I moved to LA!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well kids, it is totally official… I moved to LA. I think, as a human being who wants to get paid to be creative, I had to really ask myself if Chicago was giving me what I needed. The answer was “No”. I love Chicago and my time there was amazing. Chicago became my home, my grad school, my club house, and my trap. It was time to move on. So that’s why the break has been so extended. I’ve spent the past 6 months getting on my feet. And what do you know! Here I am. Standing on two feet and loving this new place I call home. LA. What a ride. I still improvise at iO; it’s just the bar is outside the theater here. Look me up next time you visit. We’ll have some beers and shoot the shit.

Molly

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

While Molly was settling into LA, I got real busy by being hired by Comedy Sportz Chicago. Then after that I got busy with a sketch group (Pennybear) and a six-week run at the Apollo. After that I have no excuse as to why we didn’t post new posts. I got lazy. Even after Molly get back on track with this blog, I dragged my feet on this thing. But now I’ve been properly chided back into posting again. So sorry for the delay and I hope we get back to posting regularly soon.

Jon

I think we all can agree that coming up with a team name is the most painstaking task a team can endure besides the task of agreeing on what night to rehearse. Everyone’s got some “hilarious” opinion, or no one really gives a shit at all and suddenly you’re called “Snail Mail”. Fucking terrible. There is no good way to go about this. So I will tell you my personal favorite way to come up with a team name. It is a system handed down from my first Rattle Snake coach Pat O’Brien.

First: Sidebar POB set up.

This man wanted to get a tattoo, but did not want to get a tattoo that he loved and would eventually come to regret. He had decided that any tattoo he loved now, he would eventually…. At some age, come to regret. But he still really wanted to get a tattoo. So what he did was get a tattoo of something that he would IMMEDIATELY regret… now. With this thinking the heartbreak would be quick and painless and yet he could still get inked. Well, that’s how POB got an “INSYNC” tattoo on his back. No joke. Ask him. With a star dotting the “I” and everything. God bless America.

Now back to team names. POB, I think, understood that the process of choosing a team name is both tedious and long. This is due to young improvisers wanting to have a cool name and also not wanting to upset each other. So he made us choose our team name by making the process as long and drawn out as possible. So we each got something like 3 names to put into a hat. We then could each choose three we liked and each round one or two would be dropped that didn’t get enough votes. But as you can imagine, with 10 people on the team that’s a lot of rounds. Now, at any point during the elimination of names, people can option to stand in front of the group and argue why a certain name should be brought back into the mix. When it got down to like the final 3… instead of everyone just voting on their fave, you voted on two so that it was really narrowed down slowly and exhaustively. During this process you hear each name about a million times and by the end you really know if you like the winner or not. This is also how we would choose movies for movie nights with the Snakes.

I think the last three names were:

Topaz

Rattlesnake High School

And

U.S.S. Rock and Roll

Needless to say, we would have won any way we went.

