Here’s Kathleen Nakozy, a current level 4 student:

I began improv thinking I was a funny person. But in Level 1 improv class, I quickly realized that I’m not funny. I was discouraged after the first few classes. I watched my teacher’s troupe perform and thought, “These people are funny. I can’t do that because, as it turns out, I’m not funny.”

I kept at it and moved on to Level 2 because classes at the Hideout were so fun. Then I moved on to Level 3 and Level 4. Somewhere in there, I had a second revelation — trying to be funny isn’t the point. The point is not trying to do anything, to lose your ego and just be up there, improvising.

It’s not that great improvisers are naturally funny. People just look funny when they don’t know what the hell they’re doing. And I think the more you get into it, the funnier you look.

But, I may be over-thinking it.

-Kathleen Nacozy

Kathleen’s absolutely right. One of the first things we teach students in our classes is to let go of the pressure of trying to be funny. Trying too hard to be funny is one way to guarantee that you won’t be.

An audience wants to see people on stage who are relaxed, confident, having a good time, and willing to risk failure. They want to feel like you’ve “got this”, and that they’re taken care of.

It may sound strange, but we’re really teaching you how to have fun… in any situation, no matter what is thrown at you. You learn to not care about looking cool, and instead to focus on and roll with whatever the moment is giving you. And if you’re relaxed, having a good time, listening, and talking faster than you can think, the audience will think you’re brillliant…

and funny.

Wanna experience the revelations that Kathleen had first hand? A level one class starts soon (tomorrow, Saturday at 3pm as of this writing). Sign up here.

Here’s Andrew Pish, a current level 4 student. Andrew just started playing in Maestro not too long ago, getting a first taste of what it’s like to take all the stuff he’s learned and use it on stage.

Last summer, I was sitting at my desk during a summer internship, hoping for something, anything to come along and sweep me up from the monotony of my 9 to 5. That’s when I saw an ad on google for comedy classes in Austin, “the Hideout Theater! Take a level one improv class, it’s never too late to take a risk” and I thought to myself, “I’ve always thought about doing comedy, so why don’t I try something new?” At the time, I was a Junior engineering student at UT, and I was bogged down in numbers, equations, and physics theorems that made no sense (they still don’t). So I thought it would be a good opportunity to try something I’d never really done before, and even though I had never acted or performed on stage in any way, I signed up.

So I showed up on my first day in a room with a group of people I didn’t know, awkwardly biding my time until our teacher walked in. Our enthusiastic teacher, Andy Crouch, immediately got us doing wacky stuff to get us thinking and learning each others names. Before I knew it, all of us were laughing and having a lot of fun doing things that took us out of our comfort zone. Andy said it’s all about not letting the left side of your brain censor what comes out of your mouth. You have to be comfortable saying and doing whatever. So we would play some improv games, and inevitably someone would mess up, but Andy would then encourage that person to take a “failure bow,” while all the class applauded. And little by little, this soothed the fear of making a mistake. We all began to open up, and our classes became a lot more fun. It was great to be able to start in a very non-hostile atmosphere, and it was a great foundation for my future improvisational endeavors.

The improv classes that I have taken at the Hideout have drastically increased my confidence on and off stage. They motivated me to start doing stand-up comedy around town and definitely helped me deal with all the silent reactions to my “punchlines.” The classes even help in regular conversation, and now things come more naturally to me because I’m not as worried about every little word that comes out my mouth. I can even talk to girls now. It’s incredible what a little improvised nonsense can do for a person.

I recently finished the level three improv class and am now taking the level four class, and in all seriousness, I could not have predicted how much more satisfying improv can be now that I can act out a longer scene. It was hard to see the progress between every week of class, but now that I’m at level four, I can truly see how far I’ve come. I’ve gone from failure bows to incredibly imaginative scene work. I’ve learned how to create meaningful relationships in a scene, how to react truthfully to my stage partner, and how to commit to stronger characters. My improv class is now one of the highlights of my week, and I always enjoy going. It’s been an incredible ride, and I don’t want to get off any time soon.

