Follow Through

Yesterday (thanks to an informal assignment set by

Friend Nat

[you're my boy, Blue]) I completed the first draft of a short play, the first bit of fiction writing I have seen through to the state of having a distinct and spelled-out beginning, middle and end since . . . well, I can't recall. It

is

a first draft, and was largely worked through during lunch breaks and lulls at il day jobo, so it's not a magnificent accomplishment. Still and all, there was a very pleasant sense of synergy I experienced in the writing of it and, as you can see, the mere fact of finishing something has me feeling cuddly with myself. So it got me to thinking about the "Notions" series (& a

1

, & a

2

, & a

3

) of 'blog entries I shared with my tremendous, and tremendously grateful, reading populace all the way back in October/November of 2007. (Verily, Odin's Aviary has become an institution.) (Please refrain from unsavory "institution" insinuations. That's rude.) The idea behind those was to experiment with how the accountability that announcing creative intentions invites would affect their outcomes. Simply put, would sharing my ideas for projects sap my enthusiasm for them (as it seemed to when I was younger) or would it hold me to my ideas and keep them coming back to my priorities list? Let's take a look, shall we?

• Freaky Chicks & Aspirant. These are my two most interesting ideas (to me, at any rate) for comic-book adventures, the first being one I wrote a draft of way back 'round 2000, the second being one I had the idea for RIGHT BEFORE HEROES CAME OUT, I SWEAR TO GOD. Both toy with the notions (heh-heh) of superhero(TM)-like people cropping up in mundane settings, and rather unwilling partnerships. These ideas, I confess, I've done absolutely nothing with in the intervening months. Can I explain myself in this? Not really interested in doing that, I'm afraid. Also: No. I can't. I really like these ideas, still. I just haven't done the work necessary to resurrect them.

• The Project Project. This is a play I badly wanted to write when first I thought of it, and is most likely of all of my announced notions to go the way of the Dodo. Frankly, the title is the thing I dig the most about anything I've come up with for it. I started writing it, and got about five pages in before feeling like I had really gotten off on the wrong foot. I found the characters unsympathetic and the structure nonexistent -- two very bad things, made worse by the fact that I was in complete control of both of them. Clever titles are like booby-traps for frustrated writers, man. And this one's a bear trap, because I can't get over how great it could be, if only I could figure how to make it have a heart.

• Mimosa Pudica. A play I directed in college; the idea being that I mount a showcase production of it here with me directing. I haven't re-read the play, I haven't researched a thing along these lines, nor been mentally casting. I've barely thought about it. BUT. Over the past few months a burgeoning desire to direct has been building, and expressing itself through this here 'blog. I think the important thing about this particular notion was that it got me thinking that way with a fairly safe specificity, and now my thinking has expanded to more daring possibilities (such as directing my own Zuppa-style show) which, frankly, may be more apt. Mimosa Pudica may still get done though. It would probably be a good idea to have an intermediate step between my intention and my ambition.

• Building various stilt-related paraphernalia. Mmm, yeah. Well, this is a tough one when you don't have ready access to a workshop. Also tough when your stilts have been in storage for the past three months. And finally, Corporate Carnival queered me on stilts for a little bit. May be coming out of that soon; still would be lacking a power saw or titanium lathe. (Though I do have some nifty welding goggles.)

• Picking back up the trombone. Uh-huh. Next!

• Punch & Judy. Heather and I have made very little headway on this project; just a bit of research (including a wicked-rad find by Samantha Philips) and discussion. However, it definitely informed our creation of Love is Crazy, but Good for our performances in Italy in June, and the experience of working on that ended up being a crucial step toward things like learning how to work together without outside assistance and learning what works, what doesn't. It's difficult to develop something whilst in separate cities, and with so much other Zuppa-related work to do, but I'm confident Heather and I will get something of this up off the ground.

• Superhero(r) monodrama. I don't know how I feel about this notion, these days. The ubiquitous monodrama of the self-generating "creactor" is still something I'd like to have under my belt, but I feel more and more that I need collaborators to get my best work done. It's how I've worked all my life, really, and I'm not sure I'd even want to see a monodrama that had existed in solo for any significant stage of its development. Plus, when I had the idea, the Hollywood superhero(c) phenomenon hadn't quite hit the fever pitch it's at now. I would probably be working against a curve with that concept. Back to the notional drawing board, as far as I'm concerned.