Molly

~~~~~~~~~~~

Trying to get a bunch of people to all agree on a single team name is super hard. Everyone loves different names for different reasons. If one person loves a name because of how deliciously pun-y it is, then 5 others hate it for the same reason. It can’t be too long and it has to evoke a really neat mental image, or so some people think. I’ve heard of coaches giving a team only 10 minutes to come up with a team name – take it or leave it. I’ve heard of the process lasting three weeks. Let me also just give my opinion that the word “squad” should never be included into a team name.

In college, the group I was apart of already had a name, Theatre Strike Force, but I was part of one independent group that was made. At the time there were three other major independent groups that were basically sub-cliques in our troupe: Danger Chimps, Anatomically Incorrect, and Cinnamon Grin. We thought these names were awesome and we needed an equally great name. In the end we chose Quacksalver. In retrospect, I wouldn’t be a fan of naming my team any of those names today.

In Chicago, my classmate Laurel and I invited a bunch of our favorite classmates to form Cage Match team with us. After only a few rehearsals we already loved the new group and decided to make the group an independent team. I needed a team name when submitting us for the Cage Match and so I just chose one out of my ass: Sponge Cake. After telling the group what name I chose, surprisingly no one thought it bad enough to change so it stuck. “Sweet! I named a group!”

When I got on a Playground incubator team, each of us wrote down about five to seven name we thought were good. With nine of us submitting all these names, the first list was huge. We decided we would get three votes each to whittle it down to 27 or so names. Then we had a second round of voting. But after that we were stuck. So we decided to think it over and talk about the names via email the next work week. By the time we met again, we were kind of exhausted talking about this. This time we narrowed the choices down to 5. Then we narrowed it down to 2 names: Quisp or Atticus Finch. Thankfully Atticus Finch won. It was also a name I submitted! “Sweet! I named another group!”

During our 5B class, around the 7^th week or so of class, we took some class time out to stand in a circle and brainstorm 5B show names. My personal favorite was Jung Americans, since our form was very The Dream-like and since we all lived in America; it was also a few months after 9/11 so I thought the pro-America name might draw in a larger audience. But a few of the group were older than 30 (gasp!) and so they weren’t young and Ed Illades was from Mexico so technically he wasn’t American. Somehow we decided on Under Your Bed, which in retrospect is not all that bad, but it sure didn’t sound good either. The other 5B class chose Dropping Mercury. The worst 5B name I’ve heard thus far – and also ironically awesome – was “Jerky McJerkalot and the Jerks from Jerkville.”

My second iO team was Mammal 79, which was a suggestion by Brian Goodman I believe, and it was completely a nonsense name that didn’t mean anything. Depending on who you spoke to in the group, the 79 either did or did not have an apostrophe before it. (’79) My first iO team was named by Dunbar Dicks and this was yet another name of a character from a book. We were called Kilgore Trout. (Plug: KT has slot in the Cage Match of Fallen teams, it’s June 9^th.) At first I didn’t like Kilgore Trout but after a few days of letting it sit in my head, I warmed up to the name.

Jon

Where’s the party at tonight?

I asked that question a lot when I really got immersed into the improv scene in Chicago. I first became aware of them around level 3 or 4 when I was going through the training center at iO. Since I was usually around the theater to see a weekend show, I would start to hear people talking about where to go when the shows were over. They would be at somebody’s apartment and I’d debate with myself if I wanted to go. I couldn’t go by myself because I specifically wasn’t invited, right? I need to have a friend go with me and that meant a teammate or a classmate. I’d get to the party and I wouldn’t know anyone around me and would feel like an invader. I would become ultra shy and seriously think about leaving so I could feel comfortable again. Or I would see a veteran improviser there and I would still feel like an invader but now I wanted to stay because maybe, just maybe I might be able to talk to them!

I was also amazed at the sights I saw. There was a ton of people packed into a tiny apartment, good or ironic music being played, kegs, smokers huddled on the back porch, and maybe a game of flip cup going on a table. I was never much of a partier in college and so this was my real introduction to parties full of alcohol. I hadn’t seen a keg stand until I came to Chicago; and I went to a school that was voted the #1 party school in the country my sophomore year in college! I tried to take it all in. Even when talking to someone at a party, I would be scanning the room, watching and observing all the odd alcohol induced behavior. So yeah, I was that asshole who was talking to someone and looking around for a better conversation to be in.

It was at improv parties where most of my introductions to improviser happened. I might meet 100 new people at a party and by the next day I was lucky if I could remember 5 people’s names. There have been so many times that I’ve said “I know I’ve met you before, but what’s your name again?” But it’s understood that in THE SCENE you meet so many people that learning people’s names is a Herculean effort. It’s also the place where I’m surprised that two of my good friends are meeting each other for the first time. About the time when you’re done with 5B shows and on a new team, it’s almost assumed that everyone knows everyone at the party.

I remember when Rush Howell started up his Beer Pong tourneys in 2001 and they were always THE parties to be at. There were so many people there and all your favorite players would be there guaranteed. And if you were out of town on a weekend it seemed like that was the weekend that the best party was happening on. “Did you hear that some dude broke his leg at Tony’s…” “At Melewski’s party Sean punched this kid in the face and…” “After you left everyone at the party got down to their underwear!” These types of events went down and it felt really cool to be apart of this community. I felt like I was apart of THE place to be. I imagined that decades from now we’d be talking about these magical times just like we speak about the beatniks in the ‘50s or the punk subculture in New York in the ‘70s.

Chicago in the summer is amazing and it’s this season that is also the improv party season. It seems like every weekend night there’s at least three different parties to choose from. I’m exaggerating but not too much. (Party at Piero’s!) Soon the sea of unfamiliar faces became all your best buddies and it seemed like you knew everyone at the party. “This is what being popular is like, right?” my nerd brain would ask the group mind. This is when iO starts to become like your club house or your version of “Cheers” where everyone knows your name. Just six months ago you didn’t know a soul in the joint and now it’s become a home away from home!

After I was done with classes my frequency in being at iO dropped off a little and as a result I heard about fewer parties. I was also a little tired of going to these huge parties because they were so packed and after awhile fewer of the veterans would be there. Instead there were all these level 1 newbies and they were annoying and non-jaded. When I went back into classes after not being on the schedule, I again went to more parties and it was neat because then I started meeting new people but my nervousness from before was no longer there. I’d been around the block before and it wasn’t as novel anymore. After awhile though you and your friends just want to hang out in small groups and so that’s what you do.

These days I rarely go to these types of parties unless they are big occasion times like CIF, New Years, or Halloween. The Halloween parties are always super huge and for the past number of years held at this loft apartment over by St. Alphonsus and its not unusual for these parties to be stopped around 3am by the cops due to noise complaints or because idiots are peeing off the roof onto the front sidewalk. I find them interesting because it’s neat to see who’s dating who now. I’m also sort of starting to experience moments where people thing I’m a veteran and it’s weird to think I may be filling that role now.

