Moving Into Improv
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"You're teaching improv?" the email read.
I just read the question from the past colleague and could hear the incredulousness within the "YOU'RE?" coming through despite no bold intent declared in writing.
And I couldn't blame her.
She had heard me lament my have a problem with the improv class I had taken several years earlier. Not because the instructor wasn't great. Or because the students weren't fun to experience alongside.
But rather my companion "fear and self-consciousness" decided to include me to class like a clinging Helena engulfing Demetrious inside a Midsummer's Night Dream.
Just how did Time passes from the 60 pound improv weakling to a hulking 100-something pound improv cheerleader?
The journey began with paralysis visiting me during my first Improv class.
I was carrying out a game where I am to pretend there's a box of goodies before me and i am to dip my hand in to the pretend box and take out the said imaginary item, look at it, name it after which throw it over my head and then pull more goodies out. All the while my two colleagues sitting next to me were to comment on the item presented - a la:
Me: "Here's a ball"
Colleague #1: "Oh it's so shiny"
Colleague #2: "I love how they bounce"
And so forth.
My reaction?
I looked into the box and panicked with the thought
"Crap, there is NOTHING in my box."
And I'm not joking.
For the reason that moment, I could not imagine something which was inside.
"How is that possible?" I recall thinking within the moment.
Come on, there needs to be SOMETHING within the box!!!!
Days later I came to realize, oh yeah, there was something within the box alright.
FEAR!!
Fear that I wouldn't still do it - pull the item fast enough, have enough variety, what-evvvvvver, you name it.
In teaching Artist's Way classes based on the book by Julia Cameron called "The Artist's Way", I often remind our students that Julia talks about how "the need to be an excellent artist makes it hard to be an artist". In that moment of "box nothingness," the conscious and never so conscious voices during my head were requiring greatness when all I really needed to do was appear and listen.
Without judgment.