips collapsed (although it actually could be seen as a return to normal). In the 19^th century, when the hyacinth became the new fashionable flower, a similar economy fluctuation occurred.

Other similar bubbles have formed – notably the South Sea Company (officially The Governor and Company of the merchants of Great Britain, trading to the South Seas and other parts of America, and for the encouragement of fishing) was a British joint-stock company that had a monopoly to trade with South America. When the company began to set up stock, they created extravagant rumors of its potential trade profits to be made in the new world which also spurned a frenzy of speculation that drove prices from £100 to £1000. Again a herd mentality drove prices up – a belief that all the money would be made back and then some. This happened again in 1720, also around a monopoly, this one (The Mississippi Company) for businesses in the French colonies in North American and the West Indies. Those of us in the millennial age distinctly remember the dot-com bubble of the late 90's, built around free spending of digital companies whose only objective was to “get big fast”. As company's stock values rose, they drew in more investors hoping that it would continue to rise. Around the same time, the rapid increase in the apparent value of Beanie Babies catapulted their worth to unprecedented levels before a similar “burst”.

So what's the point, and what does it have to do with improv? There have been recent blog posts and podcasts where comedy luminaries (like Bob Odenkirk) have indicated that an improv bubble has formed and that it is going to burst. UCB and iO (Chicago) have recently moved into swanky new huge headquarters, and improv is definitely on the rise. All across the US, even small market cities are now home to improv theaters doing excellent business and most mid-size cities probably have 2 or 3 theaters. Classes are full, shows are constant, and communities of improvisers are thriving. So we have to be in a bubble then?

Talking about how improv is either on the verge of breaking huge or breaking down is obviously one of the most common conversations held by improvisers (one that rivals “how did he get on a house team” in occurrence). We are fascinated with the idea of being on the ground floor of greatness or getting watch the fires consume Rome; but I think more basically we do want to see improv succeed so we are concerned with the idea of the bottom dropping out because it would mean the party would end. While I am by no means an economist, I personally do believe that we are in a bubble, but I don't think that we are going to see that bubble burst, and here's why:

1. Most everyone who actually knows things about bubbles says that you cannot identify a burst before it happens. Collapses in commodities can only be seen after the fact, so there isnt' a way to predict it. All we really know righ tnow is that churn in improv is increasing and the economy is growing, which may very well just be natural growth. To call it a bust is a bit apocalyptic and doomsaying.

2. All previous bursts have been built on commodity trading. That is to say that bubbles form when people drive prices up hoping they can re-sell the things they're buying at profit. We cannot re-sell improv no matter how hard we try. What we are selling, when we sell things, are shows (which are one of a kind memories that cannot be recreated) or education (workshops/classes) that only the person who participates in can enjoy. They can turn around and sell what they have learned as teachers or coaches, but they can't actually buy something that they re-sell at a mathematically equal level. To truly be a good teacher is to take a bunch of classes and do a bunch of shows, which effectively limits how quickly we can reproduce our product.

3. Bubbles are, by definition, when the trade of an asset (a tangible or intangible that is able to be owned or controlled to produce value) occurs at a price that strongly deviates from the corresponding asset's intrinsic value (what is actually worth, independent of the market). Essentially, when the price of a thing appears to be implausible based on views of the future. Any time a bubble has built up it is because people keep increasing the price of something over what it's worth, but here's the rub – what is this thing we do actually worth? Some theaters do free shows, or donation only, $5-10 is pretty common, but I've paid $45 to see one show when it was a really good show. Most coaches cost $25-50 for two hours, and most workshops around $30, but I have heard of coaches going to $75 for two hours and $100 for workshops depending on the teacher and the class size. But what we do doesn't have intrinsic value; we decide the value, and as long as we're willing to pay it...

4. Bubbles are built on frenzy. Bubbles form because the prices rise dramatically and form positive feedback loops encouraging more investment. Economies suffer lots of churn with rapid trading; but the nature of improv purchase limits how often it can be traded. One of the reasons that the tulip bubble formed is that tulip bulbs mature very slowly – but, improv can be instantly recreated constantly, but can only be purchased less so. We only do a few shows a week, one rehearsal a week, one class a week. We can only buy so much of it, and only so often. The limiting factor is in how quickly we can make trades happen.