Jon

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My interest in improv parties really rolls in a wave pattern. For the record, I want to clarify that my definition of an improv party is the kind of thing you hear about: through grape vine/ from an intern/ on a message board. I am not including the small get togethers you have with your team mates or the small beer sessions that occur on summer nights after shows when no one wants the night to end and it feels like you will never die. I’m talking about the parties with kegs, the parties the cops are bound to find, the parties where Pierro’s sure to be passed out on the couch.

When I first started doing improv, I felt like I NEVER knew where these parties were happening. I knew they existed because I would hear about them from my better connected improv friends, but I couldn’t figure out how people knew about them.

When I first started to go to them I was really overwhelmed. They seemed fun at first but often times, because I was still young in the scene, I didn’t know everyone or only knew of people but didn’t have the balls to talk to them at these parties. I would walk into a party and see Paul Grondy or TJ and I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. I know this is stupid… but whatever, sometimes I’m stupid. Or I would only know some people very loosely and because younger improvisers communicate through bits, going to these house parties was a real test in one’s threshold for bad jokes, people looking for someone better to talk to mid-conversation with you, and awkward “I saw you in that show”s. Plus when I was young as an improviser, I was practically married and most of the time the “better half” didn’t want to have anything to do with these bit fests. At this time in my life these parties started to feel more like work than fun. Mostly I didn’t like not knowing people and was too awkward and self conscious to change that.

As I became a teenager in my growth in the community, I began to LOVE these parties. Suddenly my friends were the ones hosting them. Carol Minor and her roommates had one of these parties what seemed to be like every weekend. And for a while Rex, Paul, and Bill all lived together in the “Snakepit”. They would have some pretty great parties. All my friends would be there so I would walk in and know everyone in the room, or close enough. A lot of times the Snakes would go to parties together as a group and this took so much pressure off because if I didn’t know anyone I could just chat to the Snakes. In general these parties were more fun because I knew a lot more people. Plus the more drinking buddies the better I say. And for a while these parties got really dope! Rap battles/ dance parties/ corner poker/ arm wrestling/ naked obstacle courses… fun, fun, fun!

At some point though, I got kind of tired of these parties again. A lot of new improvisers started showing up and I didn’t know them… and it felt like work again. To have to explain inside jokes and make small talk. I got to a point where all I wanted to do was hang out with my close improv buddies more than find the big kegger. I stopped caring about knowing everyone in the scene. (Do I sound like a 15 year old punk rock kid or what?) Because eventually there’s a whole new crop of people and you can’t possibly know all of them. The bad bits started coming back into kitchen talk.

But then all my friends started getting older and finding long term girlfriends/ boyfriends. And the exact opposite thing happened to me. I became single for the first time in my whole life! So suddenly going to parties and meeting lots of new people seemed like a real fun idea. And that’s how I rediscovered my love for the improv party. It’s a little different now cause most of the people at these things are younger than me. Not always… but a lot of times I feel like I am walking in on someone’s 5B after party. It’s not the same kind of fun because a lot of the old excitement used to be hanging out with my improv team and causing trouble at parties. Oh well. I say… the more parties the better. “Regular” friends are pretty great… but sometimes you just want to be in a room full of people who get your shitty bits and don’t mind that you lose your inside voice after 3 beers. What a great way to meet everyone in your community! What a great way to enjoy the night forever. Summer is here. Whose house are we partying at this weekend?

Molly

I haven’t been doing improv in Chicago as long as some people… but after 6 years I have nice sack full of rehearsal space experiences. Everywhere from living rooms to main stages, from basements to class rooms and one time our rehearsal was an exploration of the city of Chicago when Pat O’Brien sent us on a Rattlesnake vision quest. Rehearsing is something you become trained to do. With 2 other teams rehearsing on either side of you at Gill Park, with room mates walking through your scenes, and Bill Boehler’s dog sniffing at your crotch wondering what in the hell all the fuss is about… it’s a wonder that we ever get any real emotional work done.  But we learn as improvisers to push through, focus up and sharpen our listening skills.

Chest Pie, the team my classmates put together, used to rehearse in Paul’s old house in Wicker Park. It felt very awkward to me. I didn’t know everyone in the group all that well, we were all still pretty awkward at “improvising” and we didn’t have a coach to ground the rehearsals. Looking back I think that was my major problem with it. Not having a coach there to legitimize it made me feel kind of silly in the beginning. I would look around and think, “We are a bunch of 20 something’s acting like morons together.” And now, I am fine with this, but as a young improviser I was still a little self conscious about a lot of stuff… so even though the practice was great, the actual work was pretty generically frightening.

Uncle Elaine used to rehearse in Carol Minor’s living room for a while. At the time she lived with 2 other girls. We would practice in her “dining room”. It was a small, red-walled, “unused” room. And this didn’t seem as weird to me because Jeff Griggs was there to sort of give the rehearsal stakes. I guess for me when I had a coach telling me things were cool, I basically believed them.

I personally think rehearsing in people’s houses feels really strange. Yeah, it’s cheaper and that rules… but it’s also really distracting. When we started rehearsing at Cronholm’s house for Uncle Elaine… the team was much older and we were very comfortable with each other. People would roll in late, and it didn’t matter cause we weren’t paying for the space. Once everyone was there we would spend a half hour shooting it and making coffee… etc. Which is fine, but sometimes on a Sunday morning at 10:00 am you just want to get in and get out. Na mean? Plus the phone would always be ringing and answering machines picking it up, etc.

My other least favorite place to rehearse is any one of those middle, partitioned rooms at Gill Park whenever there’s another improv team rehearsing on either side of you. I mean, come on. How can you possibly discover the “anything” in a scene when all you can hear is Improviser Joe making Monkey noises at the top of his lungs over and over and over again? And to be fair… how can Improviser Joe perform his best monkey if all he can hear is your fight with your lover?

Having a special, regular rehearsal space for your team is like a frickin holy grail. If you have a loft, or an office board room, or a bar’s back room, or a class room… A CLASS ROOM!!! (What heaven!) to rehearse in every week and it’s FREE!!! Wow. You really have something amazing. Don’t. Let. It. Go.

Some of my fave-o places to rehearse:

TUTA’s space - the only rehearsal space in Wicker Park… which was heaven for me since everyone else lived on the north side and it was one of the few times I wouldn’t have to commute an hour and a half to go to rehearsal.

St. Alphonsus’ Classroom – lots of space and close to everyone

Second City back classrooms – great work spaces

The first floor room at any of the park districts – unless the speakers are playing Whitney Huston from the ceiling, or kids are walking in to get their backpacks… am I right?

Some of my least fave-o places to rehearse:

Snakepit basement – So tiny and cramped. Every scene would derail into someone getting bologna out of Rex’s fridge.

Gill Park middle rooms – ECH! I’m over them! And you’re kicking us out 15 minutes early? Blech.

Molly

