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.

Unpacking Haiti, One Week Later

For the first week back, things were weird. And I wrote this and never published it. And now I'm feeling a bit more settled into my normal life, so I thought I'd share.

The shock I've been experiencing isn't traumatic, or upsetting. It doesn't make me freeze up, or have flashbacks or anything like that. I'm eating well and sleeping well, and I'm feeling really great.

In fact, a few coworkers who have not gone to Haiti said "you all come back with the same glow about you."

And we definitely do. I am nothing but happy that I went to Milot and met the people I met and did the work I did.

The shock part is subtle and cultural and environmental. I want to stress how it's not difficult to deal with, only that it's part of me now that layers a new dimension onto otherwise normal situations.

I was only gone for one week. And here only one week really passed. But for me, time in Haiti was all relative. An hour could feel like a day, or an afternoon like ten minutes. I felt like I was in Haiti for much longer than I was because so many things happened in such a short time frame. I went through so many emotions and discoveries in one week that it can't have possibly only been seven days.

Now I find myself thrown back into schedules of rehearsals and dates and plans, and people are referencing things we did together only two weeks ago, and I can't believe when I'm caught up in it all, that only last week all the details of my reality were vastly different.

I was not there long enough to forget how to drive a car, or what pizza tasted like. But I also wasn't there long enough to process all the things I saw and did and felt. So coming back is a strange mix of feeling sometimes like I will never be the same, and then thinking maybe nothing's changed after all. I feel like I was plopped in and out of an alternate reality. Since nothing here is different, it's hard to imagine that I went at all sometimes. And the lines are blurred even more when I'm sleeping.

Every night since returning (and even when I nap)  I dream that when I wake up I will put on my scrubs and spray DEET on my neck and fill my water bottle from the filter and walk to the hospital. Without fail, in my dreams I am writing out to do lists, and I remember which ones need a new IV line today, and which ones have a wound dressing due. In my dreams I am eating a grapefruit with Colleen W. and we are talking about the orphans.

Then I wake up and I'm in my cozy room under my white and purple quilt, and the contrast is startling. But even more startling is the realization that although the dream wasn't real the people and places in the dream are very real. As I sing at karaoke night or read the news on my itouch on the bus they are out there somewhere else in a land of palm trees and poverty. But "somewhere else," might as well be a dreamland because even if I do get to go back to Haiti, most of those particular  people will have moved on by then. I may never see them again anyway.