Why We 'Prov

I know, I know.  It's been another very long gap since the last time my fingers graced the MacBook; this is less of an excuse or an explanation than it is now just pure fact.  Since the last time I posted, I have continued to work full time, commute for 2 hours a day, got an improv team, Boy Moms (nee Ketchup on Vegetables), and was cast in a production of Midsummer Night's Dream - if you find yourself in Chicago in June on a Sunday afternoon, I mostly will suggest this as a good time.

I find myself tired all the time; not so much from "doing" - when in San Diego I rarely had even a single free night, and I now find myself often with too much time.  I watch a lot of stuff now, but mostly find myself listless and stressed: conditions which are not exactly conducive to the mixed reward of sitting down to write.    I've been battling depression for a few months now - undiagnosed, and surely a mild depression, I would never presume to be struggling with mental health at the level of true depressives, but I'm cognizant enough to recognize the signs.  This isn't meant to try and elicit any help from anyone, when in fact a) most people don't know what help to offer and even then won't offer much beyond "grab a beer, sometime", b) usually are too busy to really help, and c) even when people offer an ear, they usually get bored with "helping" after an email or two.  (A side effect of our Twitter Culture - we assume everything can be resolved with a tweet or a post, but don't really have the wherewithal to follow through if something more is required.)

I talked last time about my considering quitting improv - it's still on the table, I suppose.  I think I keep looking for a sign or indication that one choice or the other is "right".  I still have trouble figuring out "why" I'm doing it.  It leads to an interesting analysis of why we engage in really anything.  When I posted last time (supportive) people offered:

1. "You inspired me." Deeply flattering and humbling, but I would ultimately be very skeptical and suspicious of someone who set out to do something with the express purpose of inspiring others.  At face value, it appears altruistic, but would you trust someone who said they only do things to make people fawn over them, idolize them, and/or get prophets?  Certainly inspiration is a thing, but I think this is in reality a byproduct of someone's work and can not, in good conscience, be the end goal.

2. "It's fun."  True, probably 65% of the time.  There are of course many things that people can do that are fun, and often single individuals will have multiple "fun" activities they engage in (video games, movies, banjo playing, stamp collecting, scrimshaw viewing) so to say one activity takes the cake and is the thing feels a little extreme.

3. "It's a passion."  True, for the small percentage of people who own theaters, teach classes, or have dreams of moving to Hollywood.  For these people, they cannot live without improvisation, both monetarily for creature comforts like food and rent, and for their own spiritual life.  I guess I can see myself doing other things, so I can't count this one."

4. "All your friends and social contacts are there."  If all your friends were heroin users would you also feel obligated to do heroin?  And what would happen if heroin magically ceased to exist?  If your only social structure exists in a weekly 2 hour practice and nowhere else, can you truly count those people as friends?

5. "You're good at at."  Again, humbling and flattering, but I objectively feel that I am only OK and have limited precision.  If I sucked at making chairs, would it be worth it to create a dinette set?  Or, if I were say, the best at making chairs, but everyone else was also really good at making chairs, would the chair community feel a loss if I quit making rockers?  Or would everyone else just keep on making chairs?

6.  "It makes you a better person."  Probably true, though I have also known some pretty garbage people who are also improvisers, so doing the craft is not a guarantee that you won't be petty, short-sighted, jealous, derivative, non-collaborative, disloyal, unoriginal, or marginalizing.  And while I do agree that if more people did improv the world would likely be improved in some capacity, I can't shake the feeling that this reason is the kind of quote that theater owners put on websites to sell classes.  While it is likely accurate (but by no means definite) it's regular co-opting for capitalist gain sticks in my craw.

Probably more than anything, I do improv because it's what I've been doing.  Patterns of behavior tend to continue once established.  I improv, therefore I am.  Improvisatio ergo sum.

On Improv and Homecoming

I'm headed back to San Diego this week, for the first time since I left back in September.  (This both simultaneously feels like yesterday and approximately 100 years ago.  Such is the nature of relativistic experience.)  My experiences with improv homecomings have always been bittersweet; whenever I find myself back in southern Mississippi, I always reach out to my former teammates in Biloxi and Hattiesburg - I've found in general that neither group is particularly interested in opening up the doors for past membership.