~~~~~~~~~~

When non-improvisers hear that we have improv rehearsals, a familiar response for them is to ask why we have rehearsals when it’s improv.  I use the sports analogy to answer this question.  Shows are our games and rehearsals are our practices.

To practice improv, you need a place to practice it at.  A large enough room for people to do scenes in them.  There are many of different types of places you can have a rehearsal at.  They range from an actual stage to someone’s studio apartment.

1. People’s apartments:

It doesn’t get any cheaper than rehearsing at someone’s apartment.  You don’t have to chip in money to rent a space and if you have a coach, you only have to chip in for the coach fee.  The problem is that rehearsing at a person’s apartment can be kind of awkward.  You need someone on the team to have a room that is big enough for everyone to gather in and room enough to play around.  Furniture can get in the way and the atmosphere can get too relaxed which is a problem if you actually want to get some work done.  There are also the distractions of roommates coming and going and ringing phones.  Usually roomies are good about staying out of the way, but it’s still a little awkward.  Living or dining rooms are usually used for the rehearsals but if you’ve got a teammate with a loft, you might want to use that space.  Ben Johnson used to live in a loft in Wicker Park and Rattlesnake rehearsed there for a summer.  It was nice to have a ton of space to run around and play in but it did have its drawbacks.  Namely the downstairs neighbors who also chose that specific time to have band practice.  And then there was that one time that someone called and the answering machine picked in the call and loudly recorded about 15 minutes of pig sounds.  This really happened.  It was also in Wicker Park and traveling there from Wrigleyville is rather cumbersome because there are no direct routes you can take.

If your group is large enough, pitching in for an actual rehearsal space won’t cost too much per individual.  I’d go with that.  If, however, you’re talking about a 4-person group, then apartment rehearsals make more economic sense.  The problem with those is that it’s easy to not be in the mood to rehearse and instead sit around on couches and talk about things.  Maybe you want to do that, but 8 times out of 10 there’s going to be people with low energy for the rehearsal.  Having an actual rehearsal space helps to motivate people into digging in and getting their second wind.

2. Chicago Park District:

There’s two main go-to’s when it comes to renting a room through the Chicago Park District: Gill Park and Sheil Park.  Gill Park is on Sheridan near Broadway and Sheil is on Southport north of the Southport brown line stop (which just closed and will be closed for a year while they make improvement to the brown line).  These spaces are good and there’s not too expensive: $15/hr.  They are well lit and generally pretty bare expect for holding chairs.

1. Gill Park

Good rooms:

·        The first floor big one.  Downside: you may have to deal with people entering the room because they’re curious as to what’s going on.

·        The 2^nd floor one with 4 actual walls.

Okay rooms:

·        The two rooms with 3 actual walls and one wall that is a fake one.  If there’s another group on the other side of this fake wall, it can be hard to hear what’s going on in a scene.

Worst rooms:

·        The middle room upstairs that has two fake walls.  So awful.

·        The basement. It’s just gross and there are foosball tables and other things down there to distract you.

Secret room:

·        Well, it’s not really a secret but it’s only used in rare occasions I think.  It’s the 3^rd floor room.  It’s huge and it has an actual stage set up on one side of it.  It’s also got a ton of tumbling mats in it which you can use if you want.

2. Sheil Park

My first group Kilgore Trout used this place for our rehearsals.  It’s been awhile since I’ve been there for a rehearsal but from what I recall, Sheil Park doesn’t really have a bad room.

The Park District runs these places and they also hold basketball games, swimming pools, workout gyms, and other stuff there.  During the week these locations close at 10pm.  If you’ve got a rehearsal from 8-10pm at Gill, you better try to end early because they are dicks about closing the place at 10pm.  It may be 9:45pm and some guy will come to the window in the door and look in with this face like “are you going to end soon? You better.”  I hate it.  It’s rude.

These places also close at 6pm on Sundays so late night Sunday rehearsals are the worst when it comes to finding a location to hold rehearsals at.

3. Classrooms:

Both Second City and iO have rooms where you can have rehearsals at.  I’ve only had one such rehearsal at Second City so I can’t say anything about their spaces.  iO now has an annex section of the theater that is above Salt N Pepper diner.  There are two classrooms that you can use.  The problem is that since iO is a training center, these two classrooms are usually used for classes.  You can practice in the rooms if there’s no class in them, but since there are a lot of people vying for the same space, you need to sign up early to guarantee that you’ll have the space.  If you’re on an iO team, the classrooms are free.  I’m not sure if they have a non-iO team fee.

St. Alphonsus has a bunch of classrooms on the third floor that are open to improvisers.  Actually, this guy who runs a dance company rents out the third floor classrooms (they have ballet bars on the walls) and any room he isn’t using he rents out to improv teams or for improv workshops.  These classrooms are huge and are a great place for a rehearsal.  During the summer they can get pretty hot though.  I’m not sure what the rate is for these.

