A Performance

I had an interesting improv class last night. I must remind myself to distinguish between improv class and improv practice. There is my team, which has practice on Saturdays. I chose to be with each of those people on a team, and I chose to learn from our coach. What I had last night was class. It is not up to me who goes and who teaches us. I do choose to remain a part of it, because it's great. It does have drawbacks.

Last night had the good and the bad. There were relatively few opportunities to perform since we have been joined with the next lowest level. Still, as I think I've said, I do like many of those people. Sometimes we get to perform with them. Last night we did not much.  We in "The Barrel" did our own long form. I entered the first scene, and it was dicey for me. My scene partner was giving good stuff, and I was not returning it well.

I improved over time, I think, but I did not start out with much of a character or any contributions. All I did was lob glib, pedantic remarks in response to my partner's actual acting performance. I can get some laughs that way, but it's cheap and selfish and doesn't build anything. Still, I think I got over it. I managed to jump into subsequent scenes with that far better realized character my partner played, crafting something useful in the end.

He had, you see, initiated with a zookeeper grieving the illness of a gila monster. I brought a fair amount of myself into my character, a fellow zoo keeper who was put out and rather cynical about such a display over an animal. I offered to kill and bury the animal, using a shovel to carry out both acts. This gave me the only thing I had that the rest of the group wanted to keep my character going for. It worked out ok.

I proceeded to crash the gila monster's funeral and a meeting between the other zookeeper and some kind of scientist. I then was called upon to use my shovel prowess in order to kill a long string of innocent people in various comical scenarios. My character finally got his comeuppance in bizarre fashion, as his shovel died and its corpse was desecrated by the other zookeeper, who smashed it with his own shovel. My character grieved in an undignified and animated fashion.

There's how it ended, and I was glad to end the performance with some kind of contribution made. It always feels good to have the show end with you in a scene doing something decent. It gives you the idea that you had a hand in creating a high note that the person ending the show thought would be a good way to leave you looking good. I guess I did all right, and it came in a long form where I made the decision to come out first again. I think aggression is working OK.