Improv Resource Center - Forums
Finished the Wednesday 11/26 NY Times crossword puzzle.
First clue solved: “Reid of ‘American Pie’” (“Tara”).
Words I had to look up afterward: wadi, a usually dry valley or ravine, especially in Arabia or North Africa, through which a stream flows during the rainy season, or the stream or torrent running through such a ravine.
I’ve been thinking about keeping track of which clues I solve first. It’s entirely random, but it’s better when it’s something highbrow. I’d rather be able to say that it was the name of a Sartre play that leapt off the page than one of the cast members of American Pie.
* * * * *
Dear Dr. X,
I can’t tell you how excited I am to be starting therapy with you. I’d always prided myself on being someone who didn’t need therapy. My childhood and early adulthood were far from pain-free, but I survived, and my battle scars were something to show off while drinking, like the scars Richard Dreyfus and Robert Shaw were so proud of in Jaws. And being a sort of amateur psychologist myself (how you must loathe my type), I thought I had myself figured out. I’m oversensitive to being blamed for things that aren’t my fault because I was the oldest child. I crave attention and approval because I got addicted to it in my formative years, when I was somewhat of a marvel for being able to read so early. My insecurity stems from my having been very short for most of my childhood, but is somewhat masked by my enjoyment of good conversation, which I learned as a kid who was much more comfortable talking to adults than my peers.
You see? Case closed. What’s to figure out?
Only I seem to be at another turning point in my life, one of many. (People attach so much importance to mid-life crises, but I find that I seem to go through a mid-life crisis every five years or so. Someone should come up with better names for these crises. There’s the out-of-college crisis, the about-to-turn-30 crisis, the my-career-is-going-in-the-wrong-direction crisis, which everyone now goes through well before they reach middle age, etc.) I hate my job with a passion, but as my wife points out, I wasn’t all that happy at the last three either. My writing has met with near success, but not the kind of success I feel I should have achieved by this age. And then there’s this improvisation thing, which I got into because I wanted the chance to express myself creatively, but which has birthed a whole new set of insecurities and anxieties, or rather, new permutations of the old ones.
So you can see that it’s fortunate that I’ve found someone to talk to who knows about improv. I’ve done a bit of research about you. Apparently you were a bit of a rising star in the early nineties. You’ll have to tell me what it was like at Second City and IO some time, and why you’ve withdrawn from that world into the less glamorous realm of psychotherapy.
You asked for my improv biography, so here goes. I started in the Spring of 2002 at the UCB Theater, under the tutelage of George Baedecker. I’d had some theater and comedyexperience: I was in two of the senior plays in high school (though I never took a drama class, being more of a “band fag” myself), and in my twenties I formed a theatrical company with another playwright, an actor and a director, putting up two of my plays and acting in a third. (The one I acted in, Pipe Bomb Sonata, was written by Jason, the other playwright, and was performed at the NY International Fringe Festival in the same theater as Urinetown.) I also had tryed my hand at stand-up comedy, though I found myself depressed at the thought of all the open mike nights I would have to go to in order to make something of myself.
My level one class at UCB was exhilirating, like doing ecstasy for the first time. The class was full of talented girls (including Erika, who just became the first of my class to be put on a Harold Team) and I found that it wasn’t particularly hard for me to grasp the basic tenets of improv and to get laughs. I was hooked. Subsequent classes were less rewarding, as is often the case, considering that’s where most of the hard work must be done, but by then I was watching shows regularly and knew what I wanted: to be one of this crowd of ridiculously talented people; to be on a Harold team, sure, but more importantly, to be liked, loved, respected, to share jokes and beers and late night conversations and to know that I deserved to be among them.
Screenplay competitions, standardized tests, Harold team auditions....Why do I need to make myself pass tests all the time? Is that my only measure of my worth?
So...level two with Brian Huskey, three with Paul Scheer, four with Billy Merritt, where I stumbled into something great. This was Billy’s second Documentary class, and now I was in a class with people who were on a higher level than my previous classmates had been. Steve Buck was on Neutrino, and Andy Rocco, one week into the class, was put onto Monkeydick a couple of days after his triumphant 3-on-3 wild card performance with Rob Huebel and Billy Hot Chocolate. (Before the class, I just knew Andy as Jon Daly’s sidekick in his otherwise one-man sketch show, Balls Out.) For the first time, I felt as if I had to really struggle to keep up. But I was having fun, and I was proud to be a part of it. (This was also during the emotional roller coaster of my most recent brush with success, my screenplay getting into the top 50 scripts for Project Greenlight.)
We kept working at the Documentary (especially those of us who had to work harder), performing at Cinema Classics and Parkside with the previous Documentary class and, eventually, the next one. This was the beginning of 2003. I took Delaney’s level 4 performance class and Ian Roberts’ sketch class. Harold Team auditions approached and I made the sort of half-hearted wish I always make: that I would at least make it past the first round of cuts. I didn’t. I predicted, from having performed with many of them in the Documentary, four of the people who would be picked for the team that would become DIllinger: Brett, Joe, Sarah and Anthony. (Amey was my other prediction, but she would have to wait a few more months for her call.) Dillinger was a dream team full of people I loved (or would have loved) to improvise with, but I was OK with not being on the team. I wasn’t ready. I just wished I’d gotten the callback. Just a sign that I wasn’t kidding myself.
