n o w p l a y i n g - s c r i p t b i n - f a n c l u b - s t u d i o

make love to the camera



March 04, 2002 - 1:04 pm

And Scene

Good Lord. It was so cold last night that I think my jeans actually fused with my legs at one point.

And I still say that I'm going to miss Chicago weather when I move. I don't really understand why people have such a distaste for snow and cold weather. Friday night, it snowed here like a punishment from God. We got slammed. I was outside for part of it, and with the thick snow coming down, blanketing the streets and tree branches, all of the streetlights refracting off of it, casting everything in this golden, diffused light, it was really beautiful. Some people here revile the snow, but to me it's just as beautiful as a 70 degree cloudless day.

Besides: Snowmen. Snowball fights. Walking on salt. Being inside during a snowstorm.

Come on, people.

The plan was to go see Amelie Saturday night, but the storm kept us in to watch the Margaret Cho concert in San Francisco. She was hilarious. The story of her failed sitcom is amazing. The NBC execs had her lose 30 pounds in two weeks. Then, they hired 'Asian consultants' because the show wasn't "Asian enough." In the end, they decided it was "too Asian." It was then cancelled and replaced with the Drew Carey show. In her words: "Because he wasn't too fat."

I had my first improv class on Saturday. So much fun. I hadn't really realized just how much I missed performing. I only wish that the other people in my class had more experience. It makes it hard to play when the other people don't know what they're doing. It's not that I'm putting myself forth as some kind of improv genius, it's just that I've had over two years of experience at two different training centers here, thrown in with the fact that I was once an acting major. Therefore, I'm pretty damn comfortable going onstage and acting like an idiot.

Some of these people are actors or improvisers who really want to pursue this, others are just schmoes who get into it because their friends keep telling them they're funny, and others are accountants and other white collar types who want to get over their stage fright.

All in all, though, the class seems to be decent. Some people know what's going on. In every improv class I've ever taken, there has always been one older person who seems kind of out of place among all the twenty and thirty somethings. Fortunately, she's good. And one guy brought cupcakes.

It's going to be a good class.

It's easy to forget how unique and cool improv is, as an art form. It's less than fifty years old, and was creating right here in Chicago, improv capital of the world. You need nothing to do it. No planning, no script, no props, no set, nothing at all. Just your imagination, and you use it to instantly build entire worlds and people and realities. It's communal, democratic, and entirely built upon people agreeing with one another and working together for the benefit of the group. It's amazingly pure. And when you're doing it well, the audience fades out, and it's just you and the scene and your partner and you feel as if you're in complete control of every molecule in the universe. Someone once told me it feels like flying to them, but that's what it feels like to me: A tiny, personal universe where I have absolute power to create.

It's quite the rush, I tells you.

Here's why I love the improvisation: I come downstage at the same time as another girl. We're just the two people who happened to step forward. Of course, nothing has been planned, nothing has been pre-arranged; there is no script. Instantly, for whatever reason, she bends down and says "Oh, honey, look at this one! He's so cute!"

This was good, as from that one simple line she established the "Who, What and Where." Those are very important things to know in improv, as they create a much richer reality in which to do a scene. She did it well, too, in a way that didn't come across as fake. She could have said "Gee, husband of mine, it sure is nice to be at this dog kennel looking for puppies, isn't it?" which would have given us everything we needed to know, but, at the same time, would have not been nearly as artful.

So, one line into the scene, and I knew that a) I was her significant other, b) we were at some kind of animal kennel and c) we were looking at a 'cute' little animal. It could have been anything we wanted, a dog, a cow, a cockroach, whatever. I made it a dog.

I bent down too and said, in that doggy-loving voice people use when talking to dogs, "Who's that good pups? Who's a good boy? You are, yes you are! Are you a good boy, are you?" I hadn't really decided where this was going to go yet, and no real inspiration was coming to me. This isn't a bad thing, it just happens because one isn't always bombarded with tons of ideas. Luckily, there's a tool you can use in situations like this: You just keep doing what you're doing, and maybe increase the intensity of what you're doing a notch or two. Eventually, an idea comes to someone and the scene goes on.

In this case, it was her. She says "Bobby is going to love this puppy." So now we now we're looking for a dog for 'Bobby.' He's probably our kid, but, again, we could have made him anyone named Bobby with just a line.

The next thing just came out of my mouth, no forethought, as soon as she was done talking. Annoyed, I said "Hey, I'm talking to this dog right now, OK?" I then got down in the dog's face and screamed at it "I SAID, WHO'S A GOOD BOY? WHO'S A GOOD PUPS?"

Then the instructor called 'scene,' and we were done.

So, it could have gone a million ways, depending on what we said. There could have been a problem with the dog, we could have been planning to eat it instead of have it as a pet. Whatever. But just because a certain thought struck us at a certain time, the humor came from the fact that there was this husband who was just trying to have a fucking conversation with a dog, if his wife would just stop fucking interrupting him.

So incredibly fun.

I have my vocal class tonight. I probably will not feel as if I'm in control of the universe there, but we'll see how it goes.

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