Ruthie: Improv and the NO APOLOGIZING

When I was growing up, I would make videos with my little brothers. One in particular that stands out: my brother Danny with a pom pom on his head (to represent my hair), standing in front of a make-shift soccer goal in our basement, and blocking goals, yelling “I’m sorry” every time he touched the ball.

He had me pegged, that observant little bugger. I was a soccer goalie on my school’s team, and I’d dive for a ball—”I’m sorry!”—or accidentally knock someone on the field—”I’m sorry!” It was constant. I didn’t even realize I was doing it. (Needless to say, I am not now a professional goalkeeper.)

That constant need to apologize hasn’t really left me, even as an adult. I often don’t even notice myself saying it anymore. Friends tell me to stop (“why are you apologizing?”), my fiancé gives me a look whenever “sorry” sneaks out—even my yoga teacher noticed that I apologized every time I couldn’t quite get a particular move right: “Your assignment for the next two weeks: don’t apologize.” Hmmm. Good luck with that. I’m resigned to a life of using “I’m sorry” whenever a situation where I’m uncomfortable arises.

Last night at improv, Teacher Pete was wondering about our low energy after a particularly challenging game. Called Complaint Department, one person was a shopkeeper and the other was returning an object they’d bought from the store. The catch: only the shopkeeper (and the audience) knows what the object is. She’s supposed to give clues—if the object is fruitcake, for instance, the shopkeeper might say, “Why you RAISIN such a ruckus about this, lady?” (I can’t take credit for that one: that goes to Colleen.) It’s all about giving silly/stupid, punny clues that the other person onstage may or may not get, but the audience loves.

We were having trouble getting to that pun area—we were trying so hard to guess the object, or help the other person guess, that we sometimes lost our way. And during the scene or afterward, even if we weren’t outright saying it, we were (in our facial expressions or attitudes) apologizing for the things that we said or did. They’re not funny enough, we thought, or this is taking too long!

Whatever you do onstage, own it, Pete reminded us. Don’t apologize for anything you say or do—just make it into a part of the scene.

After class, I asked him whether doing improv could help me stop apologizing. He considered it for a second, and said, well, if you’re apologizing because you’re just a generally considerate person, improv—which teaches you to be extra-thoughtful toward the people onstage with you, so that you’re all working together and creating a world that the audience enjoys and understands—might make you apologize more.

But what if I apologize all the time because I feel like I’m doing something wrong? I asked.

Oh yeah, Pete said. Improv can help you stop thinking so hard about what you’re doing “wrong”—there’s really no such thing as “wrong” in improv, as long as you make it your own.

Despite what I said above about resigning myself, I’m going to try so, so hard for the next month to not apologize. To just own everything I do, in improv and in life. But just for one last hurrah, I’ll leave you with this.

Ruthie: Improv, Reflections on Singing in the Middle of a Circle

(All photos by Rich Chapman)

Last night, I went out for a drink (or three) with my friend Brooke. A huge fan of improv who’s also taken Second City classes, Brooke asked me if we’ve played Hot Spot yet. “Hmmm,” I said. “I’m not sure. What do you do in that game?”

Well, she said, the group gets in a circle, and one person yells a word for inspiration, like “sunshine.” The person in the middle starts singing a song inspired by the word, and then whoever thinks of another song inspired by that first song then moves into the middle and starts singing their song. And so on.

“Yes!” I said. It was actually one of the first games we played, but I didn’t remember the name.

Brooke had written her grad-school thesis on Hot Spot, talking about how the game is actually one of the best ways to get comfortable in improv, even though it’s one of the most uncomfortable exercises. Singing. In public. By yourself. In the middle of a circle of people.

It was the game that the Second City students she interviewed were most terrified of, she explained. Improv students go into a class expecting to speak in front of others and act in silly ways, but they don’t expect to have to sing.

But that’s the whole reason, Brooke argued with healthy dose of Erving Goffman, to play this game. Hot Spot immediately creates a safe, welcoming environment where participants leave the world of impression management—how we regulate our behavior to project a certain persona—and enter a world where we celebrate our vulnerabilities. Everybody—everybody—looks completely silly in this exercise, and it’s OK.