Andrew Pish

Join Andrew on his journey. Our next level one starts real soon. Sign up here.

cast of Slumber Party Slaughter

Roy here.

Welcome to the inaugural installment of Callback,  a new series of posts looking back at shows that happened somewhere in the recesses of The Hideout’s 11 year history. Improv is such a temporary, ephemeral art form, that I thought it would be nice to try and relive some of the highlights of the past.

We begin with a gruesome tale.

Ever since I started taking classes at the Hideout, I’d hear occasionally about Slumber Party Slaughter, a special Halloween show put on in 2003. I could never quite tell if the people involved thought it was the best thing ever, or a terrible, terrible idea. This all went down when the Hideout’s house troupe was still called The Heroes of Comedy. So naturally I asked an old-school Hero, Kevin Miller, to clue me in on the details.

Take it away, Kevin:

The Bloody Priest

In 2003, the Heroes of Comedy—feeling confident enough to vie for a piece of Sixth Street’s favorite holiday—hosted a special Halloween-night improv show with the gruesomely awesome title “Slumber Party Slaughter.” Just as you’d hope and dream of for such a show, it was advertised to be very heavy on the comedic blood, guts, and gore; the first two rows of seats in the downstairs theater were designated the “splash zone,” and long sheets of clear plastic were laid out for audience members to protect themselves.

Prior to the show, Sean Hill hit up the meat counter at the local Fiesta market for as many sickening butcher’s cuts as he could find. Backstage in a cooler, the performers had access to hearts, kidneys, intestines, and even a skinned goat’s head. (You know, just in case.) We also manufactured a solid gallon of corn-syrupy blood and rigged up impromptu blood packs ready for the squirting.

It was a predictably wacky affair. The long-form show took the form of a Clue-style murder mystery set at the afore-mentioned slumber party, though to my recollection the cast of characters would have been more well-suited at a Rocky Horror Picture Show screening. (Why yes, there was a bloody priest.) One by one, characters would find themselves alone onstage, telegraphing their imminent demise as much as possible (and more often than not, with a cow’s organ stashed up their sleeve). A second cast member would don a cape and mask and waltz up behind the poor victim, disemboweling them in as extreme and bloody a manner as possible, and spraying arterial sugar-blood over the entire stage. (It got rather sticky and slippery up there as the evening went on.) Late in the show, we realized the goat’s head had not yet been used, and so—abandoning all connection to the improvised plot—I donned the villain’s costume, grabbed the head, walked out into the audience, and simply handed it to an innocent-looking girl in the front row.

A good time was had by all. The Halloween tradition was relatively short-lived, perhaps in part due to how impossible the blood was to clean up; months later, when we disassembled the downstairs stage, we found the concrete underneath spattered with an icky layer of it. But it was worth doing, if nothing else, for the bizarre set of publicity shots we got afterwards.

Craig Kotfas and Sean Hill on an ordinary day for them

Troy Miller has sausages for intestines, apparently

Shelly Miller as The Bloody Bride

Peter Rogers gives Andy Crouch's corpse a gentle massage

Were you there? Chime in on the comments.

Wanna be there the next time something so ridiculous happens?  We’ve got a level one improv class starting soon.

Here are our favorite quotes from the articles…

What is real and what is not, and does it matter who T. Henry Baudecliffe really is? Not when he has left behind such “fractured, fantastical” stories and drawings and the actors at the Hideout improvise upon these themes. You feel as though you are in the mind of T. Henry and seeing the world as he did, even though you have just met him (so to speak). An evening well spent on many layers. Excellent work by the Hideout.

-Now Playing Austin

The production values are quite high. The soundtrack was brilliantly in step with the action, helping to set the mood, and even — as in the final triumphant sequence — evoking even more emotion.

Much of the movement is outstanding. Whether they’re making up John D. Rockefeller’s sleigh (pulled by polar bears) or forming young Tommy’s vision of human-sized caterpillars, the cast synchronizes beautifully.