4. People’s places of work:

Sometimes you will have a member of your team that works at a place that has an adequate room for a rehearsal.  A member of my Playground team Atticus Finch worked at the Old Town School of Folk Music so we got to use it’s classrooms to rehearse in for free.  They are nice although sometimes a room down the hall is playing some loud music.  Both the Armitage branch and main branch on Lincoln are nice places.  You might have someone on your team that work at a theater and might be able to get you a room.  I recall the Incubator team that Ben Johnson used to coach rehearsed at a theater one of the players worked for.  An independent team I was part of a few years back, Mothproof, sometimes would rehearse at member Linda Orr’s downtown office.  They had this completely empty part of a floor (not even cubicles in the space) and that allowed us plenty of room for rehearsals.

5. Backroom of a Bar

Apparently there are backrooms of bars that people use for rehearsals.  I’ve never experienced this so I can’t say much on this topic.  I do remember that 6 years ago a team of mine rehearsed a few time on the second floor of Sports Corner; but that was 6 years ago, I’m not sure if they still do it.

6. Small Theater Companies:

Chicago has a ton of small theater companies around town.  Many of them offer rehearsal spaces for rent.  The second iO team I was apart of, Mammal 79, used TUTA’s rehearsal space in Wicker park a few times.  This space is fairly large and it’s nice, although there are a lot of theatrical pieces around the space to distract you and it’s in Wicker Park which I’ve already mentioned is hard to get to unless you live in that area.  The Mammals also used The Breadline Theater for rehearsal space.  There are many other small theaters with rehearsal spaces for various rental fees.  I don’t have the energy to find out what they all are and to list them here.  That’s for you to find out.

7. Outside!

In the summer, Chicago is beautiful and it sucks to be cooped up inside.  So why not have rehearsal in the park?  It’s fun.  I’ve done this about 5 or 6 times and it’s always a ball.  And it’s free!

——–

Basically anyplace that you can get to hold a rehearsal in is fair game.  Just make sure it’s practical for your team in both location and rental amount.

Jon

I love being a coach. It is my favorite thing about my improv career. I will say for the record, I think I am a much better coach than I am a player. If I could live up to my own  notes… I would be amazing.

I originally started coaching because I had some friends who were younger than me who were moving to Chicago and wanted to form an indie team. I told them (mostly to light a fire under their butts) that if they set up a team of people they thought were fun from class then I would coach them free of charge. That team was Radar 7.  Jeff Griggs had done this for Uncle Elaine and its one thing I always respected him for. I wanted to give Radar 7 the gift of a free coach. I also knew that I could be a better coach than half the subcoaches. So I thought it was a wonderful opportunity for me to start looking at improv from the other side of the fourth wall.

I love helping people to find their confidence as an improviser. What ever that means to each individual player. As a coach, you are not teaching your players to do improv. With the team I am coaching now at iO, most of the players have been doing improv for more years than I have. So my goals as a coach are to build a solid, indestructible group mind, give each player the tools they need to be as confident as they possibly can each time they get on stage, and to reach a point where the team is able to critically think about what it needs without me having to tell them. I think I am very good at doing these things.

I have to tell you that when the Signatures have a really good show, I honestly feel like a rock star. Or even when I see someone breaking out of their bad habits or trying something new… I feel like I helped give them the power to go to that new wonderful place. Even more than I like the feeling I have after a really good Rattlesnake show. Because for me, that snake show is fleeting, but the growth I see in the team I coach is an ongoing gift. So rad.

I respect the hell out of Pierro, because that kid thinks about improv theory more than anyone I’ve ever known. He really gives the role of coach his time and effort. And I want to live up to that precedent. I mean, there is a reason why this kid is the most used coach in improv. I don’t have my own theories, but I want to give my team what they need every week. I don’t want to walk in with the same exercises I did in my rehearsal the previous week with the Snakes. Cause that’s not critically thinking about the task of bettering the team I coach. That’s rehashing to get through two hours so that I can get paid. I really believe that a coach needs to be dynamic, needs to be able to bend with the needs of her team, and needs to be able to abort theories or exercises that aren’t working.

There are way too many horrible coaches in this world. I know a lot of coaches that don’t know better after a show than to just recap what happened, or to drone on for hours with so many notes that nothing is retained and the notes are longer than the show. Just cause you’re a funny improviser does not mean you will make a good coach. And to be fair, just cause you’re a good coach doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a good improviser. As a coach I have learned more about my own performing than I have through all my training as a student of improv. Not because I had bad teachers, but because it has allowed me to see, in the team I coach, all the bad habits that I have in myself and to see all the possibilities that I have not been able to achieve up until this point.