5. Improv still isn't that big. All of the previously listed bubbles formed around huge populations of people buying and selling on a regular basis. The tulip bubble and the most recent housing one (cause of the Great Recession) involved trading on a global level. The movement of those commodities drove entire economies. Sorry to say, but improv is not driving any economy anywhere. It can be a significant cog, but it isn't the engine that is powering a city. Even a place like Chicago still has industry that dwarfs what improv generates in revenue generated.

This isn't to say that a downturn couldn't happen – quite the contrary. Prices only drive up because demand is present, which is largely dependent on us as a global community constantly adding new people into it. It would be short sighted to think that improv doesn't have some sort of draw. There is an unmistakable pull, like gravity, that brings people in and keeps them here. But if we ever reach a point where “the next big thing” happens that rivals improv (which I see as unlikely just because adults really, authentically just love doing improv) or where we don't see the investment of money (and time) to be worthwhile, then we will see prices drop. My point is simply that a “crash” - that is, an apocalyptic, craft shattering event is highly unlikely. Also, let's be thankful for the craft and it's resilience and adaptability.

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 be 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 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.

Retroskeptic: 40 Days and 40 Nights

The concept of Retro Skeptic works like this: rather than review a movie I have seen recently, I analyze a film based on what I remember about it some time later. A film's true impact can only be measured in context, and when it was present, there was an incomplete picture of context. Also, how memorable is a film? The rules are simple; review a movie that I haven't seen in a while, and I'm not allowed to look anything up on IMDb, Wikipedia, or anything, I can only evaluate it's merits based on what I remember about it.

The film in question this time is 40 Days & 40 Nights (2002, and I think it was released in Spring to capitalize on the Easter demographic). I first saw this in theaters during it's initial run, and I may have encountered it on cable a few times since then when I was home from school visiting my parents. Bottom line: I may have seen this movie three times.

The film opens on a montage of home movies that provides an ellipsis of a relationship between a character that I'm pretty sure was named Josh and is also played by Josh Hartnett and his girlfriend, who was named Ashley maybe. So we see that they used to be really happy, but somewhere along the line the relationship soured and she dumped him. Josh is in a low place, depressed and whatnot, but he salves his depression by having a lot of wanton, casual sex with random women (including one whom it seems slept with him to apologize for having spilled coffee on Josh). Everything about this should be swell, but when Josh is having this sex, he keeps seeing this crack forming on the ceiling above him. His roommate, the stoner from Road Trip (Paul Costanzo, I want to say) is no help because he brazenly likes having casual sex. Josh's brother, a Catholic priest is also no help, but then Josh talks to the Chief Priest (that's a thing, right?) who tells him about Lent, because despite Josh being a Catholic, he's never heard of Lent before. Josh decides to give up all sexual contact in every form for the movie title. Oh and somewhere in here, Ashley gets engaged which makes Josh more despondent.

Cue a music montage where Josh throws away all his porn. Now this plan of his would be all well and good, save for the fact that Josh's coworkers at an internet-selling business learn of his plan and make a betting structure to see how long he'll last. Also, Josh meets a cute girl, who I'm going to say was named something vaguely west coast-y, like Serene (played by Shannyn Sossamon, and aside here, what the hell happened to her?) at the laundromat and they start chatting in that early relationship kind of way. She clearly likes him, and he her, and then Serene gets mad at Josh when she learns of his weird sexless Lent thing. Serene works at a net-nanny company, because in the early 2000's every 20-something living in San Francisco apparently had to have some sort of internet related job. Maybe their was a city ordinance or something. Oh, and I think Maggie Gyllenhaal was Serene's co-worker.

