“What life to lead and where to go, After the war, after the war?” In the aftermath of World War I, the poet Robert Graves and T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) languish at Oxford facing disillusionment with the war that still haunts them. Playing mischievous pranks on university administrators passes the time but soon escalates into a climactic confrontation that brings the Arab Revolt dangerously close to home. A Chicago Premiere!

I made a map on how to get there. There’s free parking just around the corner. That’s right! Free parking in Chicago. You can thank the Social Security Administration who owns the lot. Click the image to see the map full screen.

One of the main characters is Lawrence of Arabia, and it’s just off Lawrence Avenue on Leavitt. There is no one named Leavitt in the play. That would an awesome coincidence.

There will be an industry night on Wednesday April 11th (more details on that when I get them). Otherwise it will run at Thursday, Friday and Saturday night at 7:30 pm and Saturday afternoons at 3 pm until April 14th. There will be no shows on Easter weekend, because the theatre is in the basement of a church. And churches are busy on Easter weekend.

You can get tickets on Brown Paper Tickets. That rocks because they are a non profit which charge really tiny service fees compared to evil companies like Ticketmaster.

What is the program?

Like a lot of programs in Chicago and elsewhere, they start with exercises used in Meisner classes. You learn to observe your partners behavior. You do repetition. Repetition is something that I’ve done for years. I thought this part of the curriculum would be old hat for me. But I certainly did learn new things.

My favorite lesson was how important it was to fight to see your partner. In my previous acting classes, there were often moments of vivid emotional life in the exercises. Sometimes people would be overwhelmed with feelings sparked by the exercises. I certainly had experiences like that. What was new for me at Black Box was how important it was to fight when you start to feel overwhelmed. That is the moment to push yourself to see your partner, and to know how they are behaving. In the past, I would just allow myself to get lost in my own emotional experience. I’ve certainly seen others do the same. I’m betting at some point, someone else gave me a similar note, but Black Box is where I first really heard and understood it.

By the second level, you are doing improvisations. These aren’t improv scenes where you create dialog, these are scenarios which you choose beforehand and spend time imagining the circumstances. The words you use are limited to repetition. They are similar to the independent activity exercises that Meisner pioneered. This is a particularly interesting class which forces you to really stretch your imagination. It’s a tough class. I remember agonizing for days over whether or not my activity would work, but it definitely gets easier with practice.

The third class really switches gears. This is when things start getting very physical. Here you get an introduction to viewpoints and a few other tools, and it’s where you begin to work with text. It felt a little crazy at first, all the things they were throwing at me. But as I used these tools with text in different combinations, as realized how powerful things like gesture, body shape and tempo were for grounding me into the circumstances of the text.

The fourth class is where things come together. You do a variety exercises, mostly with text. I worked on three different scenes and a monolog. We did mock auditions and rehearsals and used different tools from the previous classes to prepare. It really brought things together and gave me a sense that I was ready to tackle a show in ways that I never have before.

Why study at Black Box?

The program is fairly new. Laura Hooper and Audrey Francis, the owners, started the studio about two and half years ago. Most of the other teachers have been added in the last six months. I’ve met and worked with most of them too. I don’t think there is a bad one in the bunch. I’m been impressed with them all.

There are a couple things they do which I love and I hope they continue. One is team teaching. Every class I’ve taken has had at least two teachers. They don’t switch off. They both show up, they take turns running exercises and giving notes. In this last class, there were four teachers (three in training I believe). It was an incredible luxury to have that many eyeballs watching you work and thinking about how to improve your performance.

The other thing is that their teachers take classes there too. They are encouraged to be students and take the classes again periodically. In the class with four teachers, there were also two more teachers taking the class with us. So on most days teachers outnumbered students. That probably won’t happen again soon, but it’s an added perk when the person with whom you are doing a scene is a teacher.

Lastly, they listen. From the first class, I had the direct email addresses of my teachers and whenever I had a problem or question, I could contact them. They were very generous with their feedback. They were also very responsive to feedback about them. At the end of the second level, I was loving the program, but I had a couple issues which I wanted to discuss with them. I sent a long email with my thoughts. In the third level, Audrey approached me and thanked me for the feedback, saying that they had made some adjustments based on my feedback and they were working well.

