Last week, I took two weeklong summer immersion classes at the Second City Training Center in Chicago. The historic Second City theater opened its doors in 1959, and is known for launching the careers of comedy icons such as Bill Murray, Chris Farley, Mike Myers, Tim Meadows, Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, and my personal false gods Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. My main interest was the sketch writing class, but I took improv, too, because the schedules are really designed so you can do both at once. Why mess with their system? The alternative would have been me wandering aimlessly around Chicago neighborhoods all morning, sleeping till noon, or riding the red line for hours and pretending I lived on the El. Well, news flash: Second City is really good at teaching improv! That class ended up being my favorite part of the week. I learned a lot from sketch writing, too, but improv (and our amazing teacher, Jessica Mitolo) stole my awkward, introverted heart. This Washington Post article refers to Mitolo as “a hummingbird in a flouncy skirt” who had “the same effect as a bottle of tequila.” ACCURATE REPORTING. Here are the top five take-aways from Second City that I’ll be applying to writing, life, and maybe more improv in the future:
- Get out of your head. Much like with serial killers and new moms, the inside of a writer’s head can be a scary place. Actually it’s probably scary inside everyone’s head, except my cat’s, whose thoughts I imagine look like a conveyor belt of pancakes. Writers are calculating, perfectionist, and nuts. Yet many of the improv games worked best when we dove into the activity with no preconceived notion of what we’d say or do — no perfect plan. This was really hard for me, but when I realized the objective was not to say something funny or interesting, but to get out of my own way and jump into an activity quickly, that’s something I could act on. I don’t remember every single thing I said during improv, but I do remember that it felt great to get out of my head for a minute and just jump.
- Don’t watch from the sidelines. Last year I attended a one-night improv workshop that some friends were hosting as a fundraiser. I think I participated in one game, and the rest of the time was content to eat chips and laugh at “the real improv people” from the sidelines. When our teacher at Second City first yelled “OK, two people up!,” I thought for a minute that the format might be similar, and I could do as much, or as little, as I was comfortable with. Ha! After those two people went, another two followed, followed by another two, until eventually the entire class would perform every exercise with the rest of us sitting as their audience. I’m so glad I never had the option to sit anything out, because I just know I would’ve. Instead, I’d sometimes volunteer earlier, to get it out of the way, or because I was genuinely excited to play. There’s a metaphor for life in there somewhere, but I am tired.
Along Chicago’s Riverwalk
- Trust (the process, your partners, & yourself.) At the start of the week, I wouldn’t have expected to one day find myself screaming “it’s MY secret, MINE!” or laughing hysterically on the floor in front of a bunch of strangers. But hey, that happened, and it was one of the funniest games we played. A huge reason the week was so successful was because Second City obviously has a great formula for trust- and troupe-building. By the end of the class, I trusted the process and my classmates implicitly. They could have told me to do anything! This is probably how cults get started.
- Listen & be patient. I fear I’m one of those people who thinks she’s a good listener, but who in reality gets excited and talks over people too often and sometimes gets so fixated on one thing someone said that she forgets to continue listening to the rest of it. (Please tell me offline and preferably in an anonymous telegram if so.) There were so many instances in class where careful and complete listening was key to the success of a game or scene, and I’m sure I can apply that to regular life, too. Don’t tell my boyfriend that I said that.
Foggy Chitown
- Commit & make bold choices. In class, we talked about commitment in terms of emotional reactions and bold physical choices, which make scenes inherently funnier and make reacting to your scene partner(s) easier. The same is usually true in writing: Don’t almost put your characters in danger. Put them in actual danger. Don’t almost embarrass them but then quickly smooth things over. Mortify the hell out of them! Commitment and bold choices are also so important in the writing life. By the end of the year, I’ll wager that I’ll have sat down and written on more than 75% of the 365 days. That’s a huge improvement over the many years when I was a writer who never wrote. I know a few things I’ll have to show for it – a web show, some plays, this blog – while other deliverables are uncertain – a final draft of my third book? An agent? Either way, I’m committed for the long haul. And though I’m basically a tenured professor of playing it safe, I hope one day to make some bold choices in pursuit of my writing goals, too.
What lessons, writing or otherwise, has improv taught you?
(And check out my other “5 Lesson” posts.)
Tell this to the orange velvet capri pants I once bought.