So despite this hiccup, Josh and Serene start seeing each other, and at one point they have sex, kind of, using a feather as a proxy. Josh's commitment gets tested in a couple of ways in the meantime; his boss decides to follow Josh's lead and also gives up on sex to get back at his repressive wife. Two of his female coworkers corner Josh in a supply closet because they're worried his bet will take away the power of women, further re-enforcing the idea of a worldwide woman conspiracy. One of his male co-workers wants to win the bet, so he tries to slip a priapism causing pill into Josh's drink, but the boss drinks it instead. And somewhere in here, Josh visits his sexually forthcoming parents and Josh's priest brother is leaving the priesthood because he wants to diddle nuns. This is all leading up to act 3, where Josh finally reveals it was Ashley who indirectly initiated the Lent thing (not, you know, his sexual Bacchanalia), Ashley's engagement gets broken off, and she hears about the bet. Sensing a way to make some cash, Ashley goes into Josh's apartment on the last night of Lent and has sex with Josh while he's unconscious and handcuffed to a bed. Serene is heartbroken when she sees Ashley leaving, and Josh wins her back by buying her laundry detergent at the laundromat where they originally met. Then they have a lot of sex, because Lent is over, baby! Oh and there was a character named Bagel Guy, who I'm pretty sure was the elder Pete from the Adventures of Pete and Pete.

So ultimately I think this was a modestly forgettable romantic comedy; it has the fairly requisite funny friends, the story was serviceable, and the stars are likable. It's this last one that is of the most interest, though because the casting of Hartnett and Sossamon was clearly intended to capitalize on what was seen as rising star power for both of them at the time. Hartnett did Pearl Harbor and Black Hawk Down around this same time, and Sossamon had done Knight's Tale the year before but neither had done much since (excluding a very small role for Hartnett in Sin City). Most entertaining is that in this universe, not having sex is not only a sin on some level (I think a character asks of Josh early on in if he “hates his penis”) but also toxic – Josh near the end is pale, gaunt, and sallow with all the not-sex. This is a fun little movie; light and frothy, perfect even, for a spring afternoon on TBS.

The Elite

When I was in junior high band, our band teacher came to us one day near the end of the year and posed a question: when auditioning new members for the band, what should their minimum proficiency be? The drummers all insisted on being able to do umpteen paradiddles, flamacues, pataflaflas, and other delightfully, entertainingly named rhythms and rudiments. Brass and woodwinds wanted three octave chromatic scales, five or more scales, double tonguing and other vaguely sexually termed techniques. We were all naming things that we felt we could do well, and we all wanted to feel that when bringing new band members in that we wanted them to meet a minimum skill level – at the very least to preserve the overall proficiency of the group. Insisting on high skill would seem to insure that only very talented and very serious players would get in. Our band director dutifully wrote down all our suggestions (which at the end turned into a fairly long and in depth list of things) and then posed another question: how many of you could do all of this when you joined this band? In the course of our high-minded ideals, we failed to realize how hard this list was – a set of demands that would effectively keep most people out of the organization.

We must never forget just how low improv sits on the hierarchy of needs; improv has never fed the hungry, satiated the thirsty, provided security to the insecure, or loved the lonely. If the world were to come to a crashing halt tomorrow, things that could do those things to the huddled masses would be appreciated much more than a rousing “Freeze Tag”. (Though on the plus side, we could do improv much longer than we could watch TV, movies, play video games, or listen to music; in that respect it's probably one of the most efficient entertainment options. This is one of the symptoms of the modern age and is best exemplified by a thought question I saw in an article recently: the world has ended, and you can escape and take one of three people with you: Brad Pitt, Jessica Alba, or a Scientist. Most people would grab one of the first two people, even though the scientist might actually be useful.) Yet, despite how essentially worthless improv is (not meaning to say that improv cannot give meaning – that is the nature of art – but just to reiterate that it does not fulfill any of the lower tiers needed to survive), what I notice that troubles me is a cult of elitism. I see improvisers time and time again, both as individuals and as teams who act as if what they do is exceedingly important, look down at others that don't conform to them, ostracize those who operate on their own, and treat hangers on with derision.