Molly

~~~

I like coaching.  I really do.  It’s challenging and rewarding… well, rewarding when things go right.

Why did I want to be an improv coach?  I don’t know Faceless Blog Reader, I guess I just like to be in charge.  I’m only half-kidding with that joke.  I do like the power of being in charge of rehearsals and exercises, but I’m always aware that power corrupts and I don’t want to become corrupted.

My ultimate career goal is to be an independent movie director and a big tool to have is being able to direct actors.  To be able to trick them into giving their best possible performance.  Again, I’m half-kidding with that last sentence.  If an exercise feels more like a learning lesson exercise, then I try to get them to verbalize the lesson rather than having me declare what they’re supposed to be learning.  But mostly I stay away from teaching lessons.

When I first started coaching – for the Incubator program at the Playground Theater (Speed Lemon) – I mistakenly thought most of my job was to expose them to new things and teach them new things.  I got the roles of teacher and coach mixed up with each other.  A coach is a guide.  Yes, I’m sure they will learn new things but that shouldn’t be the main goal.  You should be an outside eye for the players and you should be able to have a dialogue with them.  A coach is not a dictator who sees all.  The players on stage don’t know what it looks like from the audience and you, in the audience, don’t know what it like to be on stage at that moment.  That is why if you are unsure about something a player did, you need to ask a question and find out where their head was at that time.  So I try to remind myself that a coach is a dialogue facilitator.  I learned that from Joe Bill’s coaching workshop.

I also enjoy the challenge in trying to get a bunch of individuals to play like a team.  When coaching a team you really have to focus on several things at once.  For me, I see it as trying to juggle 6 different things and trying to make sure none of them get neglected.  The six main things I see in working with an iO team are openings/games, scene work, character work, pattern work, second and third beats, and editing.  It’s easy while focusing on one of those things for the others to get rusty.  That’s where the challenge lies in coaching.  There’s also the pay-off when the team has a great show.  I feel great when the team I’m coaching has a great show.  I’m glad that everything seems to be working.  I’m glad for them and I’m glad that I’m not a horrible coach.  And there’s the sense of pride you have when people tell you that your team is good.

And even when it’s not working, that’s when it becomes frustratingly fun.  When a team doesn’t have a good show, I love trying to diagnose the problem areas and then trying to work on them.  Mostly, I try to let the players play and as much as possible try to take their brain out of the equation.  One of my biggest faults as a coach is getting players in their heads with my exercises that sometimes feel like drills.  So I have to then tackle the problem in a different direction and allow the players to get past the problem area without getting them in their heads about the problem.  It’s definitely a challenge.

Coaching is harder than it looks.  I have had someone who works at the theater tell me that they think coaches are easily replaceable and that they are basically worthless or have little influence in how good a team is.  I was flabbergasted when I heard this.  Sure, the players themselves and their abilities influence how good the team is but I feel it’s the coach that either enables or prevents them in succeeding.  A bad coach can easily screw up a team with good individual players.   A good coach will get a team working at the height of their potential.  When the team you’re coaching is hitting their stride, it’s one of the best feelings in the world.

I think I’m a pretty good coach.  Probably a little better than I am a player.  I love coming up with exercises for Skeleton Attack.  I love seeing a player do something I’ve never seen them do.  I love helping them through tough times and being their advocate at iO.  I like looking out for them.  I’ve also learned a lot about myself through coaching them, which is great.

Jon

No matter what city you do improv in, whether it’s San Francisco, New York, or Iowa City, you will have to explain what improv is to people.  Even in Chicago, the self proclaimed hub of improv, which probably has the largest population of improvisers, you have to explain it to people.

People will first think you do stand-up.  No, lady on the street, I do not have a “set” that I do at the Laugh Hut.  The easiest way to make people understand is telling people “it’s like “Whose Line is it Anyway?” This is all fine and good if you only do short-form improv.  No further explanation is necessary.  If you do long-form improv, however, you may feel the impulse to explain that long-from is a little different than that TV show.

This would be a mistake.  They won’t get it.  No matter how much you tell them that “it’s like an unscripted play.”  Go ahead and try.  Tell them about how in long-form you get “just one suggestion” and that you do “scene work.”  And if you do the Harold, try to explain to them “games,” “openings,” and “weaving three stories into one at the end, ideally.”  Watch their eyes glaze over with incomprehension and boredom.  When they don’t get it, they will feel bad for not understanding you, so they will try to compensate for their lack of knowledge by telling you that they like Drew Carey and that tall skinny guy on the show (Ryan Stilles).

Also be prepared for them to say how they “could never do that.” That’s your cue to respond with how you do characters and if people in the audience are judging you, they’re actually judging that character and not really you.  Talk about how you’re hiding behind a character and free to be as crazy as you want to be.  Speak on about how audiences can spot insecurity a mile away and they come to a performance wanting to be entertained and how they’d rather watch someone with confidence up there than someone meekly doing a scene.  It is at this point that you realize that you’re making a sales pitch for improv.  Go ahead and tell them that they could do it.  Then get ready for the excuses.  “I’m not that quick on my feet.”  Or “I’m not as funny as those people.”  If you like the person, you’ll encourage them to try it out because it’s “tons of fun.”  If you don’t like this person, stop trying to convince them to do it.  It might mean you have to see this person around the community and you’ve already made up your mind that you don’t like them.

The curious strangers will ask “how do you do it?”  “Where do you come up with your lines?” they might ask.  Go ahead and use the old warhorse of an answer: “well, life is like improv; you never know what you’re going to say to someone, right?  It’s just like that.”  If they think they would do it wrong, go ahead and tell them “in improv, there are no wrong moves” and then try to suppress the urge to go in detail about “yes, and” and “denials” as exceptions.  One analogy that I’ve actually liked using was: “when you draw a picture, or doodle, you’re not thinking about the possibility of doodling wrong.  Improv is like doodling.”

If you’ve actually made all of these points in a single conversation, you’re probably a young improviser who’s really, really into improv.  When you’ve been doing long-form improv for a few years, you don’t really want to talk about improv all the time.  I myself just use a one sentence answer: it’s improvised comedic theater.  If they want to know more, they’ll ask; and then I’ll give another vague answer, because I’ve already decided I don’t like this person and want them to go away so I can get back to doing this crossword puzzle.

Jon

~~~~~~~~~

I have to answer this question in two parts.

