I’m constantly amused by my non-improv friends’ fear of performing. Not that this bothers me, necessarily. It’s quite nice to be able to jump on stage, improvise a few scenes badly, make a couple jokes (equally badly), and then be showered upon with praise like I had just single-handedly passed health care reform in the United States. Nor am I understating the difficulty of truly great improv. It’s hard (and all performers deserve to be showered upon with praise). But the real difficulty is not what non-performers imagine it to be.
The problem is, improvisers flake. They flake all the time. If improvisers were winter, they would go down in history as having the largest piles of snowflakes in history. If they were made of wood, you could dry a hell of a lot of fish on them (referring to the 14th century definition of flake, which was a frame for drying fish on). I’m not surprised they flake all the time, because they’re lazy and need a lot of sleep (referring to the 1940s slang, which defined flake as ‘to fall asleep’).
As you may have also determined, improvisers are not very funny either. At least not when they have access to dictionary.com.
But the truth is, regardless of skill set, improvisers are notoriously busy and difficult to pin down for rehearsals, shows, or much of anything really. My theory is that improvisers treat improv groups as relationships, but with both parties being awkward inexperienced teenagers. When we’re asked to be in one we get really excited and 99% of the time will agree to it right out of the gate, without considering the practicality of such a commitment, or even if we want to be in the commitment in the first place. This often leads to bitterness and grumbling down the line, for all parties involved.
We then dive in with unrelenting abandon. Those first few weeks of bliss are filled with rehearsals, maybe multiple rehearsals a week. We start wordpress blogs. We book shows. We look for coaches. We draw pencil sketches of logos in our notebooks while dozing off at work the following morning (we stayed out late getting drunk, in the name of ‘building group solidarity’). We just know that we’ve found the perfect group for us, that it’s going to being us fame and riches (in some hazy, undefined way), and that we’re going to go down in history as the group that Second City wishes they had been a part of.
But after that initial spastic euphoria, all bets are off. If we start showing up 10 minutes late, count yourself lucky. We could be showing up an hour late. Or more likely, not at all.
Even coaches and established performers are not exempt from this rule. My improv group, Hugs and Pullups, spent over a month unsuccessfully trying to arrange to work with a coach that we very much wanted. He was an established performer, has spent years training in Chicago, and was at the time performing on Second City’s e.t.c. stage. But getting anything out of him, even a hint at what his open nights were, turned into a nightmare of Saw-like proportions. Three weeks worth of emails got him to say that he might be available on Wednesdays, but the next time one of us ran into him he seemed to deny even telling us that much.
If the CIA is looking for the next generation of super spy, I believe they would be doing themselves a favor by hiring improvisers. We’re trained to believe ridiculous propositions, and to convince others that our made up drivel is God’s own truth. We’re used to living on a shoestring budget, which will bring costs down. And even if we’re captured, there’s no way anyone’s getting information out of us.
Then again, I doubt any of us would bother showing up on the first day. Though I still encourage everyone to shower praise upon us all.