• Using Friend Patrick's Sukeu mask in performance. See above? I don't know. In the spirit of Patrick himself, I'm loathe to apply the mask to something artificially. I want it to inform me of what it belongs with. This may entail getting in a room (with a mirror) with it and playing, without context. Which I should do anyway. It goes on the to-do list under "get new acting job." Patrick?

• My werewolf novel. You know, I increasingly feel that this story I've been writing and ruminating over has been co-opted by its own inciting notion. That is to say, maybe I don't want to write a story about werewolves (but literature needs another werewolf novel!) after all, and I shouldn't try so hard to make it be about that. What interested me and got me started on it was this different idea of what a werewolf might be. What has been most engaging about writing it (and I haven't done any writing on it in a long while) has been one of the non-central characters and writing about people who feel lost. So: Maybe I'm writing two different things without knowing it?

• The Very Nearly Perfect Comedy of Romeo & Juliet. It has a title! And a webpage! AND a 'blog! This is certainly the prospective project that has been most worked upon out of my lists, which is in keeping with my suggestion that I need collaborators to get anything done. In fact, the entire nature of the project is one of collaboration, being as it is a vehicle for collaborating with Italian artists, and I can hardly take credit for it as "my" notion anymore; if, in fact, I ever could. The very concept has leapt ahead, and in the best ways, in my opinion. I read my initial idea for the play and cringe a bit at the thought of working on something like that right now. Perhaps it's valuable, in the interests of getting projects accomplished, to think of them as inevitable, and also as something that will ultimately bear very little resemblance to the original notion.

• Red Signal. The clown, quasi-silent film screenplay. This, above all, is my most frustrating venture. Not because I haven't made progress on it; I have. That's the source of said frustration, because (much like a subway train faced with a...wait for it...) the writing hit a brick wall somewhere around March/April. There are a number of possible causes for this -- getting a new day job, busting my laptop, health concerns, getting on and into other projects -- but what it boils down to is that I feel rather out of ideas, and with three acts of a five-act outline all figured out (it's act the third that I have been stalled on; five's ready to roll). Three is certainly the magic number, and I'm confident that the cutting stage of this process will be immense, but I'm just not there yet. Something vital is missing. Apart from occasionally pondering (futility) the casting of the female role, I haven't returned to it in earnest since running out of track. Which. Is. Frustrating.

So all in all: I don't feel too bad about how I've done. I realize this list may read like it's largely a schedule of a lack of completion, but in writing it I've been reminded that every process is just that, and one can't rush it or skip steps. I could certainly have done better (especially when it comes to stilts, trombones and comicbooks) but I see in most of these notions a progression, at least in thinking. I'd like to be more productive ultimately, but that's why I checked in on these in the first place: to see how I can do that. In the spirit of this, this entry represents no great goal post, but another step in the process at large. So. Do I think sharing my ideas helped them move along?

Didn't hurt . . .

Lose Your Self

It's been a time of some frustration for me, lately. Frustration is not a particularly novel emotion on my part, I must confess. I'm something of a tense individual. (Please withhold any cries of "Understatement!" That's impolite.) My tendency is to hold energy in and rigorously control or funnel it when I let it out, which is part of why I find certain acting environments so appealing. Some because they are well served by this familiar approach, and others because they encourage me to abandon it completely, which is liberating. My natural impulse, however, is to control. Always has been, really. Any departures from that are still, no matter how incorporated they've become into my lifestyle, somewhat experimental. Some part of my mind is always thinking,

Okay boss; this is great and all, and I'm learning a lot, but when do we return to terra firma here?

Now, it's not that my approach hasn't rewarded me. It has. Greatly, at times. However, in the long run, it's an obsessive approach, and therefore at best limiting -- at worst,

damaging

.

Saturday I had my second exploit into the misty realm of acupuncture. My first was several years ago, when I volunteered as a patient of cranial acupuncture for a demonstration to be given to a class of acupuncturistas. That was pretty intense. It was supposed to treat my ETs --

mysterious medical condition

, not league of other-worldly gardeners -- and it probably did, but it's always difficult to say. Qi/Chi? Meridians? Or simply reflexive muscle stimulation and a little calm attention? Whatever the function,

Fiancee Megan

has been reaping great rewards from acupuncture lately, and with

a personal recommendation

to her acupuncturalama, I went under the pin in the hopes of treating

my recent struggles with ma' balls

. Fine: my "pelvic floor dysfunction." But I still prefer to view it as an epic battle betwixt me, and ma' balls. Which, you know . . . might be indicative of said control issues. I am a land divided!

