KC Improvisers Blog Ring Coordinated Blog II

So, the topic for this month: what makes a good improv troupe?

In a word, me.

Not really. In a serious word, trust.

I love seeing a group not afraid to pick each other up, get in each other's grill, and maybe every once in a while getting close enough to make you just a tad uncomfortable. But it's so much more than that.

When two people enter a scene, if one person says something completely out of left field, I believe that trust is what will hold the other person from breaking, from trying to steer the scene back into any direction they had already set up in their head, and/or from limping into the established reality of the scene set by their partner, rather than jumping into the deep end.

Had enough? Well, here's another thing good troupes are wont to do: communicate effectively inside and outside of troupe business hours.

Gonna miss a rehearsal? Call ahead, mutha trucka. Be cool enough to have a decent excuse. And if you don't have one? Bring some french toast or snickers bars to the next rehearsal along with a big ass apology. Why? People love good tasting stuff, and are more willing to forgive you your faults if you come with a gift that goes in their belly.

Don't dig the format your group's doing? Suck it up and do it well or be willing to express your feelings (backed up with good reasons) to the director and the director alone. Even if you do have a somewhat valid point, no one wants to hear that shit in rehearsal. No one needs to. Bringing that up in front of the rest of your castmates just plants an uneeded seed of doubt. You may think it doesn't, but you're wrong, sucka.

The last thing that makes a decent troupe is passion. You've gotta be doing it for the right reasons. If you're doing it solely as a stepping stone to something new, get outta my face. Most of the people I admire today may have used improv as a stepping stone to get where they are now, but few have forgotten their roots. The folks I wanna party with that are on SNL or are doing movies are the folks that still go out to the improv clubs because it is something they still want to do. If you find yourself thinking that you've learned enough and that the only way you'll get better now is through performing, shut your trap and take a workshop. For realz.

Umm...that's all I've got for right now. I was going to leave it at just my third sentence, at just trust, but I'm kind of glad I elaborated a little bit. Sorry for the tardy.

My boring update.

So, I'm going to MN a few weeks later than I had planned. I leave May 2nd now. Here's the deal: I could have a much better paying job tomorrow if I wanted, I'm pretty sure of that. At this point in my life, and at this point in the course of our country, it seems as though we're on a collision course.

Making healthcare an affordable and attainable thing for everyone seems like a pretty good cause to devote a year of one's life to. On top of making sure every child has access to a world class education, keeping good jobs here in the USA, blah blah blah.....

I talk to middle class folk every day, and I love it. I work for a non-partisan public lobbying group. That means we don't deal in party specific B.S., we work on issues.

Issues are what people too often forget in the election process. I love it when I walk up to a person with a Ron Paul or John McCain sign in their yard. I'm not trying to convince them to change candidates, all I'm doing is bringing important issues that affect their lives to the forefront. Putting it in their minds. Hopefully in a few months, when they go to vote, they'll keep these facts in their minds.

Bah, I could go on, but I'm a little tired.

Don't call it a comeback.

Here's something improv related that I'm still trying to understand: Why do people care what other cities think of our scene? Also, how would they know much of anything about it?

I mean honestly, Kansas City hasn't exactly been sending out TONS of representatives to other festivals. And the out of town improvisers we bring in for the festival perform their shows and get to watch the other acts from out of town. What do y'all expect? The only real way to get big time national notoriety, which I could personally care less about, would be to have an open call festival, and mix national acts in with local acts. Having lots more local troupes going to other festivals would help too.