Old Improv Friends
When I started in improv, if someone would have said I would make life-long friends in improv, I wouldn’t have cared. I wasn't interested. I was too busy trying to "make it." Relationships were a distraction.
I was not a good friend back then, but hopefully I am getting better.
Last week, I heard there was going to be barbecue at a celebrity charity event in Evanston, and some my old friends from improv were going to be flying in from LA for it. It was only going to be three blocks from my house and I wanted go, and I probably could have gotten myself invited if I had asked someone, but I felt too intimidated to ask anyone for an invite. Who would want to see me? Don’t you know I am a horrible person?
The night before the event, I improvised with Dee Ryan in our monthly Jimmy and Johnnie show. Before the show, we talked about the barbecue and she said she was going. I told her my fears. The next morning, she texted me with instructions on how to get in to the barbecue.
Even though this was sign that I was welcome, I was convinced I was going to be kicked out. Would people ask me a million questions about how I got in? Would people even remember who I was?
You know what happened? None of that. Damn, my head lied to me again.
People were genuinely excited to see me and even people I didn’t know that well knew my name. I was shocked in a good way. I had great conversations with lots of people and caught up with people I had not seen in years.
We didn’t talk about our careers; we talked about life. And, yes, we did some bits (we are improvisers after all). It went so well that I actually didn’t feel like ruining it by going home and comparing myself to their IMDB page.
Instead of feeling jealous or less than, I felt the love and the gratitude that I was lucky enough to be part of such a great community of improvisers at a time in Chicago that was the golden age of improv — the ’90s. A lot of people made it, and others stayed in Chicago and taught improv. That last part is me.
I did not appreciate the people when I started out, and I wonder how things would have been different if had I. I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more.
As performers, we want the audience to love us, forgetting that real love sometimes comes from the people we work with, who sometimes becomes our friends — our friends for life. It just took me 35 years to figure it out.