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I did it. Last weekend I actually did a live improv show in front of a live audience.
It had been over two years since I had been on stage, thanks to Covid. But here I was at the Laughing Academy in Glenview improvising again with some people I had known for years and some people I had just met.
It was strange to be back. Nothing had changed but the entire world.
I was more excited than nervous. I was more calm, than anxious. But the fear of being in a large crowd still lingered, thanks Covid.
But still, I was grateful to be there, to be with people again.
For me, the pandemic gave me more appreciation for human contact. I had taken for granted meeting friends at Starbucks or going over to someone’s house to watch the Oscars. And I have missed being with people so much. That’s why I was looking forward to improvising again in the flesh.
Yes, I was timid at the start of the show — rusty, as we like to say. Both my excitement and my control issues came out, causing me to edit way too much.
In spite of my mistakes, it was completely joyful experience. It was one of those nights that the air felt light, like you couldn’t do anything wrong. And it all went by too fast, which is a sign of a great show.
The audience agreed. I heard we got a standing ovation, but I don’t really remember because I was in an adrenaline blackout when I walked off stage.
The big takeaway for me was that I didn't realize how much I missed improvising. Not just performing in the show, but every part of it — hearing the audience laugh, hanging out with my fellow improvisers before and after the show.
When you improvise with someone you connect with them on a deeper level, though we never speak about it. It must be how people feel when they serve in the army together or play a sports team. Except we connect though play, by taking risks and by being vulnerable.
We don't talk about this much either: Improvising, the art of getting up in front of people and making things up, is vulnerable. One of most non-improv people's biggest fears is talking in public, which is why most people have to write down what they’re going to say in front of a crowd. We as improvisers are way past that. People both admire us and think we are insane.
When you are still doing improv shows in your 50s, you’re not doing them to get fame or fortunes or to prove anything to anyone. You are doing them simply for the joy of it, something we all need more of in this unpredictable world.
And performing live again really gave me that overwhelming sense of joy like I used to get when I first started improvising almost 40 years ago, thanks Covid.
Greg Hollimon is an actor and improviser who is best known for his work on Comedy Central's "Strangers with Candy" as Principal Blackman. We talked to him about how to have a great stage presence, why he likes performing with Pimprov and how he got cast in "Strangers With Candy."
Aretha Sills is a legendary improv teacher and writer. She is also the daughter of Paul Sills and the granddaughter of Viola Spolin. If you really want to get a sense of the origins of improv and what it was like to grow up in an improv family and the huge contribution that Viola made to improv, then you will want to listen to this episode.
Marz Timms is an improviser, stand up, teacher and actor. He is the creator of Pimprov, one of Chicago's longest running improv shows. We talked to him about the Annoyance's style of improv, how to be bigger than the stage, how you can get paid in improv, and the difference between stand up and improv.
Improvisers inherently know that joy is in the now.
That’s where the laughs lie, and the audience reinforces that when we are on stage. It's something we train for and hope to achieve in every show, yet I still don't achieve it every time I improvise.
Staying in the moment can be hard, even for longtime improvisers like me. I cannot tell you how many times I been improvising and while I am doing scene and I am thinking about what I am going to have for dinner when the show is over.
As hard as it is to be in the moment on stage, it can be even harder in our lives. The best way to avoid the joy is to spend a lot of time thinking about the future or the past.
Our mind is muscle. It needs discipline, and you have a better chance of being able to be in the moment on stage if you practice it in your own life. It's the old cliche "art imitates life."
Students asks me all the time what they can do between classes to get better, and I think training yourself to be in the now is one of the best things you can focus on. Here are five things you can do in your own life to be more in the now.
If you are looking for a little inspiration in your comedy career, I have found three things — a book, a movie and a documentary — that really spoke to me recently, and if you don't mine, I'd love to recommend them to you.
Odenkirk talks about creating the iconic SNL sketch with Chris Farley where Farley played the motivational speaker, the hard work that it took to get the cult classic sketch show Mr. Show on the TV, and how he originally turned down Better Call Saul.
He is someone who seems to be objective about his life and his career. When talking about his years working at SNL, he is honest with us that he had a chip on his shoulder and a bad attitude. Through sharing his successes and many failures, he passes along lessons to us. Bob has always had the reputation of mentoring comedy groups and people in the business, and this book in a lot of ways is an extension of that work. For anyone who wants to have a career in comedy and show business, this is must read. I love saying must read, especially when it's true.
I used to think that not only did my opinion matter, but that it defined me. And if you did not agree with me there must be something wrong with you, or worse, something wrong with me. Sharing my opinion about someone's show or a movie wasn't just a matter of an opinion. It was a matter of life and death. I took it personally. You were the enemy. I don’t know, maybe it was because I read so many of those self-help books like, “How To Win Friends and Influence People,” but somehow I had it in my head that when people were agreeing with you, that made you more likable, and I was all about being more likable.