Recently I have had cause to observe a very interesting sequence of development in a short play I've been working on as an actor. I feel as though I've learned a lot about myself through it, which is not something I was expecting when it began. My frustration in this process can best be summed up as a difference of opinion. At first, I thought my difference of opinion was simply between me and the director, which happens all the time and is one thing. But due to various circumstances, I discovered my opinion differed from most of the other actors, and the playwright as well. I perceived the script, as it originally started, as a more naturalistic, character-driven story. Through various stages of working and some unusual factors, the concept was taken more toward farce, then amped up to screw-ball, and finally the script was pretty majorly revised to accommodate those changes in style and plant the story firmly in that genre. To put it plain, I began with one script that I liked, and it's ending with one almost entirely other. This is not the first time this has happened to me, but for one reason or another, it bothered me more this time. Whether or not it began with my own misconception of the piece, it has taken a lot of effort on my part to fulfill others' expectations.

I had been anticipating acupuncture to be a bit like a massage, in the weeks leading up to my appointment. You know, something that might at times be painful, yet ultimately relaxing. I may be a bit of a controlling obsessive (a

tiny

bit), but I've come to appreciate instances in which I'm expected to relax and allow things to happen to me. If I can avoid any hostile emotions, I do pretty well with that. It's a relief. Well, it turns out that acupuncture can be a bit of work. (I might've known.) Since I am treating what is essentially a self-inflicted injury, it makes poetic sense, at least, that I might have to put a little effort into treating it. The first acupuncture appointment is two hours long, so they can get the run-down on your condition, Chinese-medicine style. They could see the problem I was dealing with in my body, as I stood before them in my underwear. According to my acupuncturians, I'm all bent out of shape (no, really) in numerous subtle places. Also: I'm a liver person. This apparently means I tend to be frustrated, to rise up against challenges with a somewhat fervent and stubborn passion. They may eat ox tail, but those Chinese know something about something.

I didn't know what to expect of our premiere of an essentially new play, midway through our run. My character's opening monologue was changed pretty drastically, with some very out-of-left-field stuff, and I couldn't get effectively off-book for it in time. I could get

off-book

, but not

effectively

. So, with the playwright's permission, I took it in hand as a sort of

Zuppa-del-Giorno

adjunct to my performance, and largely winged it (wung it?). After all, the play had been changed significantly, and in the direction of absurdity, so maybe it would be best to go with that current and risk more, rather than less. I can improvise a monologue all day, but no one in my cast knew that, seeing as they had from me the careful development process over the previous month that I apply to a more naturalistic role. They seemed to largely take my angst over the changes to be anxiety over performing them, and I didn't try to dissuade this opinion, because my opinions of the play itself had very little to do with the job I had to do. I didn't want to get into a debate over the relative value of the play or the changes; I just wanted to get on with it. And what was the worst that would happen if I broke out my improvisatory style in performance? It tanks, and the playwright has something to consider the next time he has the impulse to revise midway through a run. So I set foot on stage that night, and wanged. Wung. What you will.

I could at first barely feel the needles the day after the performance, they were applied with such a gentle touch, and in gradual stages of difficulty. I had two practitioners working with me, and they talked to me throughout, because I admitted my curiosity and, eventually, they needed to give me instructions. The needles were being applied to my front, and the final stages were in my calves and lower abdomen. That's when they started to sear a bit through, er, my meridians, as they slid in to their work. And one of the practitioners started to see a habit of mine, of my breathing, that she thought was contributing to my pelvic difficulties. Namely, that I breathe into my stomach, expanding it, and drive the air out when I'm exerting effort, constricting my abdomen to push. It's called diaphragmatic breathing; it's something every stage actor is trained in. And, as she was raising her voice to get me to

reverse

this physical tendency and

relax

(most self-nullifying command in the English language), I realized that she was right. I constantly contract my abdomen, even unrelated to my breathing. I've been doing it since high school. Through an extreme effort, I managed to reverse, to stretch my abdomen flat and long on the inhale and "relax" it out on the exhale, and they finished my poking, covered me with a thermal blanket and left me in the room to rest and let the needles do their work.