-The Austin American Statesman

It quickly becomes apparent that there’s something very different about this improv show.

[...]

The source material gives the show a naive and innocent feel, yet with deeply sinister undertones. The way the cast uses movement and contact feels like it’s headed toward dance at times, or at least toward something a little more experimental than the average improv show.

[...]

So the lights come down after a unique improv show, and one is left to ponder the question the show asks: Who Is T. Henry Baudecliffe? They’ve presented a documentary and some of his work. They’ve shown us what they imagine a full story might look like. But they don’t ask the question that one can’t help but wonder. How real is what we’re experiencing? The answer is another question: Does it matter? No. It doesn’t. The work stands on its own, regardless of who T. Henry Baudecliffe is.

-The Austinist

Come experience the show for yourself. Who is T. Henry Baudecliffe? runs every Saturday at 8PM through August.

Tuesday on her 1st birthday

Roy Janik, Artistic Director and dog owner here.

A while ago, my wife and I got a puppy. A cute, little crazy puppy.

We knew right away that she was smart… she learned how to sit on command almost immediately. We just had no real idea how to train her. So we went with a professional… Austin dog trainer Steve DeBono.

He taught Tuesday (our dog) how to stay, how to heel, how to jump through hoops (really!), and most importantly, how to listen and pay attention to us. It was invaluable.

So I was thrilled when Steve signed up for improv classes, at The Hideout because it meant that I could share improv with him in the same way he shared his dog-knowledge with me.

Steve has recently started blogging for Dog Star Daily, and for his very first post he wrote about his experience in level one at The Hideout. Here’s an excerpt:

STUCK IN A RUT? TAKE AN IMPROV CLASS!

There were about 15 people in the class. Each class would consist of a series of games. Our instructor would lay out the rules of each game, and we would play. Anytime someone made a mistake or broke the rules, he or she was encouraged to proudly throw their arms to the sky, proclaim “I’VE FAILED!” and take a bow while the rest of the class applauded.

How liberating! To be encouraged to fail! And furthermore, to be applauded for failing!

[...]

A thorough knowledge of the rules of dog training is essential… the learning theory… the techniques. Knowing the rules is what makes us professionals. Just as important is the ability to be spontaneous and take risks while adhering to the structure of these rules. We can not be afraid to fail. We can not be afraid to make mistakes. When a mistake is made, we must acknowledge it, throw our arms to the sky and proclaim “I’VE FAILED!”. And do our best to never make the same mistake again.

• Read the whole post here.
• Learn more about Steve here.
• Sign up for Level One here.

It was during the Level 3 graduation show. We pulled up two students for a game. I was going to give them Twin Pillars, where  we use two audience members to interject randomness into a scene.

But when the students came on stage, one of them, Andy, did something funny where he wound up looking like a spy trying to act casual. Inspired by that, we threw out the game we had planned, and said “Just use that energy when the lights come up”.

The scene that resulted had Andy standing there, looking like a nervous guy trying to act cool and casual. His attempts got more earnest as the scene progressed. One by one, all the other students walked into the scene, noticed that something was off about Andy, and exited.

Of course, the audience was dying to know, “What’s the deal with that guy?”. And as time went on, the question became more and more important.

Finally, Erik, another student, came onstage, mimed zipping up his pants, and washed his hands in a mimed sink right next to Andy.

And in that stroke, it became apparent. Andy was awkward because he was trying to casually hang out in a bathroom. It was perfect, and my favorite part of the whole show.

The thing I really love about it was that none of it was planned. “Awkward Bathroom Scene” wasn’t on our list of games for the night. It all just stemmed from noticing a pre-existing energy, seizing it, and building it up from there.

One of the skills we teach and reiterate in our improv classes is “Being in the Moment.” That means not worrying about the future, about what you think should happen. It means paying attention to what is going on right now. In order to find those magic moments of organic discovery, you have to be able to see what is actually happening. The same is true for directors as well as performers.