Is it a perfect program? No. I wish it were longer and more intense. I’m sure some of my classmates think it was intense enough, but I wish I could train like that everyday. I’d like to learn more about viewpoints. What they taught me was very useful, but it’s obvious there is much more to learn about it.

I am very happy I went through it. I got two key things from it. First, I have a set of tools from which I’m putting together my process. I didn’t have this before. I feel like I could use these tools every day for the next few years and continue to learn. Second, I am ready to get out there and audition for shows here in Chicago. Last fall, when I returned to the theater, I didn’t quite know where to begin. Now, I feel ready to get back in there.

image from www.wordle.net

Here is a list of things I think improvisors should spend their time doing besides improvising:

1. Learn to act – some people are actors before they come to improv. Many are not. These days many improvisors start by going to see an improv show and signing up for a class with no prior experience performing. There is nothing wrong with that, but if you don’t have training as an actor and you want to be great, get some. And take opportunities to act, especially in plays, but also in video projects, sketch shows, etc.
2. Go to the theater – don’t just watch improv shows, get out to the regular theater and watch some plays. You might not think of yourself as a fan of theater. Get out there and see a variety of plays, contemporary plays, classic plays, Shakespeare, original plays and one person shows. You will get some great ideas for characters, situations and techniques to use in your shows. When you think you have seen all kinds of theater, keep going, but instead of watching plays, see everything else. Go see performance art or dance or clown shows. Watch live music or opera. Go see stand up or variety shows. Go see a lecture or watch a religious ceremony. Within an improvised show, you can put anything else that might work on stage. As Del use to say, “Harold eats everything,” so make sure to feed Harold a diet with lots of variety.
3. Read books – like watching theater, reading books should give you lots of ideas for your scenework. You should read both non-fiction and fiction. You will glean ideas about characters, settings and story lines, store up lots of details and specifics that will spill out into your scenes.
4. Watch movies – especially movies that have unique and interesting points of view or use novel storytelling techniques. If you live in a major metropolitan center, seek out smaller, independent movies that have a certain buzz around them. You will want to see some bigger blockbuster movies too, so that you understand what is happening when someone starts a scene on planet Pandora. But if you want to get interesting ideas for how to put together shows, you want to see movies like Short Cuts, 500 Days of Summer, Memento, Pulp Fiction, Magnolia, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the more unconventional a movie is, the better.
5. Know the news – find a good source of news and consume it regularly. Listen to NPR on the way to work. Read a good newspaper. Find some interesting podcasts. Read books about current events. Find a magazine with in-depth, thoughtful articles. If you are going to get onstage and take suggestions from an audience, you better know what’s going on in the world.
6. Develop a secondary performance skill – learn to play music or sing. Learn to perform magic. Study dance, clowning or some other movement based art form.
7. Write – keep a journal. Write short plays or sketches. Write character monologues. Write erotica (and send me a copy). Write top 10 lists. Write jokes. Write your mom. It doesn’t matter, just write.
8. Meet new people – don’t just hang out with other improvisors. Find some other channel to meet new people and keep a line open to old friends. Learn how to start conversations with strangers and do it often. Hang out with your weird relatives. Make a point to ask about their lives and their experiences. Do they believe something different than you? Ask them to tell you about their religious or political views or their philosophy of life. Make them tell you all their best stories. Don’t debate them. Just listen, and ask questions.
9. Have new experiences – try something you have never tried before. Learn how to shoot a gun or ride a motorcycle. Ski. Take a cooking class or join a volleyball league. Like a writer, the more life experience you have, the more you have to share on stage. As a bonus, it will also help you meet new people.
10. Travel – travel whenever you can. Get to know the corners of your country, but travel abroad as well. When you do, make sure you meet new people and ask them all about themselves.