I like playing with the unaffiliated. I've been getting together once a week with a few improvisers in a very low key, relaxed environment – some are members of a few different groups, some have played in an official setting since they finished their last class, but they all get together because they love doing this improv thing, and they either don't get enough in whatever outlets they already use, or they've been cast aside by an improv group. At the same time, I've met some improvisers who play in a strongly defined improv group who practice a kind of jingoistic, isolationist group think that looks down their nose at the “other”, if they even deign themselves enough to recognize that they exist. Why this is plainly apparent in one aspect: insulation prevents innovation, but not so much in another: we were all that guy once, who wasn't very good, and who didn't have a group to call “home” (hell, I was that guy until pretty recently).

The way I see it is that you can either stay locked in your ivory towers, pretending that what you do is important, wanting people to watch you, but hoping that only the “good” ones get in, or you can come down to everyone else, and try and help others along. The ivory tower self-perpetuates: if you do it, the next group will too. But if you try and share the fire, it will spread too far and bright to be contained. Of course in that very Prometheus-like allegory, it should be pointed out that the Gods did chain him to a rock so that birds could tear him apart for eternity, so take my lessons with a grain of salt, because those who live in the ivory towers will not appreciate your generosity.

InDoc

“Does making a man a knight make him a better fighter?”

“Yes”

Kingdom of Heaven (2005)

Modern storytelling has definitely romanticized the knight and the samurai almost into caricature, yet we remained spurned on by theirs and other similar bands for what we see as noble behavior. We could trace a line from their teachings all the way to the fictional Jedi knight if we wanted, but the origins are in fact much simpler. The knight for example is a champion of the code of chivalry, whose origin is the French word chevalerie, which means roughly “skill with a horse”. The first knights and samurai alike were little more than soldiers or mercenaries, raised by vassals and shogun, respectively. The concern came that when you hire people to specialize in the art of killing, that you needed some sort of internal restraint to keep your skilled warriors in line. Hence the samurai received bushido or “the way of the warrior”, which espouses things like courage, benevolence, honor, and loyalty, and the chivalric code covers three areas, duties to countrymen and fellow Christians, duties to God, and duties to women. It wasn't enough that we needed our warriors to be skilled at killing, but we wanted them from the very beginning to also have a heart and soul. For example, in a study of initiation rituals, historian Mircea Eliade found their function was “to reveal the deep meaning of existence to the new generations and to help them assume the responsibility of being truly men and hence of participating in culture.” Even the early chivalric prototype in the Middle East included poetry and piety in the same breath as skill with a horse or bow.

A more modern indoctrination is “innocent until proven guilty”, which serves as the backbone for almost our entire present day legal system. An indoctrination's primary difference from just being a lesson is that it is a learned knowledge that is gained outside of the arena for questioning thought. Or basically, when you are taught, you are encouraged to look at the whole of knowledge as an external observer and analyze and internalize it yourself; when you are indoctrinated, you are just supposed to accept the teaching as “the way”. Certainly as improvisers, you might think that Our Craft has managed to stay inoculated against such Newspeak encroachments, but in fact you were indoctrinated (likely) during one of your first practices, the “yes, and”. This is a concept that you are not invited to question, you just take at face value that you are supposed to agree and build to information provided to you by your partner. What I find lacking in improv education is how little more attempts are made at providing students some kind of direction in the form of these indocs. We give them yes, and, and then just throw them to the world and say “figure the rest out for yourselves”. It's no wonder that so few improvisers appear able to truly support each other's work. Here's another indoc: “theater of the heart”. This is the concept that you are to cherish each other on stage and treat others as if they are “geniuses, artsits, and poets”. And yet I see a lot improvisers, both experienced and green, that treat each other as if they were gladiators out for blood. They have never been made civilized, so it's more like “Mad Max” than “King Arthur”.