It sounds simple, but so much goes into being in the moment. To be in the right frame of mind, you should be relaxed. And being relaxed while on stage, without a script, with an audience staring at you, and lights shining in your face isn’t always the easiest thing to do. We spend a great deal of time in classes working on letting go of fear, and embracing the idea of risk. And once you’re relaxed, you’re free to be playful…. to recognize what is happening, and then to joyfully explore what that means for the sheer pleasure of finding out.

We have a level one improv class starting Tuesday, July 20th. The journey of discovery starts there. You can register at: http://www.hideouttheatre.com/classes/levelone

-Roy

I’ve been contemplating writing a blog post about 1) why you should see The Battle of the Sexes, which features two outstanding peformers from Dad’s Garage in Atlanta, and 2) why, if you’re an improviser, you should take the Dad’s Garage workshops.

But then it hit me. Far better than anything I could say would be the praise and accolades of those performers and fans who have worked with or seen the Dad’s Garage folks in the past.

So without further ado… If you’re still on the fence about seeing The Battle of the Sexes or taking the Dad’s Garage workshops, please consider the following:

	Got my start there and love them to this day! -Shana Merlin, Merlin-Works
	My first improv experience! Saw several shows there while I was in college in Georgia. The fire was lit for me while sitting in the audience. Uncle Grandpa’s Hill Dilly Stew! (And a college friend is in their company now!) Do it! -Jerry Bilbo, Look Cookie
	A huge reason why I do improv. -Shannon McCormick, Gnap!
	I have taken workshops with these guys in the past and they were really great. I also performed with them in Edmonton, Alberta at the International Theatresports Festival several years ago. I was blown away by how good they were. I highly recommend them. You will not be disappointed!!! -Ted Rutherford, Junk
	Yes! The guys at Dad’s are great. Immensely talented and very classy. I’m lucky to be able to watch and work with them regularly here in Atlanta. See them while you can Austin!! -Matthew Arisheh Falkenberg, Black Box Improv Festival (Atlanta)
	Scandal (Dad’s Garage’s long-running improvised soap opera) was the first improv show I ever saw, and remains one of the best I have ever seen. Shannon and I still make jokes about Boozy the Imp. -Lacey McCormick
	Lived in Atlanta for years and I must’ve gone to Dad’s over a hundred times. Top notch. It doesn’t get any better than this!!!! -Sanjay Deshmukh
	I saw some Dad’s garage folks last summer at a festival in florida. They’re awesome! -Ben Masten, Audience of Two (NY)
	Had the great gift to play with that lot back in the early aughts and learned so much. Highly recommend! -Lauren Zinn

Tickets to the Battle of the Sexes show can be found here.
To register for the workshops, go here.

Hideout Theatre: You started out in Edmonton before you moved to Atlanta. Is there a noticeable difference in style between Canadian and American improvisation?

Kevin Gillese: RFT [Rapid Fire Theatre, in Edmonton] and Dad’s are so connected aesthetically, and have been for many years. I think that’s the reason that I feel like the improv is so similar. The truth is that every city in Canada has a different style, and I’m sure it’s the same with cities across the US.  So while I don’t know that there are essential differences between the Canadian and American styles, I would say that any place you go to is going to have it’s own distinct vibe (even if Rapid Fire and Dad’s Garage are an exception).

HT: After doing it for so long, what makes playing Theatresports still fun for you?

KG: Improv in general is the best because you get to do whatever you want every time you hit the stage. There’s unparalleled levels of freedom in this art form which is why I think it’s still exciting for me after doing it for so many years. There’s always a new game, a new style, a new person to riff with, all those things make it feel like it’s ever evolving instead of the stagnation you might expect when someone does one thing for so many years. I first started performing Theatresports with RFT in 1996 and I’m still doing it pretty much weekly after all these years… so I guess there’s something attractive going on there. Maybe TS is like a hot ex-girlfriend that you just can’t stop having sex with even though she’s a terrible match for you.

HT: When did you start getting into narrative longform?

