Improv: the Cult

I just finished reading Tina Fey's new book Bossypants.

Fey devotes a large portion of the book to discussing improv. It wasn't until I was reading about the culture she found herself immersed in that I realized NOT EVERYONE DOES THIS. I have been taking my role in the improv cult for granted.

I don't ever assume that everyone went to nursing school. Or that everyone else grew up in West Roxbury. Yet I forget that years of rhyming drills weren't part of everyone else's college experience. I forget that not everyone spends their spare time playing make believe. It's easy I guess, because most of my friends have a unique day job that I know little to nothing about, and then at night they do what I do. Everyone I associate with has the same basic story that I do about finding and falling in love with improv. We don't have to talk about it, because although we went through it separately it was a shared experience. It's just what we all did, and what we all do. I'm not talking about being part of a show-biz social circle, although at there is certainly some overlap. I'm not even talking about belonging to the "theater kid" clique, although I have those groups of friends as well. Improv ingrains itself into you in ways you don't even consciously realize. To quote Tina Fey exactly: "studying improv literally changed my life."

I once posted a piece about what it means to apply the rules of improv in a medical workplace. This was a response piece to Liz Caradonna's blog post about the benefits of having a trainer improviser in the office workplace: Beyond the Funny.

When I joined The Yellow Submarines in high school, I had no way of knowing I was beginning a life long journey down a new way of life. I don't care that it sounds over dramatic to you. It isn't.

The Subs and I watched Whose Line is It Anyway (the British version) and thought "we can do that." So we did- learning and perfecting short form games each week. We went to see shows at Improv Boston and Improv Asylum, idolizing grown ups who had somehow made improv their livelihood.*  Still, improv was just a game to me until I auditioned into Mission:IMPROVable at UMass.

My time in Mission was the most serious I have ever been about  improv. We rehearsed three times a week. We had a show every Saturday. If you could not make all three rehearsals, you couldn't perform in the show on Saturday. If you missed too many rehearsals a semester, the director would talk with you about your commitment to the group. We hired alumni to come back and give workshops. We raised money and went to Chicago every year on Spring Break to see shows and take workshops  at iO and The Annoyance. We did corporate shows, and college road shows during the school year. In the summer time we played at birthday parties for friends, and tried to busk on the streets of Boston.

We used to do a warm up called "Yes, Let's" and the attitude behind the game permeated our performances and our friendships. Want to make up new structures on stage, with a live audience? Yes, let's. Want to try to do an entire show backwards?  Yes, let's. We failed sometimes, but that was half the game. the other half of the time we were brilliant. We were fearless in our love of the art.

By the end of sophomore year with only a handful of  exceptions, EVERYONE I interacted with on any kind of regular basis was an improviser. My friends. My roommates. The guys I dated. When I left college I was more concerned with what I was going to do for my last show with Mission than I was with any other part of graduating.

My social circles now are slightly more diverse by virtue of my job, but not by much.  My involvement in the Improv Boston community as well as my role at Improv Asylum see to that. Plus, most of my best friends from Mission are still in touch, some on a weekly basis.

So I really do forget that not everyone knows how to hold an "object work" coffee cup,  and that not everyone knows cares what a "Harold" is. Most of my coworkers during the day won't "mirror"  funny voices and don't "yes and," jokes. Instead they laugh and then ask me how my stand up is going and if this is part of my routine.

Sometimes I wonder what I'll do when I eventually move on from Improv Asylum. Until I read Bossypants it was easy to imagine that I might just retire. Try something new entirely. But now I know that even if I took a break from performing for a while (which, to quell any rumors before they start, is not my plan), I would never, ever be able to leave the cult. You take it all with you. Like a language that you never forget how to speak, like your handwriting but when you're not thinking making it neat, like the side you sleep on in your bed when no one else is there. It's just who you are.

Finding Your Niche

Today I am going out to UMass Amherst to address the second bachelor students. I went and spoke to the undergrad nursing class in January and it was a huge success. What am I going to talk about? I'm going to talk about figuring out what kind of nurse you are, and creating a role for yourself in the world that fits that person.

My involvement in coming to speak to the school of nursing is the stuff of fairy tales for me. I was well known in the School of Nursing, and mostly well liked. However, since I was not a traditional nursing student, not many of my professors expected I would become a nurse.  In fact, when I graduated, they didn't read off a hospital after my name, which is what typically happens.
 "J. Jones, Cooley Dickinson, Northampton, Ma.  A. Morrison, Children's Hospital, Boston."