What worries me about how most improvisers are trained is that they are given the way of the sword (i.e. how to swing it (in improv terms, how to do a scene/game/mime)) which is the technical stuff, without giving them the way of the warrior (i.e. who to swing your sword at and why (in improv terms, the “theatre of the heart”, organic group based thinking) which is the stuff that makes improvisers more than just technicians and makes them artists. But even beyond just making them better improvisers, it makes them real people who can function and contribute, discover and help, rather than razing the world to the ground. That kind of stuff you can't get from a class or a book (or even, heaven forbid, a blog), you get that kind of stuff by being involved in communities, and more importantly, communities that live by that way of thinking. At the same time, be aware of what you're teaching other improvisers just by how you work. You'd be surprised how many habits are picked up just by others watching you and taking that as “the way of the improvisers”.

Single

Allow me to start by being candid about my dating history; or at least as candid as one can be without truly “kissing and telling”. I have gone steady with a grand total of five women in my entire life. I use the vaguely outmoded term going steady because, in my mind, it is far more accurate in describing the activity. “Dating” seems too casual, as if just meeting for coffee were sufficient and “girlfriend” feels far too official – the kind of thing that you could change your Facebook status to. (I do sometimes miss the term “going out” that was popular when I was in junior/senior high school, but taken literally doesn't make sense and only imparts some sense when you understand the colloquial use.) Of those five women, I dated no single one for longer than five months, and three of them were during high school. The last one ended in March 2014. Excluding that relationship, I have gone a grand total of five dates in the last five years, none of which were second dates. (As I said, I'm going to be candid, which will likely not be charming or uplifting.)

What is the point of this depression dredging material, you ask? I'm not looking for pity, and I'm also in no way boasting about my single life. In order for me to speak frankly about being as single as I am, you need to understand just how single I am. (Answer: very.)

Being single in college is fine; the vast majority of people you meet are also single, engaged in a massive game of musical chairs wherein the music only stops in certain sections of the circle at any one time. When you meet someone who is in a relationship, you're usually assured of its brevity; those in long-term (>1 year) or “serious” relationships are extremely uncommon – the unicorns of the university. This is, for the most part, fine. You likely have a fairly large circle of friends in a similar situation, and you can always have someone to a) commiserate with and/or b) pine with. The change happens very slowly however from one crystalline state to the other. One day, your usual going out/game/movie/whatever night is different and Sean has a date. At first, this doesn't seem unusual because your friends are always going on occasional dates here and there, so it will only be with hindsight after a few months that you realize this is “serious dating” and that you will start to see your friend a lot less.

I feel like I should stop here and point out that this is not a missive against women or men violating a “bro code” or placing “hos before bros”. I am authentically happy anytime one of my friends settled down and with exceedingly few exceptions the counterparts they have selected have been wonderful. I'm just trying to tell the narrative.

Even the loss of one of your friends will likely not raise a red flag, because you still have the rest of your friends. You're not alone, yet. This process will continue to repeat however, and the next thing you know, you're the only single friend you really know. Or, possibly even worse, there is one other single friend and you two are forced to hang out as the only ones who can. If you're lucky, you'll like this person. (Though god forbid they are a member of the opposite sex (or same sex, depending on how you swing) because there will be no end to attempts at unifying Germany, so to speak. This process seems to happen so seamlessly, so silently, like a background computer program that it is quite a while before you realize the music stopped on the musical chairs game a long time ago and every single one of your friends is in a long-term committed relationship.

Why is this bad, you ask? So many websites, Tumblr feeds, books, and memes constantly extol the virtues of being single (Do what you want! Have more money! Live free! the pamphlets would say). There are two primary problems: being single is lonely and being single is a threat to your friends.

First, that being single is lonely seems like a no-brainer. But I'm going to paint a picture. It's Saturday night, and I've just done an improv show with a bunch of my friends. All of their significant others need not be present for this to work. If you're lucky, you all go out to the bar for post-show frivolity and drinks; if you're unlucky, only a few of you will actually be able to participate in the ever evaporating team-bonding. You have drinks, you talk about the show or movies or whatever, and slowly your paired friends depart either with or to join their partners at home. Being the only person left, you pay your tab, get a burrito at the late night place next door, and return home to watch Hulu until you fall asleep. (And, scene.) This is quite nearly all of my going out experiences. Being single in a group of paired friends is a detriment, because you get forgotten. Our world is geared to couples – tables have an even number of chairs. Everything about being an adult is built for “double occupancy” and your coupled friends will throw parties that you will only find out about when the pictures appear on Facebook the following morning because the phrase “odd man out” exists for a reason.