KG: It was around 2000 when (the AD of RFT at the time) Jacob Banigan first started training us in long form, and started programming it at the theatre. It wasn’t until Scratch in 2005 that I really immersed myself into a long form project. And it ended up being by far the most important collaboration of my artistic life. And I’m super proud of the fact that now, after six solid years of work and right when we’re starting to wind down the project on account of my relocation, we’ve been nominated for a Canadian Comedy Award.

HT: A lot of fuss seems to be made about shortform vs. longform. Is the difference significant to you, and if so, why?

KG: I can’t stand folks who take sides in the shortform vs. longform debate. It’s like saying films suck but photography is amazing, or vice versa. The forms are so connected that I can’t understand how someone can see the artistry in one and not the other.

With a few exceptions, I’d say for the most part people who say short form sucks – aren’t funny. And people who say long form sucks – can’t improvise. My favorite improvisers, the ones I look up to the most, they can do both and do both well.

I honestly think it’s the same thing, just done differently, and the haters on either side are just coming from a place of wanting to disguise the fact that they’re having trouble keeping up. If a visual artist told me that he thought oil paintings were the best thing ever and that graffiti stencils were bullshit… I’d think he was a pretentious asshole. Same policy applies to improv.

HT: How would you characterize the house style at Dad’s garage?

KG: I’d say we’ve got a 75/25 balance between short form and long form. We’ve got a narrative based focus, with a tendency towards big characters. We’ve got a very “attacky” energy, if that makes any sense, and a dirty streak to our comedy. It really is bizarre how similarly Dad’s Garage and Rapid Fire have evolved artistically. I guess that’s what makes me a good fit down here.

HT: How has Dad’s Garage changed over the time you’ve been there?

KG: Oh man, there’s so much. Where to start? Well we’re doing auditions for the first time in August. We’re expanding our programming for next season. We’re hugely ramping up our touring presence with tours planned into Canada and across Europe this summer and fall respectively. And there’s a bunch more on the horizon, so a lot really has changed or is in the process of changing. I just figured as a new guy why not switch it up? I’m only six months in, I’m hoping to make these guys sorry they hired such a nut-job before my first year is up.

Hey everyone. This is Curtis Luciani, co-director (with Kaci Beeler) of the Hideout’s upcoming show Who Is T. Henry Baudecliffe? A lot of folks have been asking what exactly this show is — a fair question, which I will now try to answer.

Late in 2009, I received an email from an artist friend of mine. She had sent me and several other friends a collection of digital images. The images looked like severely demented children’s drawings, and each drawing had handwritten captions that seemed to be drawn from some equally demented narrative. This was my first encounter with the work of T. Henry Baudecliffe.

Thomas Henry Baudecliffe, who passed away in 2009, was a resident of St. Mark’s Community Home, a center for transfers from Austin State Hospital who have been judged to be no danger to themselves or others but still require daily care. After his death, the staff of St. Mark’s discovered thousands of pages of original illustrated children’s stories among Baudecliffe’s belongings. Given the sheer volume, Baudecliffe must have been working on them for nearly his whole life. Since this discovery, there has been a great deal of interest in Baudecliffe among local artists, folk historians, and collectors of cultural oddities.

We only know a little about his life. He was born in 1925 in Lukenbach, served in Europe for a few months in WW2, and was sent home after receiving a friendly fire injury. He lost his parents in an auto accident and then passed several decades of quiet seclusion until 1984, when he was arrested for setting fire to a toy store in Fredericksburg. Baudecliffe was determined to be “mildly schizophrenic” and was sent to State Hospital, then transferred to St. Marks where he lived the rest of his life in relative peace and privacy.

As for the (fragmentary) stories, they’re pastiches of American children’s literature filtered through the very peculiar mind of Baudecliffe — a mind equally naive, troubled, and exuberant. They are fantastic tales of adventure, virtue, and creeping darkness.