I think this is mostly due to the fact that improv has a notoriously short attention span (something I've discussed many times in the archives) and teams move on.  Our capacity to entertain old acquaintances is largely a function of our endearment to them, something that diminishes rapidly with time (and also something teams are more concerned about waves in than individuals).  Teams change, evolve, as do the players, and everyone gets a little hesitant about playing around with people that have started to suspiciously look like strangers.  Another aspect is the "little dictator"; as teams change, so does the leadership.  I don't think anyone outside of the improv community could understand it, but who is In Charge, who is Calling the Shots, and who Has Authority is a very contentious and aggressively fought for aspect of improv.  People will fight tooth and nail for years to hold the cards and have a deeply vested interest in maintaining their hold.  Outside people, getting personal attention and "special" treatment, have a certain cachet and currency of sentiment that can threaten "little dictators", when they exist.

The big issue though, is the abandoned home issue.  Improv is nearly completely built on reputation, notoriety, and putting in the hours.  Theaters tend to not value talent or ability so much as loyalty and consistency.  While you're in house and working hard, that is rewarded, but when you leave, new people move up to fill personnel vacuums, and have a vested interest in maintaining their positions.  The biggest issue with coming home is finding out that home outgrew you, and that there's no room at the inn.

What have I been up to since I left?  I still work full time, though I now have 2 hours of commute every day on the train.  I'm taking three different improv classes right now, about halfway through both Annoyance and the Chicago Improv Studio programs, but not performing regularly.  I've had a small handful of pickup shows (five, to be exact), and one show with my fellow San Diegan, Laurel, but nothing regular.  I'm not rehearsing regularly, and only watching shows with any regularity.  The tradeoff in moving to a bigger pond is that you become a smaller fish by default.  I would describe my life as mostly "empty" and "rudderless" since I left.

I miss performing, teaching, and coaching of course - these were all regular challenges that pushed me and tested me all the time, and it filled my hours completely and fully.  But I really miss rehearsal regularity the most - having a regular group of peers to work with, play with, and hang out with.  I won't lie - Chicago has been exceedingly lonely, and I have too much time to realize how alone I am.

I'm excited to be back for a weekend; I need to see some friendly faces and some familiar turf, despite how much wrangling had to happen to squeeze me in anywhere.  I'm very excited to do a show on Saturday - one with a partner who I love performing with in a show that I enjoy and know well.  I didn't realize it when we were performing regularly, but Fourth Date is the most rewarding experience I've had as an improviser - the one show that I can honestly say that I felt most like an equal as a member.  For every strength I had, Kate had a comparable (weakness doesn't sound fair - non-strength? skill-gap?) and vice versa, and every group decision was reached equally, fairly, and discussed.  Not sure what I did to deserve such a partner, but I'm thankful I lucked into it.  I've missed that show and Kate most of all, so I'm glad to get back to it, even for just a night.

If you've followed my Twitter, you'll know I've been kicking around quitting improv for a bit now.  The reasons are various, but the Cliff's Notes are that I just don't know what the point is for me anymore.  People have recommended a "short break", but I really don't see the point of taking three months off - if I stop, it'll be for good, so I want to make sure I'm making the right choice to stop.  Whether or not I quit and the reasons for doing so is a discussion for a different post (or a conversation over a beer), but it's one I've been going back and forth on since November or so.

I know everyone in San Diego is busy, and everyone has a show, and it's just not a good weekend, but if you can, I hope to see you either at the show at Gym Standard at 8 on Saturday, or if you can spare a minute, I hope we can catch up.  Coming home, even temporarily, is often hollow - and the echoes can be deafening.

Heroes Make Us Anxious

It's really no surprise that the stories we tell and share are all truly about some deep seeded anxiety.  We are highly developed as a modern species, but that doesn't replace that somewhere inside of us lurks an animal, and those animals are still primarily driven by fear.  Storytelling, both modern and ancient, are all about dealing with those fears as a way to shine lights in dark corners.

Horror movies are the most obvious; every single horror movie is about some fear (obviously), and their ability to pray on Fear of the Unknown and Fear of Alone (or sometimes both) is critical to their ability to invoke fear in viewers.  We of course remain constant consumers of horror movies because they play with our fear, and what horror movies are popular is equally driven but what continues to make us afraid in an evolving capacity.  Take a look at zombie movies, which have a very storied and long history - early zombie movies didn't feature zombies as we have them today, instead they were the traditional Haitian zombies of living men bewitched of their own autonomy and made slaves.  This Fear of Loss of Self was very much the theme in White Zombie and on through the first 40 or so years of the genre.