Clearly, I had this all wrong. The way to be more likeable is actually to be able to see everyone’s point of view, not just you own. But sadly, this took me a long time to figure out.
I think the fact that people have different opinions about art is why it can be so hard to discuss, and also why it can be so hard for some of us to continue to put our art out there.
Having people talk about our art, even if what they say is not favorable or what they think about it is not what we intended to say with our art, is good thing, though I prefer when they like it.
Recently I realized that, thank God, I’ve finally changed and am now able to have a passionate conversation with someone else who has a different opinion about a show or a movie and not feel that because we don’t agree that I lost an argument, and more importantly, a friend.
Last week, I watched about an hour of Steven Spielberg’s new West Side Story. There were a lot of things that I liked about the movie, but overall I felt that it moved too slow, and I did not like it as much as the original, which I’m not even sure I have ever watched in its entirety. That did not prevent me from having an opinion about it and getting into two different conversations about it, which I did with two of my friends. Nobody raised their voice, nobody got heated, nobody had to convince the other person they were right.
I could feel the passion in their voices because both people know far more about musical theater then I ever will.
It was the first time I realized we could each have different opinions and I did not have to be right and they didn’t have to be wrong — that art is subjective. I think the best art doesn't offer solutions, it starts conversations. And the intention is not to divide us, but to bring us together by talking about our reactions to it.
And that does not mean we all have to like it or all have to hate it. If everyone likes something, that’s not art, that’s a cult.
The point of art is not that we all like something but that we have a shared experience in seeing it. This is how art connect us. It does not have to polarizing, like so many things are today. We can share a difference of opinion, and though it has taken me many years to realize this, art is safe place to do that.
I am not a very courageous person. It's weird to think that I teach people how to take risks, when in my own life I am pretty risk averse.
Last weekend, I took Betsy to a skating birthday party for one of her friends, and the parents were invited to skate, too.
I was excited to go, even though as a kid I had always been afraid of skating and tried to get out of it, when we had to skate as part of a school trip. But I decided now was the time to face my fear. The last time I skated was 45 years ago, and I am not the same person I was then.
At least that is what I thought.
When we got to the party, and I saw the rink filled with kids zooming around on the ice, and I panicked a little. As I was putting Betsy’s skates on her, I thought, “I’ll just return my skates and go on the ice in my running shoes.”
When I told Betsy my idea she said, "I’m not going skating, Dad, unless you go skating, too."
She was blackmailing one of her parents, a skill I don’t think I learned until I was in the 3rd grade. “Fine, fine, fine, I'll put on my skates,” I said.
When we finally got on the ice, I was terrified. It took every muscle in my body to just stand up on those skates without falling. The thought of actually moving in them seemed impossible.
Besty's had other ideas. She had a little plastic chair that she was holding onto and was tooling around the ice. Me, I was glued to the plexiglass side of the rink and was moving like I was on a ledge of a 30-story building, afraid I was going to fall off. I was so full of fear I wanted to die, and I would have if I wasn't responsible for Betsy.
Eventually, I let go of the plexiglass and moved into the center of the rink where the parents and kids seemed to be having good time skating.
The mantra in my head was, "Just don't fall. Just don't fall."
I was now wobbling, and as I passed other parents I asked them if they had tips for me for skating. They said they didn't know how to skate either and then would zoom off like the were trying to qualify for the Olympics. Is that what “I don't know how to skate” looks like?
I was counting the minutes on the digital clock on the wall until 5:30 p.m., when we had to get off the ice. In the meantime, Betsy was gaining more confidence and speed, which meant I had to fake having more confidence and speed to try to keep up with her.
I was trying to follow her, but I was no match for her and the plastic chair. The digital numbers on the clock weren't moving. My feet hurt from this unnatural form of exercise.
Then, finally, it was over. We crawled back to the bench, and my feet had never been more excited to see my shoes. And I actually felt proud of myself. I had accomplished two goals: I did not fall and I did not die. This was my definition of success.
I felt that sense of pride you feel when you overcome a fear that you were not expecting to overcome in this lifetime.
I always think I have to not feel afraid before I can do something courageous. But I forget that doing something courageous means feeling the fear and doing it anyway.
If it were up to me, I probably would never take risks, but thank goodness there are other people in my life who sometimes push me to do things I didn’t think I could, whether that be other members of an improv group, my friends, or sometimes, a stubborn little Kindergarten girl.
How many times have you done an improv show, and after you get a suggestion from the audience, you get in your head trying to find the "right" way to use it?
Or you are in scene and thing to heighten is right in front of you, but you resist doing it because you think it’s the wrong thing to do? Or you join yet another improv group or agree to a project because you are afraid if you don't do it, you will be missing out. I think the term is FOMO.