There are a couple things I notice about this list after writing it. First, I like to give advice, but really I’m giving advice to myself. Some of these I do, some I wish I had done more, some I’m working on right now. But they are all things I want to do more often. Second, a lot of these cost money. Many improvisors have trouble scraping together enough money for classes let alone all these extras. However, a lot of these don’t cost money or can be done cheaply. Besides you won’t have enough time to do all of them. Pick a few that you do think you can work into your routine and that don’t cost a lot. These are just some ideas to get you thinking.

I’ve been thinking of my own interactions with people over the years, where I did well and where I came up short. I feel like there are some situations and stories I’d like to share that might help me in my future interactions in the theatre and comedy worlds. One thing I’ve been thinking a lot about is status.

Pay less attention to status

I remember when I was in Chicago, I was intensely aware of status within the improv world. I was a part of many conversations that likened the ImprovOlympic subculture to a second high school. The new students were the freshman. After a few classes you might find yourself on a team and begin to feel like a sophomore. The players on house teams felt like the upperclassman, the cool juniors and seniors, with whom everyone wanted to hang out. And that was just the status within iO. There were similar communities at Second City and the Annoyance and while you might feel like a big dog at one theatre, you might be considered a peon at another.

Your status was determined by several things, your talent, how long you had been in the community, what team you were on. Your status was higher if you were a coach or a teacher. And of course, like in any community if you were well liked by your peers, that tended to raise your status.

I remember feeling at the time, that my personal status had a lot to do with how long I had been around the theater. I felt deferential to some players because they had been there a year or two longer than I had. And I also felt entitled to a greater status because someone started taking classes six months after I did. I spent six years at iO, four of them on the house team. I was a coach, a director and a teacher there. I remember feeling like I had a certain status there, one that I had earned.

Now here is where the story becomes particularly unflattering for me. Anyone who knows iO, knows there is a long running show on Monday nights which features “iO’s most accomplished performers and alumni.” I wanted badly to be in this show, but while I was respected as a performer and certainly valued as a coach and a teacher, I had to wait to play in that show.

For a long time, it didn’t bother me much. The people who were invited to play were players who had been around longer than me and were great performers. Even in the early days of that show, some people from my generation were invited to play. However, they were clearly performers who were better than me, and I didn’t mind at all that they were getting a chance that I wanted. As the months and years went by, more and more of my peers were invited to do the show. Eventually even some of my teammates were regulars in that show, but not me. I felt this was a good thing. I was getting closer, moving up the queue. It wouldn’t be long now when Noah or Charna would give me the nod to play one Monday night.

And then I got skipped over. They started inviting one or two people to play who I had coached or taught. If I remember correctly there was even someone who started performing in the show while he was still in classes. I thought I was at the top of my imaginary waiting list for the show, but apparently I was wrong. It wasn’t about how long you had been waiting to perform in that show, it was about how talented you were and how ready you were to be in that show, and really that’s how it should be.

I know I have been in other situations since where I valued one person over another simply because they have been around longer. Being around longer should mean something. If someone has spent five years performing at a particular theater, their experience and their loyalty should count, especially if that experience makes them a better performer. But ability should always trump status when we are talking about casting someone in a show.

One thing that is easy for me to forget, is that people have all kinds of experience and talent beyond what I first notice. This might be their first class in long form improv comedy, but they may have been an actor for years. Perhaps they are a musician who understands many of the concepts I am teaching implicitly already. And maybe, they have worked for years for another theater and they know a hell of a lot more than me. I have certainly taught many people over the years who had more raw talent than I did.

So, I hope I can really put this into practice. I think the older I get, the more I realize that this status is less important than I once thought. There was a time when I only wanted to be coached or taught by people who had been doing this longer than I have, but I realize now that I have a lot to learn still, and that there are a lot of people younger than me with less experience than me who nonetheless have a lot to offer.