For me they read, "M.Whitaker... (loooong pause) will be... will be performing at Improv Asylum in Boston," because I had just made the NXT cast and that's what I wrote on my graduation information sheet.

So when they invited me back to speak to young impressionable students... that amazed me. It still amazes me.  I always fantasized I would have a chance to tell my story to people it might matter to. And now I am being given that chance.

Nursing school was difficult. Not because I wasn't great at memorization, cramming, or writing 20 page papers the night before they were due. Boston Latin School taught me all that a long time ago.

No, nursing was difficult because I was trapped between two worlds. Comedy and Nursing. Theater and Medicine. Art and Pragmatism. Doing both made sense to me, but it made little sense to many of my professors.

In fact, I had one clinical instructor who, on a weekly basis would take me aside and ask if I had quit Mission:IMPROVable yet. I hadn't. I had been in the group for four years before she met me, I explained. I planned on doing improv professionally later on, I told her. And so long as it didn't effect my grades, it was really none of her business. Even as I pulled in a steady line of "A"s on my papers, tests and care plans these little side bars continued because "comedy just isn't an appropriate hobby for a nurse."

This is what I looked like sophomore year of Nursing School.
I wouldn't have placed bets on me getting an RN either.

Meanwhile, I was fighting some personal battles. My father had passed away at the beginning of sophomore year and my mother was/ is unable to work. I was newly financially responsible but couldn't qualify for aid because they assuming my mom could throw some of Dad's pension my way, which she couldn't actually afford to do. So I had taken out a loan and was working as hard as I could without quitting improv. Often I was coming to school not having slept at all because I had to work overnight shifts to make money.

One morning, my white sneakers split in half after being on my feet all night. The next morning I pulled on my green high tops and went to my clinical in West Springfield where I was shadowing a school nurse at a local high school. We had been working together for a few weeks and she had already commented that I could relax the school uniform so I went in and everything was fine. The next week I still hadn't replaced the shoes because I needed to wait for my next paycheck. Unfortunately, this was the day my UMass clinical instructor decided to visit me at the clinical site. She took me into the back room, where we let girls who say they have cramps lie down when they want to skip gym.

I stared a a poster on the wall of "100 Things To Do Instead of Smoking," and listened as my instructor told me that I was the reason people don't take nurses seriously. I thought about all the nurses in the world wearing teddy bear scrub tops and tried not to open my mouth. She told me the next time I came in I better have white shoes. I told her the truth. That I couldn't afford them right now.

"Don't you have parents?" she asked.
"I have one," I answered, daring her to go further. Which she did.

A verbal fight ensued. In the end, I won. But not before some terrible things were said on both sides. She insulted my family. I threatened to take it to the Dean. I'm amazed she passed me that semester. But she did. Green high tops, sassy back-talk and all.

Those stories are just two examples. There were a million reasons I hated nursing. I wanted to quit, but I have never been a quitter. I have never walked away from something just because it's hard.  I was good at the technical skills, and I got good grades on every care plan. The only thing that was hard, it seemed, was being accepted by other nurses. I just didn't fit in. Maybe it was enough, I thought, just to know I could have gone into nursing. 

The person who finally got through to me was Jennifer Foster. She taught Culture and Anthropology. She had traveled the whole world. She wore funky clothes.  When I mentioned to her that I was probably leaving the school of nursing she listened carefully and then said simply, "don't."  I'm paraphrasing here but she told me, "you don't hate nursing. You hate the culture of nursing school. When you leave here you choose what you want to do, and the people you will do it with. You will find your niche. The nursing world needs more nurses who are like you. Because only you will fill that niche. Don't forget that."

I didn't forget that.

When I spoke to the students last winter I told them that one of the most important things they could do for themselves was remember that they are free to NOT take advice. They do not have to listen to people who tell them to quit something they love. By the same token, they also do not have to listen to me.

 Everyone on my path was trying to do something good for me. The woman who hated comedy wanted me to be a successful (and published) psych nurse. She was giving me advice from that lens. The woman who hated my shoes wanted me to be taken seriously, and she was worried I wouldn't be. It made her say some very mean things, but it had originated from a helpful place. But I was free to politely disagree with them. As soon as you figure out that you are free to NOT take advice, life gets a lot easier. It really frees you up to set goals and then systematically pursue them. Or you know, float through life on whimsy like I do, accidentally landing both my dream jobs in one year. Whatever works for you.

