How improv saved my life
tl;dr
I was a happy kid. I was a sad adolescent. Improv games helped me find my true voice. I am happiest when I have that true voice. I love improv. It helps you consider, create and connect in a group. It has value in the dating or professional world. I’m rebooting an idea to bring improv to groups and companies that want to do something different. Could improv be right for you? Fuck yeah…
Deep breath
I had a tremendously tranquil and privileged childhood. I was given every opportunity to develop my own voice and succeed.My parents were, and continue to be, fucking awesome in every way. I consider myself very lucky.
I learned from a very young age that I liked the company of other people and fed off their energy. I often became super excited to get the opportunity to play with other kids. As with most of my cohorts, I participated in team sports. It turns out, I wasn’t particularly good:
But, I liked sports because I was on a team. I was part of something. I was part of a group with a goal that we had to work together to complete. Maybe that particular something was only good for orange slices at half-time, but I felt joy in the participation with others.
Puberty (Spoiler: I was a late bloomer — see the Lego set I played with till age 15) caused an unfortunate change in this childhood bliss where I aligned myself with those that gave me the opportunity to be a part of their group, but often at the expense of my own dignity. Grades 8–10 weren’t fun. I was rude to my parents, languished in class work and pretended I was someone I wasn’t. Depression accompanied this, but I kept it under wraps by never acknowledging it and humiliating others to make myself feel better. Also, I wore Abercrombie and Fitch cargo pants, one of those horrendous white hats and drove an SUV with bass in it. Pretending I was a Mid-Atlantic lacrosse playing frat boy while secretly listening to trance music when my friends weren’t in the car. Objectively speaking, I was confused. Subjectively speaking, I was either an asshole or a follower.
Then, one day, after finally admitting to myself that I was absolutely terrible at soccer and watching as most of my friends participated in the fall rite of chasing a ball around a field, I had zero extracurricular activities on my plate. Because studying was never an option, I decided to try out for the play. THE PLAY! The thing that the non-athletic drama geeks do. Who was I kidding? I was a non-athletic drama geek. I constantly did impersonations of Monty Python sketches, (old) President Bush, anyone from the South and a fictional Long Island housewife named Sylvia Krazelburg. This was my calling.I went for it.
It turns out, the play was fucking AMAZING. I had never felt such joy in being on stage, owning a character and making an entire theatre of people laugh their ass off. I connected with my actors (and even the back-stage crew ☺) in ways that I never did before. We were all a part of creating something fantastic: a performance. What did I love most of all? It was the improv games that the play director used to warm us up. (Mrs. Wrubel, I never thanked you for introducing these to me, but they’ve had a lasting impact on my life.)
These were games that forced us to be present and available, creating and listening to each other in never-before-created scenes and situations. It felt as though life was breathing into me. I had a palpable reaction to this instruction and felt more alive than I ever did.
What did I do about it? Did I become the drama kid I was destined to be and live out my dreams of making people laugh professionally? No, of course not. I compartmentalized my experiences, separating my “real” self from the one I thought would make me more popular. This continued in college, where I eschewed drama and the performing arts for making the my friends laugh, sometimes at my expense. Where was improv when I was eating Taco Bell 3 times a day, weighing 285 lbs and earning the moniker “Buck the Truck”? Improv was there, I was too afraid to reach out and grab not for fear of what others might think, but from what I thought they’d think.
After college was a depressing time as well, I ended up working at a restaurant while most of my friends were either traveling or in entry level finance and consulting gigs. I was overweight, lonely and aimless.
Attracting sexual interest from people when you espouse these three characteristics is about as likely as Dick Cheney apologizing…for anything.
Progress was slow. I started exercising, and it turns out, if you stop eating fast food and even pretend to get on a Stairmaster for 15 minutes, you start losing weight. I was taking the bus back from the gym one day and reading the SF Bay Guardian (RIP) and read about improv classes. They were advertised as a “fun social activity that develops personal skills and allows you to make new friends”. I signed up.
I took two 8-week classes in a row and my mind was blown. Similar to the feelings 6 years earlier when I started playing improv games as play rehearsal warm ups. Here I was, in an environment where I could be myself, totally vulnerable without any of the crutches of needing to impress people or trying to be someone I wasn’t. I flourished. My depression subsided, I embraced life. I moved to Chicago without any job just to do improv. I followed a dream of studying something that made me feel good about myself EVERY TIME. What a novel idea?
I continued to study, take classes and perform with a myriad of different groups. It blossomed in to my number one hobby, replacing sitting on the couch and watching sports with take out food. I got successively better jobs and moved back to San Francisco, doing improv with an amazing group called Chicken Scratch Improv for the past 9 years. But, as I’ve gone through other changes in my life, I have trusted the folks in my improv group like nobody else. Their support, nurturing, presence and hilarity in the face of adversity make life better. Thank you Jay, Shawn, Jody, Dawn, Caleb and Lee — I love you!
Is improv magic? No. It is a performing art, that like all performing arts requires study and lots and lots of practice (just like DJing). It is my belief that everyone could benefit from improv. Everyone needs a team to be proud of. My gift back to the world is to teach the main principles of improv…
Consider. Listen to other people around you. Use the concept of “Yes, And…” to add to people’s ideas rather than negate them. Reduces judgement and makes brainstorming an actually enjoyable activity. When is the last time you listened to someone without having an agenda or a bias? In business and dating both, we often find ourselves having goals before we even meet people.
Create. What’s more fun than making something with others? Building a project or an idea with people who are present and communicative allows for an easier path to success. Remember that time you helped that stranger push his dead car into his driveway even though you were already late to work? Improv puts you in a better position to help create things in the world.
Connect. By considering and creating, we connect. Through a shared group experience, we connect in ways and with people we never thought possible. The more difficult the project, the greater the connection. The shared sense of accomplishment (or failure) provides a real basis for a relationship. That’s why most of us work in teams, isn’t it? That’s why people love those Kickball leagues as a way to meet people, right? When we succeed together, we are the happiest.
So yeah, I’m rebooting an idea I had a few years ago called Nerd Improv, where I’ll teach these principles to groups and businesses that are looking for something different to help their people consider, create and connect.
Did improv save my life? Yes, most definitely. Could it change yours? Maybe. You don’t know unless you embrace vulnerability and give it a shot.
Hugs,
Josh