There's a certain relaxation to giving in to a force, or forces. I quickly reached my monologue Friday night, and let 'er rip. There was no shortage of energy, certainly, because it is a thrill, however familiar, to face an audience with something less than a plan. Yet I was relaxed, because it didn't matter what happened. Win, lose or draw, I couldn't even be sure what one or the other would look like. So I did my thing . . . and it was a hit. Even I was surprised; not because I didn't expect to succeed or because I thought the new play wasn't viable, but because in all my resistance to the changes I had felt that I wouldn't be able to leave that frustration behind, that I would inevitably carry it on stage with me. Somehow I had let it go, and the audience was delighted with my performance. The whole performance went great. Was I wrong about the changes? Should I have let go from the word go, and not complicated things with my opinions, my liver-induced feelings?

Lying there in a dark room the next day, riddled with pins, I managed to let go of a little bit of what all was pent up inside. Just a couple of spurts of acknowledged helplessness. That's what prayer essentially is, you know: letting go.

Acting is a confusing business, not to mention art form. I often forget what I'm doing here. Like an Alzheimer's patient, I'll suddenly awake to the room around me and be baffled at what my purpose was in entering it. The key to it is, I want to be an actor. Not a stand-up comedian, not a circus performer, not a mime or clown, and certainly not a clerk or secretary. All those roles are very nice, and I've been lucky enough to experience them all, and have opportunities to return to them. Yet an actor is a specific person, with specific goals that surpass entertainment. Perhaps we lose sight of that as a result of the actor seeming to be anything, seeming like a compilation of roles, all adding up to a bizarre nullification of identity. The experience of this show, however fraught, has served to remind me of what it is that separates an actor from a performer. An actor dares to let all of his or her practice, and technique, and safety go, and offer the self in every aspect up to the moment, to the risk of failing to entertain, in the pursuit of truth. An actor is not a cypher for any one person or idea, but for everyone. And I want, more than any of those other things, to be an actor.

The final diagnosis of my acupuncturologisti was that I needed to give up all front-ways strength training until my issue gets resolved, that I need -- if I am to continue exercising at all -- to find a way to do it that lengthens and relaxes my abdomen. And, ultimately, I need to find a different approach to working, altogether. Because my health and work isn't about just one direction of strength, or the appearance of success. It's about the risk of being open, of allowing what will be, and of constantly discovering new ways of being and, thereby, new risks.

But I'm still doing my push-ups. Damn it.

The Continuing Story of Circus-Kid Kate

Some time ago, rather in response to a 'blog entry Leah Hager Cohen did about her, I devoted an entry (see 3/14/08) to Friend Kate Magram in tribute to the amazing things she's taught me. That, I had hoped, would spawn a tremendous groundswell of Kate-imonials, because she's really touched a number of people in her time as an active circus enthusiast. (And most of those touches weren't even inappropriate!) Well, my readership is too small, it seems, to inspire such swelling. I remain confident that it's not size that matters in this matter (of swelling, ground or otherwise), but I do wish I could have brought people's awareness of Kate a little more to the forefront of the national consciousness.

Fortunately, Mizz L.H.C. is a little more influential:

http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/names/bloggers/balancing-acts-blog

Sure. It's Good Housekeeping. But I still think it's hella cool. In the accompanying interview with Mz. Cohen they ask her if she's done any "acro-balance" moves lately, and she replies that she hasn't, but likely will the next time Kate comes around. That doesn't surprise me, because it only takes one acro session with Kate to appreciate that she's eager to do that work any time, any place, compensating for any injuries or social mores that may stand in her way.

Recently, I ran across a photo on a friend of a friend's Facebook(TM) page. (No, I'm not linking to Facebook; because it's ruined my life.) It was of my friend and his friend doing a thigh-stand in some public space, and looking pleased as punch about it at that. My friend is Kasidy Benjamin. (Okay, see? That's how Facebook's ruined me.) He found me in Legal Snarls, Zuppa del Giorno's second production, way back in 2004. Kasidy came with us to Italy for In Bocca al Lupo the first time we all went, and performed semi-improvised comemdia dell'arte in Italian for an Italian audience. He graduated high school last semester, and in the fall he's off to Dell'Arte International. And somewhere in all that, either I or Friend Heather (and I taught Heather) taught him thigh-stand.