I received a lot of emails afterwards thanking me. A lot of students said they were glad someone had the courage to say the things I said. Some of them said they also had been thinking about quitting because they don't feel like they fit the "nursing mold."  They felt better now. I felt better too. Telling all the stories about nursing school helped me let go of my anger.

So, I found my Niche. Obviously. But the thing about Niches is that, sometimes they change too. If they didn't I'd still be teaching theater at a Montessori. That was perfect for a while, but then it wasn't anymore.  I'm going to add that to my speech today.  You have to continue to be aware of yourself, reevaluate your goals and your dreams and then keep carving away at your place in the world. Because for a room full of intelligent, dedicated, passionate people there's absolutely no excuse not to do what you love.

Classic Water

In honor of Labor Day, my favorite poem by David Berman:

"Classic Water"

I remember Kitty saying we shared a deep longing for

the consolation prize, laughing as we rinsed the stagecoach.

I remember the night we camped out

and I heard her whisper

"think of me as a place" from her sleeping bag

with the centaur print.

I remember being in her father's basement workshop

when we picked up an unknown man sobbing

over the shortwave radio

and the night we got so high we convinced ourselves

that the road was a hologram projected by the headlight beams.

I remember how she would always get everyone to vote

on what we should do next and the time she said

"all water is classic water" and shyly turned her face away.

At volleyball games her parents sat in the bleachers

like ambassadors from Indiana in all their midwestern schmaltz.

She was destroyed when they were busted for operating

a private judicial system within U.S. borders.

Sometimes I'm awakened in the middle of the night

by the clatter of a room service cart and I think back on Kitty.

Those summer evenings by the government lake,

talking about the paradox of multiple Santas

or how it felt to have your heart broken.

I still get a hollow feeling on Labor Day when the summer ends

and I remember how I would always refer to her boyfriends

as what's-his-face, which was wrong of me and I'd like

to apologize to those guys right now, wherever they are:

No one deserves to be called what's-his-face.

i believe in everything, nothing is sacred; i believe in nothing, everything is sacred

Forgive me. I meant to write about Advent tonight while my stew simmered away. But like the Magi showing up unexpectedly at Bethlehem, my dear old college roommate found her way to my doorstep. She arrived just in time to help me wash the mushrooms and share the wine. So allow me to cheat this post with a story I wrote a while ago to explain our relationship.

It was early on in our freshman year that Jen's family had come to visit and dropped off two huge pallets of FlavorSplash water along with a ton of other "care package" items. Jen and I were random assignment roommates - friendly but not friends. Yet.

I decided the water was taking up too much room on the floor. Being a Social Thought and Political Economy student, (mainly enrolled in creative writing courses) I had some free time. I began to tie string around the bottles and hang them from anywhere I could get them to stay. The top of the windows, the posts of our bunk beds, attached to wire hangers and suspended from the ceiling...

Jen looked up from her Organic Chemistry book to ask for an explanation.
"It's like we have water-trees," I said, brushing my electric pink hair out of my face. "We can just reach up and pluck them down."

She was silent. Then, to my surprise my sensible, pre-med roommate put down the heavy text and began helping me string the bottles up.

Once we got all the bottles hung we went back to our homework. Jen began inventing a vaccine to prevent HIV transmission, while I wrote a poem about a bird I saw once.

It was not long before a bottle fell, BONK, narrowly missing Jen's head.

"Misch," Jen took her glasses off, "this is not going to work."

I had a different reaction to the crash. "Jen, this is great! It's like the Clock People in this book I'm reading."
"MichELLE. What on earth are you talking about?"

I was talking about a fictional pile of trash in a fictional underground tunnel. The Clock People in Tom Robbin's novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues tend to this giant trash pile that functions as their clock. When something falls off the trash pile, that's the clock striking. There is no set interval to the striking of this clock. It can go days without a sound, or toll several times in one hour. The noise reminds them that the time is NOW. There is no past or future. 1 o'clock; 2 o'clock ... means nothing. Just NOW.

I explained this to Jen. She looked like she was sorry she asked. She went back to her work.

BONKCRASH. A bottle fell onto the dresser between our work areas, upsetting some spare change.

"The time is NOW!" I yelled gleefully. Jen began to laugh. "The time IS now," she answered.

We picked up the water that had fallen and re attached it to the walls. As we were doing so Jen's boyfriend knocked on the door.

"What are you two doing?"
Jen smiled widely, "fixing our water-clock!" Mike looked extremely unhappy.
But I was very happy. And guess which one of us she spends her time with now?