Maybe that’s why Teacher Pete had us play this game in the first week. He must have read Brooke’s thesis.

Ruthie: Improv, Weeks 2–3

Misters Daryl Hall and John Oates

I can’t believe I admitted to people I barely knew my most embarrassing story*. But there’s something about the IE environment that just makes me feel safe and OK.

Last week, Teacher Pete had each of us get up and dance to imaginary music, all while sharing our most embarrassing stories. Some people talked about kindergarten, ahem, accidents, and others about making fools of themselves in front of their high-school crushes.

That was our first foray into performance, one person in front of a whole group. The rest of the time, we’d been doing group games, involving throwing around imaginary balls of different sizes and trying to catch sedated monkeys. It was a challenge for me—partly because I have never danced to no music except maybe in front of my bedroom mirror. But coming up with an embarrassing story was actually the hardest part—I don’t know how many risks I’ve taken that lead me to get really, red-faced embarrassed. I was very shy as a child and teenager, so my self-consciousness kept me from doing too many potentially embarrassing things. Even as an adult, it’s rare for me to try things that I know I might not be good at.

I need to remember: if it makes you feel stupid, DO IT HARDER! If nothing else, it’s to give myself some more embarrassing story fodder.

*If you think I’m going to admit the story here, you’re wrong. There’s something about baring it all on the Internet that makes me feel unsafe. But it does involve a particular ’80s duo whom I love so much. Maybe that’s embarrassing enough.

Ruthie: Improv, Week 1

After meeting all 40 of the Fear Experiment participants on the first day, it was nice to get into our smaller groups on Thursday. Nerves were high, but we eased into things this week–a lot of talkie, not very much do-ie. Our instructor, Pete Aiello, who (among many other things) leads improv activities for corporate team building, asked us what we were excited about and what we were afraid of going into this three-month adventure.

He also provided us with some wisdom gems from his years of doing improv. Lessons learned:

Trust your fellow improvisers.

As I mentioned before, we spent a lot of time talking this first night, learning about why we were excited (excited to be silly) and why we were afraid (looking stupid in front of the audience or not knowing what to say). It was a bit touchy-feely, but it was all part of Pete’s master plan: to get us comfortable with each other. Because improv is all about building worlds from nothing with the people around you, we need to know and trust the people on stage with us.

Silence the meta-critic in your head.

Improv is a rare activity where you don’t need to worry about what Pete called “impression-making.” With your coworkers and even with friends, you craft a persona and try very hard to not say or do anything that veers from that persona. With improv, however, you’ve got to turn off the voices in your head that tell you, “Don’t say that; you’ll look stupid.”

Play as if you were a child.

Recently, I wrote a story for the University of Chicago Magazine about Vivian Paley, a retired kindergarten and nursery school teacher who researches children’s play. With young kids, she said, their imaginary play is how children learn to make sense of the world and interact with other children.

Children’s play has “a kind of Second City spontaneity going on constantly. The great thing about the preschool and kindergarten improvisation and the audience is that it is impossible to get it wrong,” Paley told me. “Somehow or other, anything another child pretends or says is considered quite remarkable by all the other children.” This is what improv should be.

Most importantly, and most quotably, if you feel stupid while doing something, do it harder.

This is the one that I imagine will be the hardest for me. When I acted onstage in college, I’d feel like I was being totally expressive and acting my face off, but I’d watch myself on video and realize I was completely holding back. Do it harder.

Standing up to our fears

Afraid Together features the voices of just a few of the 38 Chicagoans facing our fears this winter. A project started in 2009 by Saya Hillman of Mac ‘n Cheese Productions, the annual Fear Experiment takes “people who don’t know each other and who are ‘bad’ and scared to do something”—specifically improv or dance, Saya explains on her website. Then, they train with a teacher and perform onstage.

Eighteen of us have chosen to train for three months in the art of improv, playing games that get us comfortable with our bodies (in the silliest way possible) and with the rest of our group. Twenty of us are learning to dance, also getting comfortable with our bodies, but in a less silly way, and figuring out how to train our angular selves to do body rolls. At the end of the three months (April 28), we’ll perform at the Park West in front of an audience of 750 people.

This is our diary.