How I Live and Learn With Improv

I love being creative. Be it through writing, toy photography, drawing, or acting. There’s one form of acting I love best and that’s the art of improv. The thing I like about improv that’s different from regular acting is that you literally make your scene up on the fly. Now, that might frighten some people, but I was never passionate about reading and memorizing scripts. With improv, there are no scripts, but there are rules. During my improv journey, I found that some things that made improv very difficult for me. First thing, I have Asperger syndrome, which is a high functioning form of autism. So, eye contact is a struggle for me due to this disability. Additionally, I struggle to read social cues. Last thing, my anxiety. My anxiety currently controls my life and makes it difficult to do things. Currently, my anxiety contributes to why I’ve been skipping improv classes lately. But more on that later. In addition to my mental struggles, there were the financial struggles due to the high costs of paying for the classes that I took. I would like to review my improv history and how improv taught me a few life lessons. I remember my first improv class. I was 14 when I started improv and class was held inside a small dance studio in a shopping mall called The Foundry in Barrington, IL. My teacher was nice and so were my classmates. Heck they even let my friend join me in class for free one time too, so I got to perform improv alongside my childhood friend for just one class. As I began to get comfortable with my peers and performing improv, eventually though, oh boy, did my attention seeking ways come out through improv. I will admit up front, in improv, I’m a stage hog. For two reasons, the attention, and the laughs. For me, silence is scary, but more on that later. After I finished the kiddie improv class at the small dance studio in Barrington, IL. 

It wouldn’t be until 2010 when I started attending classes at Metropolis Theater in Arlington Heights, IL. Metropolis truly became my first deep dive into improv as an adult. I was taught by my first true improv teacher Jeremy and met classmates who would eventually become the members of our improv team, Sunny Beijing. Sunny Beijing and I performed at Metropolis and even perform at Laugh Out Loud Theater in Schaumburg, IL. Along with taking classes with Sunny Beijing and performing alongside them at LOL, we all became close friends too. Slowly Metropolis transitioned to coaching my improv team instead of teaching classes for adults. As Metropolis today more puts their focus more on teaching children than adults. As my love for improv grew, I decided it was time to expand my education. I decided to attend classes at The Second City and iO Theater. I studied at a legendary Chicago theater, The Second City. I graduated their improv, acting, and writing programs. I love to tell people that I’m an alumnus of Second City because I studied where Chris Farley, Stephen Colbert, and countless other comedy legends got their start. Now, I never became a bigshot like them, but that’s cool. It was cool too that I was taught by people who knew them. I have had so many great teachers it is hard to keep track of them. One thing Second City taught me was how show business operates and how it’s truly not a 9 to 5, but a gig to gig. During classes at Second City and iO Theater, I learned that it’s good to not always be funny in improv. Usually, people think that improv always usually must be a comedy show or they’ll confuse it with a stand-up performance, which I blame on another theater called The Improv. The Improv theatre is more stand-up comedy based. Over the years, I created serious characters during improv scenes which people, to my shock, seem to like my more serious or straight-man characters in scenes more than my Chris Farley/Jack Black knock-off characters. It feels good to know that I have range as both an actor and improv performer. The Second City to me is both a place of fond memories and sadly, a place I’m scared to go back to. The reason I’m scared to go back to Second City is because of an email from a teacher who helped me and traumatized me at the same time. I used to perform in Second City’s Jam Sandwich, but after a email that rocked my world was sent to me, by someone that I respected, not anymore. 

My teacher was trying to help me out, tell me the rules, teach me, troubleshoot some potential complaints about me. Yet, how I interpreted the email made me sad and annoyed. Usually, I would send an email asking to sign up for an upcoming Jam Sandwich. Instead of a sure, ‘you in’ return email, I got an email back which basically read this is my playpen and you must follow my rules. My teacher called me a scared puppy, and I know he was right, that I am a scared puppy. I know the stage hog in me was rampant during my performances at Jam Sandwich. People who watched me told me I did good, and they weren’t in my family. But sadly, after that email, I returned to Metropolis to rejoin my team and had the bonus of a shorter commute. Now, back to why my anxiety, which is making improv difficult for me now. I have missed or skipped so many improv classes due to my emotions. In all honesty, I need to grow thicker skin. One thing I don’t like most of the time about taking classes is feedback and criticism. I focus more on the negatives than the positives, which when I hear bad criticism about me, I focus more on that, than the positive feedback I get from an improv scene I performed in. I have even left classes early because I couldn’t take the criticism anymore. Because I miss classes, I’m not a reliable team member. Even though I feel like my team still cares about me and we are friends, there’s a riff is slowly forming between me and my teammates. In some ways it brings back memories of the cursed Jam Sandwich email. At a recent performance at Laugh Out Loud Theater, we were playing a guessing improv game and our teammate struggled to guess the final clue. Now I admit up front, I flub a lot of guessing games. Many times, when the performer has been on stage for to long and when we are running out of time, it’s okay to give an obvious clue to move things along. I felt it was that time, but my group didn’t, so I was silenced when I tried to give a clue. They were probably right, but my mom and I felt that the silencing was a bit harsh. My anxiety makes me paranoid about if my team cares about me or are they fearful of me because I’m a bit of a wildcard. I still love performing improv when I can, and I still perform with my improv team Sunny Beijing. Who knows, maybe I will return to Second City or iO Theater someday. I even have thoughts of going to take classes at another Chicago theater called The Annoyance. I do love that when you perform an improv scene, it’s usually one and done. It might live on in a video on my YouTube channel or depending on how funny the scene was, I might write it as a sketch. But it’s nice when an improv scene is over, it’s over -never performed again. After an improv scene I performed in is over, my hindsight kicks in and says how I should have done things differently. Yet, in all honesty, it’s just in the past and the past already happened. All you can do is just learn from your mistakes and continue to improve your life. After all, there’s no improve without improv.