Kate has a thing about the lineage of knowledge, particularly as it applies to the passing-down of skills. In her perfect world, everyone would know the family tree of everything he or she has learned. "I learned it from this person, who studied with this person, who was a disciple of..." Etc. I admit, it sounds very nice. Even noble. I also think we're a bit too far gone to get it done these days. I could certainly start now, though, and in the world of acrobalance my beginning begins with Kate. From Kate came all these good things. I owe Kate huge karmic residuals (which she would almost certainly rebuff for being inherently un-karmic [unless they manifested as money or free time, perhaps]).

Here's the thing I'm having trouble with: For various perfectly rational reasons, a few years back Kate drastically reduced her involvement in creating circus work and new circus performers. She is now hip-deep (occasionally eye-ball-deep) in the work entailed in becoming a physical therapist, and she'll be a good one. Her secondary passion to acrobalance when we worked together was making sure EVERYONE DOES THINGS SAFELY. Some of this, admittedly, may have had to do with liability issues, but I choose to believe the core of Kate's personality lies in a primal need to protect people; occasionally from themselves. That instinct, combined with her love of all things physical, makes her a prima candidate for becoming an involved and informed physical therapist. Can not complain about them apples. What I can moan about is Kate's self-removal, albeit necessary, from the regular teaching and choreographing of acrobalance. I don;t think this will come as any particular surprise to Kate. Unless she misinterprets my feelings as a criticism of her choices. Which they are not. Kate.

It's just that, dang it, she's good. Maybe she's not the greatest acrobat in the world, or even the most gifted teacher; she'd be the first to confess various stories of having missed this or that, wishing she could go back and do something different. But I think we all feel that way about our work to some extent, and the people who really fail in any meaningful sense do so because they fail to perceive their own mistakes. What Kate has that's so damn valuable is an effortless love for the work, and for the people who are willing to try to come to it with open hearts and minds. That love fills the room -- and sometimes, a good portion of Sheep Meadow -- when Kate teaches. I've tried to carry that on, that ethos, and I think I've done a pretty fair job. I enjoy teaching or skill-swapping in this vein for the moment it creates amongst all involved, and it seems that those moments can indeed carry out into the world and the future with the right people involved, like Kasidy. So it's good work. Time well spent.

Thanks again, Kate.

It Is, In Fact, Electric

Doot do doot do doot do-do do do, doot do doot do doot do-do do do!

I admit that, if I weren't at work, I would now be maliciously cackling at having suggested that song unto your brain space. I contemplated referencing other songs, such as Deborah (nee Debbie) Gibson's Electric Youth, or Electricity, as rendered by Sonic Youth, in particular because I loathe Electric Boogie and wish Marcia Griffiths had been hit by a fast-moving bus before she could unleash it upon the world and inspire Ric Silver, thereby ensuring that every wedding betwixt people of a paler persuasion for the next three decades would involve an oddly awkward and unseemly ritual. It's one of the songs on my no-fly list for the wedding. Because I hate my own culture.

But I digress.

The times, they are a'changin' (now that's a good song). Most of you who read this here 'blog with any regularity whatsoever know that The Northeast Theatre (TNT) has been nothing short of my theatrical home-away-from-home for the past six years or so. I'm even on the banner page of the website, with Friend Todd. (Said website, by the way, is fascinating in its labyrinthine complexity. It's been built up over the years with no particular notion of where it might end up, and as a result has ended up with a lot of dangling pages and decentralized indexing.) Some time back, the more-constant employees of the theatre and the artistic director got to talking and realized that, when they really thought about it, their personal goals could best be realized by aiming TNT toward becoming an ensemble theatre company. Which is to say, with people who are employed 'round the year, not just on a show-by-show basis, including actors, designers, etc. "Etc." Hmmm. Anyway, invitations were extended, including to me. I declined, though tempted, as I'm not really in a place to leave New York just yet, much less settle in Pennsylvania. But I've eagerly anticipated the change, curious to see where it leads them.

The Northeast Theatre (TNT) is dead! Long live the Electric Theatre Company (ETC)!

At the time of this posting, the website is still rather underdeveloped, but a few pages are up and a simple cursory glance will illustrate how far the theatre has come in its sense of identity over the past few years. Their season is pretty kick-A., too. At present, the only part I'm scheduled to be a part of is Zuppa del Giorno's take on Romeo & Juliet, which is rather as it should be given the change and my present priorities. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit bothered by my distance from this venture. Part of the ideal behind the change was the idea that actors suffer from not having enough long-term collaboration through which to grow. I could claim to have a good deal of that by way of Zuppa's productions, but the fact is that coming together as infrequently as we do we usually spend half the time playing catch-up on our skills and the other half just trying to build the damn show. No; I'm missing out on something good out there in Scranton. But it was the right choice for me.