I started doing improv in high school on a team comprised of completely of high school kids. Then I moved up to the “big time” performing with a professional all-female troupe called Big Purse and Matching Shoes… I know. When I got to college I started my own troupe. Never in those six years of doing improv had I ever seen a Harold in my life. While doing my improv research online I once came upon the description of what “long-form” was, but I could not understand it for the life of me. Needless to say, the only improv I knew was short-form. When I was growing up in short-form improv, there was a show on television called “Who’s Line Is It Anyway”. It was not hard to describe what short-form was to my friends and family. You could just say, “Have you ever seen Who’s Line is it Anyway? It’s just like that without the point system.” And people would get it.

Now, when I moved to Chicago and started dipping into the ocean that is long-form, this question became much harder to answer. At first when I was just learning the Harold, I was very excited about the form. So I would go into this long winded explanation of the beats and what the piece was trying to accomplish, blah blah blah. Here’s the thing… no regular person wants to hear this stream of babble. It’s like if you ask a college student what their major is and instead of answering “Philosophy”, they go into a detailed explanation of Kant’s theorems. Yeah, I’m happy for you that you know this shit, but what the fuck do I care? Most of the time people want to know, “Is it funny?”

So, in my elder years as an improviser I have been experimenting with different descriptions in order to find the most succinct answer while still giving the form dignity. For a while I was comparing it to Who’s Line. I would say, “It’s just like that, except instead of playing games with rules, the players just do scenes.” I like to use Who’s Line, cause it’s such an instant connection for most *regular Americans. They get that Who’s Line is made up on the spot so it’s an easy reference for them to understand that long-form is also made up on the spot. But this wasn’t really giving long-form or the Harold the justice it deserved. Although I love short-form, long-form is more poetic than this reference. So I now just say, “It’s a comedic play that we make up on the spot based on an audience suggestion”. I realize that this makes long-form seem way more pretentious than it is. But I think it justifies the improvisational aspect and the scene work at the same time. People seem to get it. And if I call it a “made up play”… then they don’t expect it to be stand-up. Boom, mission accomplished.

I have played in Comedy Sportz for almost five years now. And I find the easiest way to describe it is still to use Who’s Line and say “It’s just like that but Comedy Sportz has two teams fighting against each other like a sports match for a trophy”. I know it’s not exactly the same thing, but people instantly “get it”.

That’s all. If people ever ask me about improv in a way that leads me to believe that they think it’s stand-up, I just tell them improv is done by a group of people working together instead of one guy telling jokes. I realize improv can be a solo venture, but I usually leave that out of my explanation.

*Regular Americans = nonimprovisers. Let’s face it, if you’re doing improv as a hobby, you’ve probably got some irregularity. And I don’t mean poop. The quantities of beer we drink keep us on the pot and “moving”.

This is the largest amount of quotation marks I have ever “used” in a post.

Molly

The group mind, supporting your fellow players, and being a piece in a much bigger puzzle is what level 2 at iO is all about.  It’s the heart of the training center at iO in my opinion.  Everything that sets iO apart from Second City and the Annoyance is found in level 2.  It’s a very important level, probably THE most important level.

If level 2 were a person, it’d be a hippie.  It’s all touchy-feely, lovey-dovey, getting in touch with your feelings.  It’s about getting into a circle, holding hands, and sending out good vibes to your fellow man.  Very Earthy, very crunchy.  So much of the real world is about looking out for number one, grabbing what you can take, and being selfish.  On the CTA people are closed off to each other; eye contact is a no-no on the train.  Level 2 is the opposite of that.  It’s about giving over to the group.  Allowing a shared control of a piece.  Letting go of our fears and letting the piece grow without judgment.  One of the tenants of improv is to make your fellow player look better than you.  Level 2 is all about that.

The course itself was created by Susan Messing.  Susan created the 8-week lesson plan that is taught in level 2 today.  I find it funny that this class, which contains – again, in my opinion – the core of the iO philosophy, was created by an Annoyance Theater gal.  Let me also clarify something: she didn’t come up with the iO philosophy – that was Del – but what is taught in level 2 today and how teachers approach teaching level 2, Susan created that.

I took level 2 back in March and April of 2001, back when it was called level 3.  My teacher was Liz Allen and she was amazing.  By then she had made the lesson plan her own.  It was still the Messing lesson plan, but flavored by Liz and by her approach to improv.  Liz had us visualize plugging ourselves into the group mind; imagining what color it was (lime green, same color as Ed Illades’s shoes that day) and seeing it as a cloud floating over the middle of the circle.  She told us to really look each other in the eye and connect with each other.  She taught me that while you are on stage try to be 100% aware of your surroundings.  So many times while on stage we are too busy thinking of lines to say and we pass over subtle details being made by our partners.  So many times while in a large group on stage we become lazy and wait for someone else to make a move.  When we become lazy our minds go into autopilot mode and you can’t be in that mode while on stage in improv.  Your mind has to be alive, aware of everything that’s going on around you.  It’s not too much to ask of ourselves and of our fellow players to be at a heightened level of awareness for the thirty minutes that we are on stage.

