After the success of Family Court, I was riding high.
Thought I’d go back to Improv.
There’s some real new talent there now, and it leaves me excited to see where The Pig goes next.
Impressions – they’re having fun. That was nice. Jon’s leadership seems to foster a more playful energy, particularly as the age of the players seems to skew much younger than I ever remember the group being.
For my part, I was rusty. Very rusty.
Use those neural pathways, or lose them. And those pathways are weak. I wasn’t as quick as I expected. In hindsight, I recognize I was leaning on being supported versus leading, and some of the younger there don’t have the skills yet to lead.
That’s OK. I firmly believe they will. The talent is there; now it’s just development of the skills.
There may also have been an expectation for me to be a force of presence, given my previous history as a player.
I had taken a step back, and I absolutely don’t have the history with some to signal that.
There’s also a bridge of understanding and the hard-won understanding and trust that comes from regularly playing together. The younger, less experienced players that I haven’t built that hard-won bond with are in a mutual state of feeling each other out, live, on-stage.
As such, I was out-of-sync, with a foggy, rusty brain, and not able to remotely bring my A-Game.
Then, I couldn’t let it go – a cardinal sin in Improv. You fail? Move on, try again.
You cannot keep score. You have to move on to the next scene, game, hell, even just the next moment and let go what you just failed at.
I… couldn’t. The feeling snowballed for me, and by the end of practice, I just wanted out of there.
I was having a REAL hard time with it, because I’ve built a large part of my identity around my place as an improv player.
I had to let that go. I had to give myself grace. I absolutely recognize that.
And then… the crash.
I had forgotten what that feels like.
In my opinion, when you do improv correctly, everything disappears but just the players you’re on-stage with. You reach a state of equilibrium with the players, a kind of mental and emotional sync that amplifies and intensifies between each other.
When you reach that state, every decision, every reaction becomes instinctual and natural. Nothing is forced, nothing sounds or looks out-of-place – everything just works.
I’d liken it to ‘flow state,’ but it’s something different than that. Just a heightened connection and a corresponding sense of imagination that brings you and the other players into that moment.
You’re not making this up, no – this is happening to you and the other person or people. You’re there, in this small snapshot of time, along with all the emotions washing, crashing over you.
Paraphrasing a famous improv player: “Somewhere, this has or will happen. You’re simply channeling this moment, stepping into their shoes for just a quick snapshot in time, then letting go. You step out, but those lives continue on.”
It’s a fascinating way to think about it.
But more than that?
It’s emotionally, and therefore physically, exhausting.
The toll it takes on you can’t be articulated with the specificity, but, if you believe the postulated theory above, the empathic channeling of the people you inhabit for those moments utterly drains you.
It’s a beautiful feeling.
I got home, ate a quick bite of food, and passed out hard.
I got a stark reminder last night of what it takes to be an improv player.