My life is surrounded by improv. These writing exercises are essentially improvisation. The dancing I do at Body Choir, when I do Body Choir (which hasn't been much lately, but I do miss it and I do intend to get back to it before too long) is improvisation. There's also the Contact Improv, which is a big part of the Body Choir experience for some (it definitely is for me) which is not all that Body Choir is, but Body Choir has those elements. It's like Contact Improv is all Contact Improv and Body Choir is part Contact Improv, if that makes any sense at all!And now I just got word from the Woman at the Cold Towne Theater that the comedy improv class I'm starting on Saturday there (Improv 101, though I've already taken a few classes of the first level when I was in Nashville) will be led by a guy named Chris Trew, whom I saw this past Sunday night doing his thing with Tami Nelson (the Woman of whom I spoke earlier, another of the Cold Towne people, the two of them together called One A.M.). They were quite good.
Steven went with me. He's not a big fan of comedy improv, I don't think -- I believe he wouldn't go on his own and he would go specifically for me, particularly if I was participating, but also at my suggestion, as it was on Sunday (as it were?). He was impressed with One A.M., said he would search them out to see them perform. So perhaps I am mistaken about his lack of interest in the art form. Perhaps he just wouldn't do it himself and that is the only reason he wouldn't search it out on his own.
When I was in San Francisco, I "talked" his old friend and my good friend M. into going to see an improv group there. It wasn't far from her apartment and Steven wasn't in town for some reason (he was living there then, with M., but he was gone somewhere, I think to a film festival for Life In A Box), and it was during the time that I was taking improv classes in Nashville. The improv group we saw did a musical on the spot and I remember it being good. I remember that M. liked it a lot, surprised herself by how much she liked it, I think she said, because she didn't think she would like it at all.
I think there are a lot of people that fall in that group. Bad comedy improv is dreadful, and it isn't made so necessarily just by the performers individually, sometimes it probably has to do with how well the performers get along or any number of things that might come into play on that night.
I am a bit nervous about it, about actually doing improv in front of an audience. I know that I have a natural wit, but I am also incredibly intimidated by other people at times, as well as by my own self. I don't want to do improv because--- I want to start that sentence over. I think I am drawn to improv (of all sorts) because I am trying to gain a better understanding of myself, because I am trying to become more comfortable with who I am.
The two people I saw onstage on Sunday night were totally comfortable with themselves, with what they had to offer each other, what they had to offer the audience, and themselves. Maybe it was illusion. But it didn't appear that way. If that was discomfort, then I want to be able to express my discomfort as comfortably as they were displaying theirs. It would be a freeing experience.
I think I am afraid of the idea of it because it feels a bit like junior high school, or high school, take your pick. I would probably choose eighth grade. That was when everything changed for me, when my humor was suddenly not enough to get me through awkward social situations.