This leads to your being a detriment to your friends, and it should be pointed out that this is actually very altruistic. Your friends want you to be happy and to join them in a world of “everyone plus significant others are invited.” I realized this one night when I was at a birthday party, when a friend's girlfriend pulled me aside to inquire why I was single. I looked around the party to realize that I was the only single person in a room of 20 people. I had become a social pariah. Being unattached and alone in a room full of people who are happy is a potential threat to social order – an unpleasant reminder.

“Why are you single? You're such a catch.” she said to me. Believe me, it wasn't a choice. But that line right at the end about being a “catch” is the exact problem. On paper, I appear very appealing: smart, educated, healthy, good family, employed, and funny. I am in some ways, better on paper than some of my friends. But people do not choose to date other people based on a character sheet. It doesn't matter how appealing I make my profile – there must obviously be something wrong with me that potential dates can see but that can't be named. Available partners are without fail uninterested in me; people either “like” you or they don't.

All the women I meet fall into one of three categories: already committed, homosexual, or uninterested in me. Without exception. One of my friends casually said at a party about me “Oh, he never dates anyone”, which believe me is not by choice. I have been turned down more times than I can count, and the number of empty chairs is rapidly fleeting.

I dated someone last year who, when I told her about my dating background, said that “she would like to send me out into the world to get some experience and then come back in a few years”. I have reached the ultimate catch-22: too inexperienced to date, no dates to get experience. This is frustrating, to say the least.

People's advice is generally bullshit: “love will find you when you're not looking for it” would essentially describe all of my college and grad school years almost exactly and “put yourself out there” would describe 2008-present. The problem is that there is literally no way to “make” dating happen. You can't actually purchase it, you can't build it from scratch, and you can't will it into existence. It either happens, or it doesn't. And the problem becomes additive: girls don't want to date boys who are essentially “new” to dating. The older I've gotten, the harder it's become to get into a relationship. When you're 20 being awkward on a date is expected, and when you're 30 it's downright creepy.

I am okay being alone. At this point, I've had a lot of practice. But being truly alone – that is when your friends ostracize you because you can't get a date – is hard. You probably even have that friend who's never really in a relationship, but always has a date. He has someone to go home to at night. But the real problem is that your interests start to diverge from your friend's. And there's no fixing that. You are living a life that you can't alter and that makes you an oddity.

(This essay written one night over a burrito in lieu of watching Hulu.)

The Beginning of the Beguine

First off: If you're reading this, thank you.  I always teach my students that communication is information traveling from one point to another.  If a train leaves a station and never arrives at the next one, then no transmission of information has occurred; that you're reading this allows those businessmen to go about their day.  For that I am eternally grateful.

Second: every blog post you have read up to this point was written during a period of particular industry for me in 2011-2012.  They were all loaded into the blog with release dates and times and then the blog left to its own devices.  So for the last 2 years or so, blogs were released like clockwork because they were supposed to.

There was something nice about this.  One, it meant I could be unbelievably lazy and basically quit writing.  (Nice and also bad.  It's a double edged sword.)  My writing continued to be "published" (as much as a free improv/movie/bullshit blog can be considered publishing) and I could focus on other projects.  Since the last time I sat down to write, San Diego has gotten a real, legitimate longform improv theater; sold out classes, standing room only shows, and now two nationally attended and exceedingly successful festivals.  2014 turned out to be a major growth year for San Diego improv, probably the first real "boom year" in over a decade.  Occasionally I would meet a student who mentioned that they read my blog, and I would have a twinge of panic.  This is mostly because I never expect anyone to read this (but low and behold we crossed the 10000 page view mark a while ago, apparently) and also because I don't really remember what's in this time capsule.  I shudder to even go back now and look at what I thought or -worse- how I wrote.