Over the years, I’ve sometimes been in the position to cast people for shows, to pick people for teams or decide which shows should get a run at a theater and which should not. I always hoped that I was making the best decisions I could. In those positions, the most important factors should be how good are they or their show and do I want to work with them. Their status inside the theater community shouldn’t be all that important. And yet I know it is. Why? Because people get upset. The actor who has been at the theater for years might feel slighted if they aren’t cast as the lead. The most veteran team is sure to feel passed over if the most plumb time slot is given to a newer team. The politics inherent in decisions like this still makes my head hurt even though it’s been years since I’ve had to make one.

Everyone thinks they just want their fair share, what they deserve because of their status. But really we all want more, more than is collectively available, and so a lot of people feel bitter in the end. If you ever catch yourself thinking something like, “I should be in that show, because I’ve paid my dues,” or “Why does she get to teach that class, I’ve been around here longer,” stop it. Stop it right now and tell yourself that paying your dues or hanging around a theater longer doesn’t entitle you to anything. At least that’s what I’m going to try to tell myself, the next time I hear myself thinking that.

As I read the book, I wondered about how it might apply to the life of improvisation. On one level, it’s pretty straight forward. The way you build relationships in the worlds of theater and comedy are not that different from the business world. The advice translates pretty directly to how you should treat your fellow improvisors off stage. The advice seems especially well suited for sales, and while many of us in the theatre world loath selling ourselves, it is something that definitely helps us be successful.

But I also began to wonder how it might apply to other areas. For instance, some of the advice is tricky to follow if you are a coach, director or teacher. For instance, the first principle discussed in the book is don’t criticize, condemn or complain. Obviously critiquing a student or performers work is exactly what they need (and sometimes crave). So can one follow Carnegie’s advice and still be an effective instructor? I think so. The last section of the book addresses this head on, so some of what I’m thinking won’t show up until a later blog post.

It also occurred to me that some of these principles might be applied in interesting ways on stage. For instance, it might be fun to use some of the principles as negative templates for characters. In other words, you might want to follow Carnegie’s advice off stage, but on stage, you might want to create characters who would sorely need to read his book.

With all this in mind, lets dig into Carnegie’s book. The first section of the book is titled “Fundamental Techniques in Handling People” and the first principle is “Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.”

Don’t criticize, condemn or complain

As an improv student, you should remind yourself of this principle before every class and practice, until it becomes second nature. Criticizing your fellow students work is unlikely to do anything except annoy them. But this should probably extend to the teacher, the theatre and the class itself. People who spend a lot of time complaining are unpleasant to be around, no matter what they are complaining about. This is important, because you are in class to learn and to practice. But you can’t forget that you are also there to network and to make friends. If you go to make a career in comedy, some of the people you meet in your classes may end up being your friend for decades. Don’t be the jackass who spends their time in class complaining about exercises, condemning techniques and criticizing their fellow students.

Like any guideline there are going to be exceptions. As a teacher, occasionally I’ve run into students whose behavior is disruptive to the rest of the class. Sometimes it’s a behavior that I see, but sometimes I haven’t seen it. I think it’s fine for a student to complain to their instructor about a serious problem, but I would wait until a discreet moment, at break or after class. Also, there have been some rare occasions that I’ve heard of where a teacher is conducting his or her class in an inappropriate manner. An example might be a teacher who shows up drunk or consistently late. In this case, you have every right to complain to the school administrator.

What you probably don’t want to do is whine and bitch about a teacher’s style, their exercises or their teaching philosophy. There are going to be some teachers who you don’t gel with. Some instructors might ask you to do an exercise which you don’t understand or might hold an opinion about improv with which you don’t agree. These are not good reasons to have a tantrum. If faced with a situation like this, I would suggest that you suck it up, try your best to do the exercises and thoughtfully consider what the instructor has to say. If after the class, you don’t think you learned anything of value and you didn’t enjoy the class, avoid that instructor in the future. Whining about it in class will likely just turn people off to you.

Your attitude as part of a team or show should be similar. You want to be the kind of performer who other people like to be around. Sure it’s important that you have talent and that you are funny and skilled as a performer, but people have a lot of choices when they are putting together a show or a group. Most improvisors would prefer to perform with an optimistic, fun player with a positive attitude, not someone who spends their time bitterly complaining about their teammates or the theater where they perform.