Kaci and I got the idea to direct an improv show based on Baudecliffe’s work earlier this year, while comparing some work of his that had fallen into our hands. (Friends of friends or friends, you know….) It was a joke that began to make sense. Baudecliffe’s stories are incomplete, but the show would give us a chance to see what a finished Baudecliffe story might be like. And though we’d be making the stories up as we went along, it’s clear that Baudecliffe was doing the same thing.

We hope that you’ll join us for this unique show. The Hideout Theatre has managed to acquire an impressive collection of Baudecliffe’s work, which will be on display during the run. We’ve also been recording and editing a short documentary that will help introduce people to the Baudecliffe phenomenon. Performances are in July and August, Saturdays at 8:00 pm. Check out www.whoisthenrybaudecliffe.com for more information or buy tickets here.

One of our Level Four students, Halyn, gave us permission to re-post this lovely blog entry.
You can find the original tumblr post here

So some of you may know that ive been taking improv for almost a year now, and if you dont, well i am. i love improv, and i always have since 7th grade when my dad took me to my first show at the hideout. my parents knew that i was sort of meant for improv, because every day i would just bust out into like fifty different characters, and i had these two friends in cheer, bethany and jenny, who would be crazy with me. but they were in high school, so i only ever saw them at cheer things. other than that, i would put on stupid shows for my dad. sometimes we would do voice-overs for spanish television or the 3 stooges when my dad got home from work late at night. he would also read books with me, and i would do all the voices, or vis-versa. my mom used to tell me to be something, like a lamb, and then would tell me things that i saw or wanted and i just acted out exactly what she said. i freaking loved that game, and would beg her to play it all the time. before i discovered improv i always felt a little out of place, no matter where i was. i was always this quirky awkward kid, and i couldnt help but stand out. a lot of my time as a kid i felt really alone. i just wanted to dive into these silly characters and be someone else, which is so cheesy but so true. i could escape where everything went exactly as i wanted it to.

its no real secret that i had a strange upbringing. my family wasnt normal, my living situations were never normal, i was never normal. i was always made fun of, but most of the time i never understood why. after elementary school, i started to really see that i was different, and i felt that it wasnt okay. seeing the other girls with their clean straight hair, and pretty clean clothes, in georgetown texas, with my crazy hair and clothes i painted on or hand sewed patches and things, it was a recipe for disaster. georgetowns measly little theater programs were no help either. i knew i was meant to perform, and id always try and go above and beyond, but that just made me stick out more. i was the weird kid who wanted to work on the plays and pick out costumes and paint sets and play games.

the games we played were improv games, which i didnt realize until i saw improv. i just thought they were theater games, and i wanted to play them all day every day. they were my favorite, because even in middle school, i knew that ‘the wizard of dillards’ was a waste of time. every theater class i would beg for the last few minutes of class to be games. in middle school my dad took me downtown to see a show. on the way he explained best he could what improv was, and why i would like it. that saturday night pretty much changed everything. as a young twelve year old, watching people do exactly what i loved to do but on a level i never thought was possible, was incredible. from that night on i went as much as possible, and after every show they would give the ‘thank you for coming to the hideout tonight, we hope you have enjoyed tonights show, if you like what you saw tonight we have shows and classes happening all the time here, just go to hideouttheatre.com for more info, thanks for coming out tonight’ speech, and everytime i wished i could go. but i was in cheerleading, and my family didnt have the time or money for that kind of thing. which is understandable, and im glad i waited until i was old enough for it to be my own thing anyway.

everything changed when i moved to leander. in leander i didnt stick out, because there was one thing here that there wasnt in georgetown: theatre kids. tons of them. techies, too. and they were all made of awesome. they became my best friends, and whatever time i had i was in that theatre room, on the stage, backstage, in theatre class, in the scene shop, whatever i could get my hands on. it was there that i grew as a true actress. i was put in shows and musicals and it was the most beautiful time in my life. all of my childhood dreams i threw away were coming true: i was performing, i was painting nonstop, i had amazing trustworthy friends who loved me as much as i loved them, we all loved the same music and movies and we were all family. my junior year i quit cheer, partly because of an awful back injury, and partly because i hated it for years and just couldnt take it anymore. it was wonderful to blend in for once. i still stuck out, but in a magnificent way. during this time i went on the hideout’s stage for the first time as an audience volunteer, and loved it. i felt so happy to be up there, and so in place. afterwards, little by little, i began meeting people like asaf, andy, kareem, marc, and noah. and little by little, they would remember me as ‘like the country but without a ‘d”, and i was so happy to find another outlet.