The other nice, and morbid, thing, is that I always thought that if I died suddenly there would still be a little way that I would continue to exist.  At least until the blogs ran out.  Then I would really not exist.

That brings me to this post.  I'm out of blogs.  Everything I wrote has already been published, and now I must start writing again.  Everything you read from this point on has been written recently (or, in very few cases, is a post I started on, never really got very far in, and have actually made a real post, not just a two sentence idea, out of it).

So thank you for reading.  If you've posted a post somewhere or recommended it to someone else, thank you.  If you've come to see a show or taken a class, thanks for that as well.  This is all for nought if it has not an audience.  And this is all for nought if I do not create new content.

Commitment Game

One of the great things about improv groups is their mutability; no where in any book or blog does it say that in order for improv to work, it must have “these” people. Improv groups change rosters every now and then, people come and go, and hey, that's just life. Work schedules, moving, just life – all of these things tend to interfere, and often the first thing to take the hit in order for your schedule to accommodate is that one thing you do a week for a couple of hours that you don't even get paid for. Even though these things do happen – there's no reason to say that they have to happen.

This is a tricky artform that we do, and its mutability, ease of doing, low cost, and even worse, it's capacity to be just picked up and dropped just as easily makes it very easy to treat it with a certain degree of carelessness, especially for the 90% or so of improvisers that do it as a hobby. Improv groups, like a lot of other things, go through various periods – there will be times when it feels like everything is clicking, things are going great, everyone is getting a long, and you drive home every time after practice with an electric feeling in your body. At the same time, there will be periods where you can't even remember why you do it, when nothing works right, and when you want to just walk away. Certainly there is nothing stopping you, and that's part of improv's mercurial nature – it's really easy to just drop it, forget about it, and quit, or start a new group all together. “This time, things will be different, because we get to start from scratch, etc.” Keeping improv groups going is hard work – any body who says different is lying. Those same life things that can eventually derail the group altogether are at work everyday; it's just that most of the time, they don't mount up to the point where they mess with your schedule. You have to work late, miss a week so you can go to a family reunion, meet a new boy/girl that you want to spend every moment with – all these things happen all the time.

But what makes the difference, is your commitment to your team mates. No one can decide for you how much you want to play with your team – only you can. Every time one of these life “things” happens, you decide how much you want to keep doing it. You're having a lousy day; do you go to practice anyway, or just stay home, watching T.V. Instead? I can tell you this: as hard as it is to keep a group going, it's much harder to start one from nothing. It's those moments, the ones where you've had enough, where your seconds from the door that make all the difference in a group. It's easy to walk out the door – it's much bolder move to stay. If you don't like a group the way it is, if it's not working for you, it's up to you to make the decision to change it. I guarantee you, if you don't like something about a group, chances are someone else probably echoes your opinion somewhere in the group, and you will get much more out of addressing it and doing something about it than you will out of just giving up. Most groups suffer from chronic internal commitment issues. Everyone expects someone else to do the hard work for them, and the last dying breaths you see out of that kind of group is every week a different person not showing up to practice – the long ride circling the drain. But what we do on stage isn't the only group work we do – it's in the very structure of the group itself. You can't just presuppose that you'll do group work from the time you get your suggestion until the lights get pulled and spend the rest of your time being an individual. You have to play for your team the whole time.

Life things will happen – they are unavoidable. The question is which way will you choose – individual or group?

“If you're not having fun, you're the asshole.” - Rachael Mason, iO Training Center Director

Not a Hobby

When I first started improvising with my friends in college, we improvised one night a week – every Thursday, in the Student Union building on campus. When we wanted to do shows, we just canceled practice and had the show in the same room, same time – which is much easier to do at a suitcase college, since there's not really anyone around, ever, on the weekends. We loved improvising, but for us, one night a week was enough. We saw the Second City TourCo when they came to town, and traveled to Starkville, MS one weekend for a comedy festival (where it turns out MSU is not a suitcase college at all), but that was about it for extracurriculars. We liked improv, but we had other things, and it was never more than just a hobby for any of us.