Now as a coach, a director or a teacher, you have to criticize people you are working with. There is an implicit agreement when someone comes to your rehearsal or class. They know you might criticize them, and they have agreed to listen to your notes and consider them, and to at least try to do what you ask. However, I think there has to be some balance here.

For instance, you are coaching a team and they have a performance which is significantly below their capability. You could go backstage after the show and rip them a new one. You could give them two hours of notes picking apart everything they did wrong (in their 30 minute set). What effect do you think this will have? Will your performers be able to implement every last little note you gave them in future shows? Will they even remember them? Will they spend the rest of the night feeling like crap because their coach made them feel like they suck at improv? Will that help them that much in future shows? I don’t think it will. Don’t get me wrong, you need to critique your performers, but an onslaught of negative notes may not be your best approach if your goal is to truly motivate them to do better.

I guess I would say that as a coach or teacher, don’t complain, don’t condemn, and be careful how you criticize. I’m sure I’m going to expand on this as we go along. The last part of the book has a lot of ideas that should work well in a teaching or directing scenario.

How about the characters you create on stage? Is it alright if they are complainers? Of course! I can think of a lot ways that a character who complains can work on stage. There are some pitfalls to avoid though. For instance, you don’t want the critical nature of your character to stop him or her from doing something in the scene. Let’s say you are playing a husband who complains about his wife’s cooking. If your wife has cooked a seven course meal for you, it’s going to be better for you to go ahead and try each course and find things to criticize, than it would be to refuse to eat anything. I remember Susan Messing often pointing out how behavior that you should avoid off stage, often is great behavior to indulge in on stage.

In that year, I acted in several plays, I directed one (a Pinter play no less), built sets, did lighting design and produced a play that went to the Edinburgh Fringe. It was such a great experience that, after I graduated from college, I returned for another six months, hooked up with many of the same people I had worked with before and helped produce a few more shows. When I left London, I wasn’t ready to go. I was sad, but I didn’t know at the time how to go about becoming a permanent resident there. I returned home and headed to Chicago, determined to make it in the theatre there.

About five years later, I had the opportunity to return to London. I was once again producing a show for the Edinburgh Fringe. This time it was an improv show. I arranged to stay in London a few days after the festival. I anticipated it being a great experience, but it was somehow hollow. It was great seeing some of my friends again, but walking the streets where I had once lived put me in a distinctly melancholy mood. It was like visiting a memory. It was a place I used to live and when I returned to the places I used to hang out, they were devoid of the people that made it special to me.

Similarly when I left Chicago for New York, I found some of my visits to Chicago to feel similar. However, I’ve learned through trial and error, that visiting should always be about the people and not the places. It’s always lovely when you can take someone along and show them what you love about a city. But often I travel alone. I now make it a higher priority to set up beforehand some opportunities to see friends.

I left New York three years ago and expected that I would probably be back soon. I’ve only had one chance to go back since then. I went to the Del Close Marathon in 2007, taught a bunch of classes and hung out. It was a good time, but not quite what I expected. I thought that I would spend many hours at the theatre watching shows. As it turned out, I barely spent anytime there. Like in the previous couple of years, the theatre just felt too crowded and hot and sweaty. Instead I played poker with friends and hung out at the UCB office instead. It seems not much had changed for me.

So now this weekend, I head back there once again. I’m not going for the Marathon, but rather for the weekend before and to perform on Tuesday night in a special Harold show. I have several people that I miss dearly that I hope to see and spend some time with. I hope to do some new things as well. After I left New York, I was shocked to realize that I’d never seen a show at the Magnet Theatre. I hope to remedy that this time around.

In any case, I hope that my trip won’t have that similar taint of melancholy that my trip to London had those many years before. We shall see.

It’s been years since we’ve seen each other, but we still have a very strong connection. Lillie and I had similar sensibilities and even more similar ambitions. We both wanted to run our own theatres, we both loved improv and we were both frustrated by ImprovOlympic. Don’t get me wrong, it was a wonderful place to learn and grow as performers. It was the kind of frustration you feel when you love something and feel it could be even better if only you were in charge. A feeling that many, many performers have felt over the years as they passed through iO.