George Romero's Night of the Living Dead made the zombies truly dead: reanimated corpses hungering for living flesh.  This is a walking, corporeal reminder of our own eventual demise that we often try and bury or burn to keep it out of sight.  We don't want to have our own fragile, decaying truth around, and here it is Fear of Death incarnate shambling after us.  That the focus of zombie movies has changed is no surprise; it used to be about dealing with the moments right after an outbreak, when the apocalypse was nigh, but movies like 28 Days Later and TV's The Walking Dead move the story to well after the zombie's first arrival.  Fear of Death is still there, but moved much more to the forefront are Fear of Others (think Negan or Cillian Murphy) and Fear of Ourselves (think Rick).  When the chips are down (for everyone), how much will they betray each other to put the weak under their yoke, and how much will we betray ourselves and our own morals just to survive?

In the years after 9/11, fear has become a large part of our lives and our pop culture, we wanted all our heroes dirtier and grimmer, because that is how we saw ourselves.  Look back to 2003 and 2004 (the earliest years, given long production and release schedules, to be affected), and our movies were Kill Bill, The Punisher, and Man on Fire, where we tried to deal with Fear of Revenge.  What would a dogged pursuit of retribution mean to our lives and the lives of those around us?

Horror movies individual fears have always been driven by fears of the moment.  It isn't a surprise that The Ring, about a haunted video tape, should come out right when we as a culture was trying to get rid of physical media (and certainly older, "outdated" physical media), and also that the only way to break the curse was to follow a meme-tic, "copy & share" approach that drives the internet (or at least Facebook.  A lot of similar trends can often be chalked up to imitations of successful originators, but what is truly fearful is very of the times.

Here's a list of the top grossing supernatural horror movies from the last decade and half, and what are some of the relevant fears:

Annabelle (2014) - Fear of Domestic Life
The Conjuring (2013) - Fear of New Homes
Woman in Black (2012) - Fear of the Distant Past
Paranormal Activity 3 (2011) - Fear that Our Technology Can Not Protect Us
Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) - Same
Paranormal Activity (2009) - Same
The Eye (2008) - Fear of Piercing the Veil
1408 (2007) - Fear of What We Believe Actually Coming True
The Omen (2006) - Fear of Children, Especially Our Own
Saw II (2005) - Fear of the Depravity of Man
The Grudge (2004) - Fear of Unfinished Business
Final Destination 2 (2003) - Fear that Death Will Get Us No Matter What
The Ring (2002) - Previously discussed
The Others (2001) - Fear of Surviving On Our Own
What Lies Beneath (2000) - Fear of Our Partner
Sixth Sense (1999) - Fear of Piercing the Veil

It's easy of course, to point to horror movies though; these things are supposed to scare us, but why are superheroes so popular right now?  Of course, hero stories have always had some popularity, the ancient Greeks and Romans told stories of demigods, gods, and mythical creatures doing either stories of immense bravery or supernatural powers themselves, and the tradition carries on.  Superheroes (specifically the cape and cowl variety) have been popular themselves since the 30's, with regular consumers, but why do we as a larger culture love superheroes so much now?  These are all about Fear of Actually Being Able to Affect Change, very important at a time when everyone has a voice through their Twitter account, but no real ability to do anything, instead creating a cacophony of screaming voices.

Also up for discussion is Sherlock Holmes; reportedly the most portrayed character in all of TV and film, and the current star of two successful TV series, not to mention countless imitators in spirit (House, Castle, John Doe, Bones to name a few).  Characters who are often inhuman, both in their abilities of deduction and recall, and also in their inability to easily interact with other humans.  Sherlock entered modern culture at a time when science and reason were becoming more mainstream, and a result he is Fear of Knowledge.  We now all have a veritable "Sherlock Holmes" of our own, riding around in our pockets (provided we have WiFi or a 4G connection), yet we intuitively understand that reference knowledge is meaningless without interpretation, function, and context.

And that, my dear Watson, scares us.