What I've noticed in my time since then is that improv's hobby roots are starting to not even touch the ground anymore. (Now I should point out that most of my friends are hardcore or aspiring hardcore improvisers, so my point-of-view is little skewed for analysis of the greater “scene”. And I do have two blogs, a podcast, classes, and more improv than time, so I'm one to talk.) I was reading Matthew Sweet's “Something Wonderful Right Away”, and he points out that the original improvisers from the University of Chicago were all hard science and philosophy majors, and while a number of them went on to successful careers in television and film, they did it in the more traditional pursuits of writing or acting – not improvisation. Now there are a lot of people whose comedic (and dramatic) pursuits are isolated to the improvised arts, and I find very few (and vanishing number of) people who have only a passing interest in improv.

This is peculiar because a whole bunch of other crafts have people who are casual or hobbyist practitioners. I can think of a bunch of people (my mother included) who will knit, sew, crochet, or needlepoint for fun, but none of them talk about how much they wish they could do it seven nights a week, and maybe one with a good keyboardist. My father was a skilled woodworker, and could make lots of things like chairs, desks, shelves, and bassoon stands, but he never talked about a great carpenter who you could see on the mainstage on Tuesday nights. What I'm talking about here is a kind of ontological threshold where something exists as a result of it's own independence as a thing, with it's own heroes, language, momentum – it can stand on its own. Nowhere but improv, it seems, are there so many people not willing to settle for anything less than all improv, all the time.

Here's a great example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duhU_fZu7P0 For those that didn't watch it, it's a video called “Shit Improvisers Say”. Here's another good example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkxFbz1a3As It's called “How to Spot an Improviser”. They are both hilarious, but only if you know improv, otherwise they are some incomprehensible Dada-esque pieces. (I'll also point to the acutely hilarious @ImprovCoach twitter feed.) We are rapidly losing (or not gaining, perhaps more appropriately) participants in our art who just hobbyists. Instead, we have an overabundance of people who have in-jokes, peculiar language, and who want to be in 50 different groups (the most common complaint I've heard in the last year is that all the groups in town are just different combinations of the same twenty people with different team names).

While nothing not taken in moderation is a good thing, I should point out that this is great in a lot of ways, people taking what we do seriously (and not just neutral seriousness either, but a fervent, zealous, passionate sincerity) is the gateway to mainstream understanding and acceptance. Such devotion is the kind of problem you want to have. It does create two issues, 1) a prohibitively high cost to entry – a need to have years of workshops and classes, and the ability to participate all the time, else imps face having to remain on the outside while a cultural elite dominates from within and 2) a feedback mechanism that chokes out external influence (See the above videos for indications of our craft inbreeding. Or let me put it another way – we can do anything we want, and I have seen a dozen scenes where characters discuss improvising, but not one scene set an airport baggage carousel.). And if there's one thing I've learned from ComicCon, it's that no matter how nerdy you are, there's always someone nerdier – and that kind of geekular brinkmanship is terrifying. (Which by the way, if you thought you sacrificed for improv, read about this guy who drove 1700 miles a week to take classes in Chicago: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2009-11-16/news/0911150456_1_classes-drive-time-miles). The positives are terrific though – a driving momentum that demands new, interesting, creative energy all the time, and virtually guarantees that someone will always be doing something new.

But I suppose most interesting is the question of why – what is it about improv that inspires such fervent devotion? Is it that improv feels so close to real life, and is so instantly expressable? Or that it feels so tantalizingly analyzed and un-tamable at the same time? Or even just that it requires no preparation (by design) and is therefore attractive to a generation of short-attention spans and little motivation? Just saying that it is fun seems insufficient, there are lots of things that are fun – but maybe it's because it feels like it's a new frontier. A wide open wilderness with lots of room for imps to find their place in, and just like any explorers, we can sense the call of unknown.