The solution in all these situations is the same. Instead of trying to figure out what the right thing is to do, how about asking yourself, “What would be fun?” When you get a suggestion in an improv show, what would be more fun to play: a villain or your grandma, a dolphin.
When you are in a scene and you don't know what to heighten, ask yourself, “What would be more fun to heighten: more crying, or more excitement.”
And in picking projects to participate in, ask yourself, “What is going to bring me joy?”
Some of the best projects I ever been involved in have happened simply because they looked like fun. I had no expectation that the project was going to lead to anything except for the experience of being in that show or project.
And the beautiful thing about what is "fun" on stage and in life is different for everyone. Some people can't stand playing low status characters on stage, while other people love it. Doing improv helps you find your voice, and I think one of the ways you can find your voice is by finding those choices on stage that are fun for you to play.
I have done an exercise in class where I have paused a scene and asked the players how they would like to change the scene to have more fun. And if they don't know — because, like me, sometimes they can't see what would be fun — I will ask the other students what they would like to see more of in the scene, and they will tell the players.
And when it's over, most of the time the performers will say that was a lot of fun.
If you are like me, you probably grew up believing fun could not be trusted. I know in my house, fun certainly was not something to be valued. In improv, fun is our compass. It can tell us where need to go.
Although I’ve been doing this in improv for a while now, I’ve just started realizing that I need to start following the fun more in my everyday life, too. Instead of asking myself what I should do each day, I think I need to ask myself, what would I like to do? And if I can do that, I think I’m going to really be surprised at how much bigger, and yes, fun, my life is going to be.
Last week would have been Martin de Maat’s birthday. If you don’t know him or his work, he was an incredible improv teacher who made a huge impact on the Chicago improv community.
Martin was born in on Jan. 12, 1949 in Chicago. He was the niece of Josephine Forsberg, who was Viola Spolin’s teaching assistant and the original founder of The Players Workshop, which later became Second City.
Martin himself began working at Second City as a dishwasher when he was only a teenager, and began teaching classes at Second City for his aunt when he was only 18 years old.
In 1974, when he was 25, he moved to New York, where he became a successful theater and film director, but he often returned in the summers to teach at the Players Workshop. In 1984, he returned to Chicago and began teaching improv full-time, joining the staff of the new Second City Training Center as well as teaching at Columbia College. From 1985 to 2000, he served as the artistic director of the Second City Training Center, transforming it into the largest improv training center in the country. Sadly, he died of pneumonia on Feb. 15, 2001, at the age of 52.
Martin became a beloved fixture of the Chicago improv community who fostered a sense of playfulness and community among his students. According to Wikipedia, he always greeted his students with a hug whenever they came into class. I don’t remember that, but I do remember him getting very emotional on the last day of class. That’s just the kind of person he was.
I was lucky to study with him when I was a student at Columbia College back in 1984, before I even had a clue that I was one day going to teach this stuff. What was amazing about Martin was that you always did your best work in his classes. I can’t explain how he did it. It seemed magical.
Almost 40 years later, students will pay me that same compliment and I am so grateful that I can pass on what he taught me.
He created a space that wasn’t about competition, but about collaboration. He removed the pressure of being funny so you felt you couldn’t make a mistake, which of course encouraged everyone to take more risks. He did this with Spolin’s games.
His classes were part improv, part philosophy. He believed that improv was bigger than just being funny. Though I was young at time, he was the first person I met that believed improv was bigger than just making people laugh. He was passionate that improv could change the world with concepts like “yes, and” and “making your partner looking good.” That is what he gave to his students.
Mark Sutton, who is one of Chicago’s most respected improv teachers and a founding member of The Annoyance Theater, wrote a beautiful piece about Martin’s impact that I wanted to share with you today.
It was Martin de Maat's Birthday the other day. I (we) were remiss in noting it. Especially… in a city that Martin influenced so heavily. Most of you probably didn't know Martin. Fewer were taught by him. But all of you can probably connect something you do or something you've learned to his presence in this world.
Martin was the Yin to Del Close's Yang. His teaching style was softer, more patient, more spiritual... if you will.
He believed in you. Not only as a performer, but as a person. And he wasn't there to teach you so much as he was there to help you find yourself.
He gave me endless advice and support. He gave me my first job at Second City. And he gave me wisdom, insight and understanding that shapes my teaching to this day.
He truly believed that anyone could benefit from learning improvisation. And he truly believed that there was joy and magic to be found when two people walked on stage to play together.
Most have seen the quote posted at Second City "You are pure potential." It's a good one, but the best thing I ever heard Martin say was a little more challenging: “You do not have the right to use this art form to make yourself feel inferior." Martin believed in the power of us all. Let's continue that in the work we do.