Me on stage in Ventura in January 2011

I’ve been saving this quote for more than two years. It’s part of a review by Fishbowl LA of some TV show:

You know how when your stupid friend begs you to go see their improv group at some horrible club in Hollywood and you spend the evening sitting in the back of some sticky theater watching the parade of lame and you wonder why you are friends with this guy in the first place and how the hell did you just get suckered into paying a cover to watch real life Hard Rock servers pretend to be Starbucks workers? “Ok, now we need help from the audience.” Indeed.

Ouch. Improv is one of my main art forms, and I also often feel the way the friend does above.

Short form improvisational theater often gets a bad rap, and I’ve engaged in plenty of arguments in which I’ve defended it. I’ve also sat wordless and laughed as people have made fun of it. When performed poorly, improv can be awful, as awful as its described above. And when performed well, it can be transcendent, as satisfying as any art I have experienced.

I had struggled in my teens, trying to improve myself as an actor, and failed over and over. I ran yelping from the stage for 14 years before I tried again with improv. The second I understood it and tried it, it clicked, it worked, it felt like a warm bath. I was — and am — good at it.

I love it and am frustrated by it. My friend Roxy interviewed me a while back, and one of her questions was what kept me committed to it. I talked a whole lot (surprise) but I guess the fundamental answer is that I am entwined with improv now — I’ve invested a lot of time and sweat in it, and in our theatre, and our improv group makes up my core family and social life here. But on a deeper level, improv and I are woven together.

Ugh, trite! But true. I also made a commitment to improv about 8 years ago. At the time, I was immersed in several dozen creative pursuits, and had spread myself really thin. Then my mom died and suddenly I had very finite time and energy to devote to my creative side, and maybe it was time to see if I could fine-tune my focus.

So I chose improv and quilting, almost out of a hat.

Obviously, I do more than just those things (hello Post-a-Day!) but those are my two main pursuits, and I did good — I am challenged by them, I get frustrated by them, I make fun of them, and I love them. That’s art, as far as I’m concerned.