And I'm not getting away from working out that way, not by a long shot. Just next week I need to spend a couple of days being certified as a "resident" teaching artist, and the weekend after that I'm to be involved in TN . . . whoops. ETC's benefit, which includes the mayor of Scranton in its festivities. (I'm not sure it gets any more prestigious than that.) I'll have two responsibilities during that affair. The first is to do a little walkabout as Chico Marx, whom I played in my own inimitable way for Zuppa's second show, Legal Snarls. I'm not-so-much looking forward to that; I've had enough clowning and walkabout lately to last me for a while. The second is to perform arbitrary acrobalance moves to music with Heather. That's kind of fun, though there's a lot of bluffing involved, as Heather and I are never in the same space long enough to really work out a comfortable routine. Well, at least not without some (thousand) other things what need doing first.

Being part of a company is important. It's how great things get done. And if I'm not going out there to be a constant part of it, what will I do to bring that particular it here, to me? We'll see.

Shopping Out Our Work

Yesterday I ventured out to Pennsylvania to once again teach a workshop with Friend Heather under the auspices of

Zuppa del Giorno

, our contemporary commedia dell'arte troupe. The workshop took place on

Marywood University

's campus, and was about five hours long. All of this is exceedingly normal. From our first production, Zuppa del Giorno has been teaching more and more workshops, either as educational appendages to our shows or as independent entities that spread the word of us and hopefully bring in more students, not to mention occasional income. Marywood University is gradually becoming a regular collaborator with

The Northeast Theatre

(last fall we worked with their theatre department to create

Prohibitive Standards

), and I have just about learned the routes between New York City and Scranton so well I could probably walk them if I had to (and gas prices being what they are...). This venture, however, had a distinctive element. It represented our first foray into the world of "corporate training."

Several of my friends work for companies that shop actors out into the corporate world to lead seminars in communication and team-building. Some time ago, it became apparent to we lunatics at Zuppa that this was an occupation well within our reach. We have over the past several years taught amazing things to people, I modestly confess. We usually come out of such sessions impressed with how well they went, and what everyone learned not only to do, but about themselves. That learning includes us, I'm hasty to add. Every time I try to teach new people how to execute a reasonable thigh-stand, I learn something new. Crazy? Sure. Crazy gets the job done really well in my little world.

Friend Heather

has been particularly interested in getting the Zuppa del Giorno corporate education arm out there and swinging for the fences ever since she picked up and moved to Scranton. By and large, that move has been a good one for her. She's doing more acting work than ever since, and good work at that, and she's finding for herself a particular sense of community that those of us here in New York view with a certain envious uncertainty. ("That seems so great, that kind of intimate society; yet, where would I hide?") Hell: The Northeast Theatre is even ushering in a new era by becoming more of an ensemble company, of which Heather is a member, heralded with a name change and everything. More of that ahead. In the meantime, Heather still owes to Caesar what is owed to Caesar, and her desire is to be paid in full without the addition of another mind-numbing day job. Hence her particular enthusiasm for getting "Corporate Zuppa" to hit a homer.

Now, Thursday wasn't exactly our official corporate debut. In fact, it was a sort of paid audition for the Marywood staff who handle events and marketing, to see if they'd be interested in sort of advertising such workshops as part of what they can offer to private interests. Like most universities these days, every summer Marywood hosts conferences and such to keep up the rent payments and stay active in the commercial community. Our being a part of that would certainly provide a lot of opportunities we might not otherwise have. So we had ourselves a sort of dry run for adapting our skills (audiences only like theatre troupes with skills) to the "corporate" milieu.