By now, I imagine you can see a theme, or two. Yes, I am dealing with issues of envy. More so now than then. Pre-Documentary, I viewed everyone who was on a Harold Team as on a different level than I was. The relatively new My Kickass Van was already a team when I started seeing shows, and though I saw Police Chief Rumble’s debut show (along with Rocco’s 3-on-3 performance, one of my favorite moments at the theater), I had never improvised with any of them. After the Dillinger auditions, though, my peers were being chosen for Harold teams: Kate, Amey, Violet, Erika, Maggie, John Reynolds...all people whom I’d improvised with, and all deserving of the honor. But now instead of saying to myself that I was not yet ready, I was asking myself, well, should I be ready by now? Now I was comparing myself to everyone who was on a Harold team. How do I stack up against that person?
Things were going well, though. The Documentary got a run at the UCB, and I survived a couple of rounds of cuts (once those now on Harold teams had been removed, I should add.) I was doing some of my best work, thanks to my talented and supportive teammates. Being a part of the Doc crew now called the Locals has been both a pleasure and a huge influence, and I look forward to our future projects, including another run doing the Documentary at the theater in December, a sketch show we hope to debut in March (we really need to get started on that) and, hopefully, some Harold work.
This year I also took Armando Diaz’s Instant Brilliance class, out of which sprung a temporary performance group called Puppy Teeth, coached by Ed Herbstman. I learned a lot working with a whole new group of people and approaching improv from a completely different angle. I felt like a martial artist learning a different style of kung fu. Then there’s the musical improv group that Danielle and I started, finally named Famous John. We’ve had tons of ups and downs in the past year, with a couple of rounds of defections, but I look forward to finally performing. Even if nothing else came of it, musical improv has helped with one of my biggest problems in improv, my ability to think, or respond without thinking, quickly. And again, working with Rob Schiffman and Travis Ploeger from CCL has given me another chance to put what I’ve learned at the UCB in a larger context.
I’m running out of steam a little bit, distracted by the welcoming smells of the Thanksgiving meal Tracey is cooking up for us. In my next letter, more about envy, probably, plus Tracey’s concerns about the amount of time I spend in the improv world, and my own. I look forward to your repsonse. Have a lovely and relaxing holiday weekend.
Your humble servant (Tracey was just saying people should use that phrase more often),
El Jefe
First clue solved: “Reid of ‘American Pie’” (“Tara”).
Words I had to look up afterward: wadi, a usually dry valley or ravine, especially in Arabia or North Africa, through which a stream flows during the rainy season, or the stream or torrent running through such a ravine.
I’ve been thinking about keeping track of which clues I solve first. It’s entirely random, but it’s better when it’s something highbrow. I’d rather be able to say that it was the name of a Sartre play that leapt off the page than one of the cast members of American Pie.
* * * * *
Dear Dr. X,
I can’t tell you how excited I am to be starting therapy with you. I’d always prided myself on being someone who didn’t need therapy. My childhood and early adulthood were far from pain-free, but I survived, and my battle scars were something to show off while drinking, like the scars Richard Dreyfus and Robert Shaw were so proud of in Jaws. And being a sort of amateur psychologist myself (how you must loathe my type), I thought I had myself figured out. I’m oversensitive to being blamed for things that aren’t my fault because I was the oldest child. I crave attention and approval because I got addicted to it in my formative years, when I was somewhat of a marvel for being able to read so early. My insecurity stems from my having been very short for most of my childhood, but is somewhat masked by my enjoyment of good conversation, which I learned as a kid who was much more comfortable talking to adults than my peers.
You see? Case closed. What’s to figure out?
Only I seem to be at another turning point in my life, one of many. (People attach so much importance to mid-life crises, but I find that I seem to go through a mid-life crisis every five years or so. Someone should come up with better names for these crises. There’s the out-of-college crisis, the about-to-turn-30 crisis, the my-career-is-going-in-the-wrong-direction crisis, which everyone now goes through well before they reach middle age, etc.) I hate my job with a passion, but as my wife points out, I wasn’t all that happy at the last three either. My writing has met with near success, but not the kind of success I feel I should have achieved by this age. And then there’s this improvisation thing, which I got into because I wanted the chance to express myself creatively, but which has birthed a whole new set of insecurities and anxieties, or rather, new permutations of the old ones.
So you can see that it’s fortunate that I’ve found someone to talk to who knows about improv. I’ve done a bit of research about you. Apparently you were a bit of a rising star in the early nineties. You’ll have to tell me what it was like at Second City and IO some time, and why you’ve withdrawn from that world into the less glamorous realm of psychotherapy.