after i graduated, i instantly started up improv classes with andy. wednesdays became the best day of the week, and every other day was simply me waiting for wednesday. i was so excited and as i started my first horrifying year of college, i kept it up as best i could, and went to level three with all my people. in those classes i became so comfortable with myself, and failing wasnt scary because we had the failure bow, a bow you take when you feel awkward or you stumble or you get stuck. you bow, and proudly claim, ‘i fail!!’ and everybody claps wildly and cheers for you. these classes created such a safe place to perform and these people became my good friends. i felt so grateful to be received so warmly, and it was lovely to have people who were happy to be received too, because we were all going into this blind. i also just became more positive in regular life. i had a time in the middle where i was extremely sad, but improv pulled me out of it. i missed one class, but i was instantly back in. it helped me be happy, and know that there are other things and people out there where i can find happiness. but unfortunately, i had to stop because school proved to be much more time consuming and awful than i had anticipated, and i had also started up cheer again. i had no choice. during those first three levels people kept urging me to get on the forum and get more involved but i felt i was too inexperienced, and that i needed more time.

once my first year of college ended, and my last cheer season was completed, i knew what was missing had to be replaced, so i joined a level four class with all new people. im currently in that class, and the people are very nice and easy going. i just recently volunteered for the forty one hour improv marathon, and it was so wonderfully inspiring. the more i stayed, the more people i met, and the more i realized how incredible improv really was, especially to me. i met extraordinary people and learned about the classes they take or want to take. and just recently ive been getting more and more into it, but i need to let people know why its so important to me.

yes, i love to laugh and i would like to think that im a pretty positive person. but to me its more than just laughter and getting that out of the audience. its a legit art form. last night during class andy threw me and another classmate up on stage. he told us to be a daughter and the mother who had given her up for adoption. instantly i jumped into it, as i usually do, but what came out was much more than what i had expected. i wasnt mocking the situation, or being some crazy character, (not that i am all the time, but this scene was just very unique to me) i wasnt anything on purpose. i just was that person. and she followed right with me. she was my mother who left me as a child. and in the scene, i got to ask her all the questions i had wanted to ask her and it felt so real and so powerful that when andy stopped the scene to tell me that my oscar-winning speech needed to happen here i was almost shaken completely. i was so in that world that i didnt know what to do, so i assumed he meant for me to be silly. so i started out sort of normal but you know a little over the top, and when he asked for more i just went crazy and had a grand old time and got tons of laughter. after the scene he told us all that he wanted me to keep going with that character and well i wish i had, but anyway my point is that in that scene something different happened for me. it was improv theatre, not just improv comedy. and that is something worth caring about.

improv is one of my favorite art forms, and i love that i get so many opportunities to do it. i love that its all completely fresh from the mind and unedited (most of the time). i love watching people do it, and laughing and the insanely genius things that come out of their mouths. i love that its a positive and friendly environment, and that everyone just sort of seems to love everyone, because thats what i really love. when people come together to do amazing things. through improv i can be myself, and i can be comfortable. i dont have to worry about blending or not blending, because i am accepted. acceptance was never my goal, but it sure feels nice.

the improv community is full of wonderful people. people who dont judge, and dont really care if they are judged. they are extremely intelligent and commited to their art. they are hilarious and incredible actors, and to be apart of the austin improv collective is sort of a dream come true for me. thank you to all of you who have welcomed me and taught me things, im very excited to continue to grow and meet all of you.

“There is no Them. There are only facets of Us.” — John Green