Playing with an open heart.

Meet Jet Eveleth, one of my favorite improv teachers in the world. In her words, this is what it takes to be a good team:



A key here is shared goals. A troupe that lasts is a troupe that is making progress together toward an agreed-upon end. And -- guess what! -- the same goes for church congregations.

Not long ago, I took a workshop with Jet called "Loving the Harold," which emphasized quirky organic games and grounded scenes. At the end of the three weeks, one classmate spoke up, "Ok, so now I love the Harold. I love this kind of Harold. But I'm afraid if I start playing like this with my team, they'll eat me alive."

Jet said something like:

They very well might eat you alive. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try. Start daydreaming about your perfect team. How would they treat you? How would you play with them? Go ahead and start playing like that now. And expect to get your heart broken.

Some people find their soul mate early on, but some people have to go through relationship after relationship before something clicks. If you were vulnerable and open and you got broken up with anyway, you still have to pick yourself back up and be vulnerable and open again. Don't be so busy protecting yourself from being hurt that your soul mate can't recognize you.

You have to keep playing the way you want to play deep inside, and you have to let yourself be seen. You have to believe that there are people out there who want to play with someone like you, but they will never find you if you're not playing with an open heart.

So I started daydreaming about the kind of troupe I wanted.

I like watching witty, stylized shows, (like Whirled News and Improvised Shakespeare). When I have friends in from out of town, that's often what I take them to see.

I like watching mind-spinningly fast, aggressive improv (like Deep Schwa and Beer Shark Mice). I find it impressive, because that's not how my brain works.

I could stand to develop more in all of those areas, and maybe the best way for me to do that would be to jump into teams who have those shared goals. Ultimately, though, I have not been happy on teams like that. I like seeing their shows, not playing in them.

My favorite way to play is patient and relational, maybe with some big group non-scenes to shake things up. I thoroughly enjoy Whirled News and Deep Schwa, but TJ and Dave and The Reckoning melt my nerdy little improv heart.

I want to play like the work is important, like I have all the time in the world, like my partners are poets, and like human beings are inherently amazing.

Not everyone wants to play like that. That's ok. It doesn't mean they're bad guys. It just means they have certain goals, and their goals aren't the same as mine.

This whole idea resonates with my own experience with different churches and denominations. 

I didn't fit in with Southern Baptist churches in my hometown. And, because my hometown was almost entirely Southern Baptist, I thought that meant I didn't fit in with any church anywhere. I would have to be a rogue, church-less Christian. Love Jesus, hate religion. That sort of thing.*

(For the record, that works just about as well as a being a rogue, troupe-less improviser. Sure, I can say I'll work on a coach-less solo project, but I can only get so far without critique from veterans and support from other players who are growing along with me. It might be necessary to go solo for a season, but it's not a long-term solution.)

Am I saying that Southern Baptist churches are bad? No. I'm just not cut out to be a Southern Baptist anymore than I'm cut out to be a ComedySportz regular.

After some trial and error, I discovered I'm most free to be myself in an Anglican church. I need the structure, the liturgy, the sacraments. I need the arts in worship and the theology classes. It's where I belong.

But it was four years between the time I realized that and the time I let myself use my gifts and make my friends in the congregation. If I had risked being open earlier, it wouldn't have taken me that long. I missed out on four years of using my gifts for the church and letting the church serve me in turn because I wasn't willing to risk coming to church with an open heart.



*And by "thing," I might possibly mean heresy. Maybe. If, by "religion," you mean "hypocrisy," I'm totally with you, but please say what you mean.

Technique, Form, and Substance. Also, cake!

I posted this once upon a time on an old blog. I've kept the old comments, because I have insightful friends.

If improv were a cake ...

Exhibit A: Lauren and I made this for a friend's birthday. My mom probably helped with the icing.

 ... technique would be your kitchen tools.

You know, wooden spoon and mixing bowl and spatula and measuring cups. It'd be really messy to make a cake without those things, and the ingredients probably wouldn't be well-blended.

It will make your improv so much smoother if you get good at acceptance and heightening. If you want to be very fancy, you could learn miming, singing, rhyming, and contact improv. 

But if all you have is a really great bowl and spoon and spatula and measuring cups, you'll still go hungry. At least, hungry for cake.* And you can accept and heighten and mime all you want, but that's not enough for good improv.

Exhibit B: I made this cake for my friend Meredith, who is a vegetarian.

 ... form would be the cake pan. 

Cupcakes have the potential to be as delicious as bundt cakes, layer cakes, or crazy sculpted cakes; a run of short form games can be as fun as Harold and Armando. They're different shapes in which to pour your awesome scene work.

You don't need a bunch of flashy forms any more than you need 18 highly-specific cake pans. However, if you have no pan at all, nobody is going to want to eat your delicious cake, because it won't look appetizing. A formless show is hard for the audience to know how to watch. Have a form. Your form can be as basic as Exhibit A or as complex as Exhibit B, but don't let your show get into Exhibit D territory.

Exhibit C: My husband made me this cookie cake and iced it with a Marc Johns drawing.

 ... substance would be your ingredients.

There is no definitive list of what to put in a cake to make it a good cake, just some general guidelines. Most cakes have some combination of eggs and flour and sugar and milk. Some have cream cheese or carrots or cocoa; some are vegan or gluten-free. It's a lot of stuff that wouldn't necessarily taste good on its own but works in combination with the other flavors to make something new. There's flexibility there, as long as you keep your proportions reasonable and your ingredients are good quality.

Most scenes have some basic ingredients, too: relationship, character, environment, game, and that indefinable magic that comes out of a group working together. There are probably more I can't think of. Or fewer, depending on the kind of scene.

If your milk's gone rancid or your sugar has ants, your cake will be awful. Your cake pan and egg beaters might have been fine, but that doesn't save your cake. There's no sense investing in an expensive Kitchen-Aide mixer if you're not going to bother with your ingredients and proportions.

But once in awhile, for some inexplicable reason, a cake with all those great ingredients still doesn't turn out the way it's supposed to. Some scenes won't work, and you can't always know why. You just have to double-check your ingredients, clean up your tools, and try again.

Exhibit D: My mom probably did not help with this icing. This is all me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

... and comedy, of course, is just the icing on the cake. 

You don't have to have icing for a good cake. In fact, bad icing will ruin an otherwise good cake, and good icing won't save a gross cake. If I have to chose between a cake with bad icing and a cake with no icing, I'll pick no icing.

And I'll take a good, interesting scene that doesn't me laugh over a weak scene dripping with gags. Even good icing doesn't make up for bad cake, and funny jokes don't make up for shoddy scene work.

True confession: Icing is my favorite part of cake. But it gives me a stomach ache to eat it by itself. Good icing on good cake, though? Life doesn't get better.

Exhibit what?: This is from when my mom pretended it was my birthday so my friends would come over and watch Schindler's List.

And, hey, when you're done, make sure you clean everything off and store everything in a cool, dry place, because fresh ingredients can spoil and attract bugs. Take care of yourself and your tools, or you won't think the whole enterprise is worth the trouble.


*Is there any other kind of hungry? I submit that there is not.