You asked for my improv biography, so here goes. I started in the Spring of 2002 at the UCB Theater, under the tutelage of George Baedecker. I’d had some theater and comedyexperience: I was in two of the senior plays in high school (though I never took a drama class, being more of a “band fag” myself), and in my twenties I formed a theatrical company with another playwright, an actor and a director, putting up two of my plays and acting in a third. (The one I acted in, Pipe Bomb Sonata, was written by Jason, the other playwright, and was performed at the NY International Fringe Festival in the same theater as Urinetown.) I also had tryed my hand at stand-up comedy, though I found myself depressed at the thought of all the open mike nights I would have to go to in order to make something of myself.
My level one class at UCB was exhilirating, like doing ecstasy for the first time. The class was full of talented girls (including Erika, who just became the first of my class to be put on a Harold Team) and I found that it wasn’t particularly hard for me to grasp the basic tenets of improv and to get laughs. I was hooked. Subsequent classes were less rewarding, as is often the case, considering that’s where most of the hard work must be done, but by then I was watching shows regularly and knew what I wanted: to be one of this crowd of ridiculously talented people; to be on a Harold team, sure, but more importantly, to be liked, loved, respected, to share jokes and beers and late night conversations and to know that I deserved to be among them.
Screenplay competitions, standardized tests, Harold team auditions....Why do I need to make myself pass tests all the time? Is that my only measure of my worth?
So...level two with Brian Huskey, three with Paul Scheer, four with Billy Merritt, where I stumbled into something great. This was Billy’s second Documentary class, and now I was in a class with people who were on a higher level than my previous classmates had been. Steve Buck was on Neutrino, and Andy Rocco, one week into the class, was put onto Monkeydick a couple of days after his triumphant 3-on-3 wild card performance with Rob Huebel and Billy Hot Chocolate. (Before the class, I just knew Andy as Jon Daly’s sidekick in his otherwise one-man sketch show, Balls Out.) For the first time, I felt as if I had to really struggle to keep up. But I was having fun, and I was proud to be a part of it. (This was also during the emotional roller coaster of my most recent brush with success, my screenplay getting into the top 50 scripts for Project Greenlight.)
We kept working at the Documentary (especially those of us who had to work harder), performing at Cinema Classics and Parkside with the previous Documentary class and, eventually, the next one. This was the beginning of 2003. I took Delaney’s level 4 performance class and Ian Roberts’ sketch class. Harold Team auditions approached and I made the sort of half-hearted wish I always make: that I would at least make it past the first round of cuts. I didn’t. I predicted, from having performed with many of them in the Documentary, four of the people who would be picked for the team that would become DIllinger: Brett, Joe, Sarah and Anthony. (Amey was my other prediction, but she would have to wait a few more months for her call.) Dillinger was a dream team full of people I loved (or would have loved) to improvise with, but I was OK with not being on the team. I wasn’t ready. I just wished I’d gotten the callback. Just a sign that I wasn’t kidding myself.
By now, I imagine you can see a theme, or two. Yes, I am dealing with issues of envy. More so now than then. Pre-Documentary, I viewed everyone who was on a Harold Team as on a different level than I was. The relatively new My Kickass Van was already a team when I started seeing shows, and though I saw Police Chief Rumble’s debut show (along with Rocco’s 3-on-3 performance, one of my favorite moments at the theater), I had never improvised with any of them. After the Dillinger auditions, though, my peers were being chosen for Harold teams: Kate, Amey, Violet, Erika, Maggie, John Reynolds...all people whom I’d improvised with, and all deserving of the honor. But now instead of saying to myself that I was not yet ready, I was asking myself, well, should I be ready by now? Now I was comparing myself to everyone who was on a Harold team. How do I stack up against that person?
Things were going well, though. The Documentary got a run at the UCB, and I survived a couple of rounds of cuts (once those now on Harold teams had been removed, I should add.) I was doing some of my best work, thanks to my talented and supportive teammates. Being a part of the Doc crew now called the Locals has been both a pleasure and a huge influence, and I look forward to our future projects, including another run doing the Documentary at the theater in December, a sketch show we hope to debut in March (we really need to get started on that) and, hopefully, some Harold work.
This year I also took Armando Diaz’s Instant Brilliance class, out of which sprung a temporary performance group called Puppy Teeth, coached by Ed Herbstman. I learned a lot working with a whole new group of people and approaching improv from a completely different angle. I felt like a martial artist learning a different style of kung fu. Then there’s the musical improv group that Danielle and I started, finally named Famous John. We’ve had tons of ups and downs in the past year, with a couple of rounds of defections, but I look forward to finally performing. Even if nothing else came of it, musical improv has helped with one of my biggest problems in improv, my ability to think, or respond without thinking, quickly. And again, working with Rob Schiffman and Travis Ploeger from CCL has given me another chance to put what I’ve learned at the UCB in a larger context.
I’m running out of steam a little bit, distracted by the welcoming smells of the Thanksgiving meal Tracey is cooking up for us. In my next letter, more about envy, probably, plus Tracey’s concerns about the amount of time I spend in the improv world, and my own. I look forward to your repsonse. Have a lovely and relaxing holiday weekend.
Your humble servant (Tracey was just saying people should use that phrase more often),
El Jefe