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Monday, November 16, 2015

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.