Slumming It In Improv

With the new year, there has been much tumult in my beloved community of improv comedy. I had been in it not much more than a year, and there had been plenty of changes during that time, but there seem to have been about as many more during the last month and a half. Teachers have been transferred, some classes added, and others moved in time and location. I think that it is in the service of good ultimately, though discomfort in the short term is unpleasant.

It's a little like my grandfather (a painter, tenured college professor and administrator) said in a local radio interview once about the nature of an education in the arts. As a degree is unnecessary to be an artist, the way to go is to seek out one's education from all manner of sources, many of which may involve no formal teacher or classroom at all. That's obviously not the way to go in order to practice medicine.

This period of transition in improv is also a little like this policy I read about which is commonly practiced by Japanese auto manufacturing plants. Let's say that you begin with a workforce of five hundred when you open the plant. Ideally, a new plant houses an experienced, cohesive workforce and is dedicated to building established car models. In any event, you allow that force of five hundred to work as is until they get up to full speed in their current situation. Then you just lop off some five or ten percent of the employees- you just lay off the least competent employees, and don't replace them with new hires. Now you have, let's say, 450 employees. They must now rise to the task of doing the work that it previously took 50 additional people to do. As a result, they begin to work harder and become more efficient by necessity. Eventually, they reach the peak level of productivity which they achieved at the previous level of 500, and the process thus bears fruit in the form of newly discovered and eliminated waste. You then do it again and again, stopping only when every trace of fat has been stripped from the meat. With all that is being reported about Toyota's current travails, this practice is perhaps discredited. I hope that it is not, for my sake, given this championing of it.

These two examples illuminate the truth that lies in my belief that change (and the discomfort that springs from it), while unpleasant, can be entirely for the good. The worst thing that can happen to anyone ambitious (and particularly artists) is to fall into a comfort zone which leaves them adverse to expending themselves in strenuous effort or risking what they already have in search of more. I don't pretend to have inured myself to this danger, but can recognize it when it happens.

All of this has been a long-winded preface to what I did on Thursday night. The changes in the class structure of my improv community along with many related and unrelated movements of people have meant that I see certain people less in the ordinary course of events. Thus, I've decided to sit in on the classes they now attend as much as I can, if only as an observer (as one can participate in one class a week, but observe more). This is something I already enjoyed doing on occasion in accordance with the advice of my grandfather. There's practically no end to the value in attending the classes. There is much to say in favor of experiencing different levels of difficulty, seeing the methods practiced by teachers of different backgrounds and philosophies, and gaining familiarity with the many varied students of their classes.

With that additional, possibly superfluous bit of exposition, I set off on the narrative of Thursday. There are two classes at the same time and address, and last week I had attended the more advanced one. Having not gone to that location terribly many times before, I was not entirely familiar with the nature of traveling there. As I related a week ago, it proved to be somewhat more difficult than I anticipated. This time, I was prepared to account for the areas where I had trouble, and this time knew things would be fine no matter whether I found a ride home or not. With my mind at ease, I spent the ninety or so minutes of my commute composing the blog post which precedes this one.

I got to the end point prescribed by my itinerary. From there, it is necessary to cross a few streets to get onto the neighborhood side street where the church which hosts the classes is located. That in itself is something of an odyssey, owing to the complex, nonsensical nature of those particular intersections. Once on that little street, one passes a YMCA which (at the hour I see it) is invariably as loud and jumping as some 1920s Harlem jazz club. I often wonder at the will power which enables me to pass it by and actually make it to the class or show which is my objective.

Thanks to temporary signs, I had no difficulty finding the class. Something nice about entering the room where any of the classes is held, at least when you're known to the people of that class, is being greeted by a loud cheer as was granted to Norm or one of the other barflies of Cheers. In this case, I was known by only a couple people out of the modestly sized class, and so my welcome was somewhat tepid. I blame no one for this.

It was an interesting class. Even in a beginner's class among a group largely of relative inexperience, there's much for me to learn. It's easy for complacence to leave someone looking bad, and there's always another game with which I'm not familiar or another way to play one with which I am familiar. The class did "World's Worst" in a circle rather than a line. This game has a moderator announcing some kind of profession or other identifier (such as doctor or boyfriend), and calling for the improvisers to step in with a comedic example of some especially poor specimen thereof. It's a fun game. A game I hadn't been familiar with was "Good, Bad, Worst" (perhaps known by other names). The premise is of an advice TV show. Innocent questions are lobbed at three performers who adopt humorous characters. The first gives good advice, the second bad, and the third the worst advice imaginable. Each does this respective thing while in character. Thus, a hockey player might give excellent advice each time, but always couch it in a hockey mentality along with the terminology that entails.

As I said, there's always something to learn, and one can be humbled in a beginner's class in a way that doesn't seem to happen in a more advanced one. In the latter, you can fail and look bad, but not feel embarrassed or chagrined because you know the greater difficulty of what you're attempting. When what you're doing at the moment is less challenging that what you do ordinarily, missteps are uniquely disagreeable. That being the case, I did feel somewhat chastened by the conclusion.

Upon the class's finish, there was the usual rapprochement between the two levels. I like that a lot. It's another example of the mixing and mingling which I believe can be so beneficial. I'm reminded of an account of the production of the film "The Great Escape". The cast was composed largely of actors from the US and from Great Britain. There was at this time considerably less back and forth across the Atlantic for such performers, and so the making of the film was a singular meeting of actors from the two nations. Each took in the style and means of the other, coming away impressed with the special gifts of their opposite numbers. Brits observed the natural ease and charm of their American cousins, while the Americans in turn admired the classical training and discipline of the British.

When the possibilities for socializing had been exhausted by the exit of most attendees, I myself withdrew at that time, along with a couple of other people (one of whom was kind enough to observe that he was headed near my home and could easily drop me off). There's something strangely off-putting about making a a great effort to cover some distance, and then have the a different mode of travel effortlessly wipe out the same distance in a fraction of the time. I had the distasteful experience once of taking some 10 days or more to hike a hundred miles, only to ride a bus back to the starting point in roughly an hour. It's like that.

And so it was on Thursday night.