It was, um.... It was

okay

. I think, by the end, everyone had enjoyed themselves at least a little bit. We definitely got a lot of helpful feedback, both from the experience itself and from discussion with the dozen-or-so participants afterward. It was a bit jarring, I must admit, to discover myself teaching a class of people who were required to be there. I mean to say, although we've taught high school classes under similar circumstances, this was a rather new domain. The bosses of the two departments required their employees to attend, and not all of them were happy to be there. In fact, the anxiety was increased by their ignorance of what exactly we were going to be subjecting them to. I was surprised, about two-thirds of the way through the initial warm-up, when I tried to help someone figure out a stretch we were doing. We were stretching our hips and glutes, and she had turned her torso the wrong way from her knees. I informed her she should twist the other way and, misreading me, she prepared to unfold her legs and turn

everything

in reverse. Realizing my miscommunication, I stood up from across the circle and said, "Oh, no--" preparing to demonstrate just for her. When she saw me coming, though, she immediately went on the defensive, saying, "It's me, I get confused, no, don't touch me!" I stopped in my tracks. "It's okay. I'm not going to touch you. It's okay."

But it threw me. I'm not going to lie to you. What I should have done was take a moment to acknowledge feeling affronted, and then move on both internally and externally. I did okay. I acknowledged she was scared, saying, "It's okay, I'm not going to touch you," and backed away. What I failed to do, however, was either find an alternate way to engage her or to put the rest of the class at ease after that kind of confrontation. I was surprised, to be sure, and it would be easy to chalk up my failure to simple shock over suddenly being confronted. But it was more than that. I took it personally, somehow. I reeled back, at least internally, and Heather took over for a moment or two. It made sense that the woman would respond the way she did. How often does the average person find themselves seated in an uncomfortable, confusing position on the floor while someone standing comes at them? I understood this logically; emotionally, I was offended. I didn't feel I could help it. It's a terrible feeling, that you and your work are unwelcome, and I never get used to it, and actors confront exactly this situation on a daily basis.

As I say, the day resolved itself, and everyone got involved. There was even a sort of blossoming from that particular woman as the course moved on. She went from flicking off her boss (totally permissible given the exercise we were doing) and exclaiming her hatred of having to be there to being one of the more engaged and entertained people overall. I can't take any credit at all for that evolution, and we were assisted by the fact that these people all generally had a rapport prior to the workshop. (I quiver at the thought of working with a group of people who are strangers to one another.) The work, however, does its work, and Heather and I can at least take a little credit for creating the most nurturing environment imaginable for risk-taking (short of installing emotion-sensitive airbags throughout the room [which, frankly, would be hilarious--you could distinguish the moment anyone started to feel insecure in themselves because they'd be immediately engulfed in pillowing]).

We're finding our balance. The course is predominantly aimed at using improvisation exercises to teach communication skills, but we reference acrobalance a bit (I'd like more, but can't quite figure how to do that without excluding injured or more corpulent folks) and are trying to develop ways to communicate the unique collaborative techniques we use in creating shows together. I'd like, frankly, to shift the focus off of improvisation, because I feel it's the least unique training we have to offer and that our enthusiasm lies elsewhere. (Plus improv's got a certain stigma built-in, thanks to its widespread use in such venues and the popularity of

The Office

[US]

.) I enjoy improvisation, so maybe it's just a way of incorporating it in a new way. Several times during the teaching I thought of the tremendous success of the Jeepform game

The Upgrade

that

I played at Camp Nerdly 2

. Some of the overt game theory applied in that particular improvisation may be a good model for easing people out of their fears and trepidations. Then again, that was another case of having all willing participants.

I'm remaining positive ("yes, and..."), but in so doing avoiding a strong reaction I had to the experience. There was something in that refusal, that fear reaction from the participant, that made me feel a complex wave of negativity. Verbalized that response would, compressed within less than a second, sound something like this, "

Okay, I won't touch you! Hey, guess what? There's stuff I'd rather be doing too, but I've come here in spite of my fears and in the hopes of creating something together. I can tell that's unwelcome, and that pisses me off royal. I get enough of that in auditions. In fact, next time you want an actor to lay off, try 'thank you...'. Just like that: 'THANK you...'. Every actor will

immediately

understand that you aren't buyin' what they're sellin', and get the hell out of there just as fast as he or she can. In fact, maybe I'll do that altogether. No one wants a live experience, no one wants to connect, no one wants a leading man who can't bench press the state of North Dakota. So I'll just go, all right? Will that make your life so much

better

? Will that make it so much

easier? MY. PLEASURE.

"

I'm glad I didn't go there at the moment it happened, but I'm also glad I went there just now. I'm not looking forward to our next go at corporate training (this feeling always reminds me of my private trombone lessons in high school, which I regarded with inevitable terror), but I'm aware that it's simply a challenge to be overcome step-by-step. I do like challenges. I just don't like when people think they have something to gain by avoiding them.