In a way, I got my chance to run a theatre in New York for the UCB, at least for a little while, and Lillie is getting her chance now. Last year she bought the Chicago Comedy Company, both it’s corporate improv wing and it’s theatre in Schaumburg. Although she has been running the place for a year now, and rebranded the theatre as the Laugh Out Loud Theater on January 1st, her official opening is just now happening on June 13th.

It’s interesting to see the different choices that she made. Instead of a small ensemble, she cast a big one. She has around 20 performers that rotate into the show (only 4 do each show). Her shows are short form rather than long form. Although the shows are doing well, the financial engine of the company will likely be the corporate shows and workshops they will be doing.

She is fulfilling a dream that I share, to run my own theatre. And even though she shares many of the same values as I do about performing, her theatre looks very different from the one I would start. I would focus on long form, rather than short form. I’d probably want lots of different ensembles and/or shows, not just the one consistent show. And the very last component I would add to my theatre would be a corporate outreach. It’s the part of the improv theatre business that I’ve liked the least, teaching workshops and doing shows for companies.

There are lots of little differences between us, but I still feel like we are peas in a pod when we are together. It’s funny too, because between her husband and her, they share almost all my major interests in life. After chatting with her all day about improv, I spent nearly all night talking to Scott about the internet and Second Life and other geeky topics. I think if I could pick a couple to be a permanent third wheel to, it would be them. I’d only need a break from them to go play poker every once in a while.

I realized that I was unhappy in my administration job at the theatre where I worked, so I quit (although I kept teaching). I started winning at poker and began to think about pursuing it professionally. I found another new source of income when a hobby became a business. I left New York to spend some time with my father in Arizona, and finally I moved back to my hometown to take care of my mother. My old life has been completely interrupted.

This is not all bad. I’m very glad that I’ve been able to spend time with my family and being a caregiver for a parent does have many rewards. It’s hard not to feel a little lost at times though. Eventually, I will leave again, pick up my life and start over. And I’ll have many options in front of me.

Do I return to the theatre? If so, do I go back to Chicago, return to New York or join many of my friends in Los Angeles? Maybe I should go back to Arizona where the weather is amazing and theatre culture is still young, or perhaps I should reconnect with some of my oldest and best friends in Seattle. Do I teach for someone else like I have before or do I teach my own classes or even start my own theatre?

Part of me longs to travel, both here and abroad. Perhaps I should return to poker, hone my tournament skills and spend a year or two traveling from one tournament to another.

My business may still be doing well when it’s time to leave here, perhaps I should throw all my energy into that. I don’t think most people get several chances to build up a successful business. Second Life may peak and fall apart within the next 5 years. I should strike while the iron is hot, make as much money as I can before people move on to something else.

Still, perhaps this is the time to return to grad school. I could get an MFA in acting or directing. Perhaps teaching at a university would be great fun and a good way to spend the next twenty years or so.

But if I return to school, maybe this is the perfect opportunity to nurture a different interest. Maybe computer science is still something I could pursue and enjoy. Of course, I’m also very interested in mathematics, biology, economics, diet and nutrition, and a half a dozen other topics, so saying I’ll return to grad school only expands my options.

In part the purpose of this blog is for me to hone my sense of what things are most important to me. I know that I’m getting ready for the second big chunk of my adult life and I want it to be meaningful and satisfying. I don’t want to simply see where the wind takes me (or do I? Perhaps, that is exactly how I should spend life, hopping from opportunity to opportunity, never quite knowing where I will be five years from now).

Of course, I don’t need to decide this today or tomorrow. I think this blog will help me figure out just where my path lies when it comes time to move on to the next part of my life. You could call it a mid-life crisis, but I don’t think it is. It’s more of a mid-life pause. Life has forced me to narrow my focus, give up most of parts of what was my life temporarily. I’m determined to use it as an opportunity.