Level 2 was a great time for me.  Each class was like play time for adults.  It was fun and it was challenging.  It was also the time when I started to really bond with my fellow improvisers.  We shared truths and got to know each other a little better.  When I look back at my 5B group, I see the genesis of that group being in level 2 (level 3 back in my day).  Not only did we all stay together in the same class (with only a few people here and there coming or going from other classes) but it was when we began to feel connected to each other.  We had signed an imaginary contract that we would continue this journey of improv learning together till the end of the training center.

I can still remember – 6 years later – a group game we did in class. We call came on stage, unscrewed our own personal overhanging light bulb, shook the bulb to check the filament, changed the bulb out for a new one, screwed the new one into the socket, pulled the chain to light up the bulb, realized that THAT was enough for a group game, and walked off the stage at the same time.  We didn’t judge the game as being too short or too simple.  No one single person was the leader of the piece the whole way through; advances in the game were made by different people in the group and we all noticed it because we were all hyper aware of the people around us.  We really were connected to the group mind at that moment and it was an amazing experience.    I also remember doing openings in level 2. They were a little clunky and frustrating at first but after a few tries we got the gist of it.  It was also the level where I was introduced to the circle warm-up.  I learned a million circle warm-ups in level 2.  Then at the end, the ultimate love-fest, we took turns telling each other what we loved about each other improv-wise and what we would love to see each other do to stretch ourselves improv-wise.

Today when I look back at level 2 I see that it, coupled with a few other outside-the-class learning experiences, gave me the core of what is my philosophy towards building a team.  What it taught me was that if any improv group wants to stand a chance in creating something that is greater than the sum of its parts, the players have to trust and bond with each other.  If you have any hope in a group standing the test of time, this needs to happen.  And you have to like playing with them too.  It’s common sense: if you’re in a group of people that all like each other and want to play and do scenes with each other, then there’s going to be passion there and the improv will be great.  It will be fun.  Even if there’s only one person in the group that you’re just not that into doing a scene with, it will become a virus and kill the group.  This calls for putting aside all judgments on what you are doing; judgments of each other and, most importantly, judgments of yourself.

Jon

~~~~~~

Basically everything Jon said about level 2 is true. It is super touchy feely. And you gotta know I personally love that shit more than anything. I also had Liz Allen for level 2, which in my day was actually level 2. I loved this level. I loved Liz Allen telling all of us to speak from our emotional points of view, and making us talk about what we love about each other. I loved all the love. Loved it, loved it!

Level 2 was by far my fave-o level. In this level is where I really started to make some of the improv friends that I still hold dear to this day. When people were forced to get up and give monologues they were some of the most personal monologues I had ever heard. When people did scenes together they broke through the bits and really started relating to each other as people. And when it came time to talk about what we like in our fellow improvisers (which Liz makes you do) I started crying. Yes, I cried in Liz’s class a lot. Mostly because I was so happy to be performing with such talented wonderful people. And you know, Liz has this Barbara Walters effect on me. I get on stage, she gives me a note and I have a major break through. I love her. She rules.

Memories from level 2 I will never forget:

A girl telling everyone during a class that she masturbates constantly, sometimes 4 times a day.

Crying during the last class ’cause I was so proud of how far everyone had come.

Doing the Busby Berkeley about a million times and loving it.

Finally feeling comfortable in my skin during improv class.

Doing WeirDass and thinking “This is the most brilliant form ever”

Being asked to be on Chest Pie.

Thinking I was lucky to be doing improv with this set of people.

Molly

The slump is always present. It lurks just around the corner. It breathes its horrid breath onto your subconscious like the stink of a ripened diaper.

Slumps live… for ALL improvisers… all the time. I have found though, that after improvising the Harold for five years… (Somewhere Paul Brittain is correcting me) that you figure out how to shake them quicker. I can’t even say that they come less frequently. Because we are improvisers and as improvisers there is a certain level of insecurity. In the beginning the slump is a very self conscious thing. As you get older you start to care less about what other people think about you, but then the slump becomes about the fact that you’re always playing the same characters or that you’re not inspired to make new choices, or that you feel you could be driving the show more, etc. So the slump can take on different excuses for existence, but it lives nonetheless. The good news is, the more you perform the quicker you recognize it. And the quicker you recognize it, the quicker you can change up your pitch.

Things I have found useful in helping me to get out of an improv slump:

(Not to be used in any particular order, but as needed.)

~ Getting out of the city/ taking any kind of vacation

~ Have a serious bond night with my team

~ Try to play an entire show where my whole focus is on “Yes anding” my scene partners instead of thinking about myself in any way

~Experiencing a different kind of show. I.e.: go to a Steppenwolf play/ see a rock band/ go to a book reading

~ Take a class in improv

~ Take a class in anything else

~ Stop taking myself so seriously and realize it’s all in my head and just have fun

Inevitably any slump is all in your head and it’s just you talking yourself out of liking yourself for a little while. But you’re cool and you’ll rediscover that in a week or two. Then you and yourself will think you are hilarious again and things will be cool. You can’t outrun slumps. They wait for you to be sure of yourself and then they pounce. But with the right attitude and a willingness to grow as a performer… you’ll shake it off. Just in time for another one to hit. YEAH!

Molly

~~~~~~~~~~~~

When I first started doing improve in college, everything was new and fresh.  Every character I did, I did for the first time.  Every short form game I did was different.  Every exercise our leader did for us was different.  I was also so green that I had no idea if what I was doing was good or bad.  It was a very exiting time.

After awhile, I got a sense of when I was doing a good job and when I wasn’t.  I guess you could say at some point we all gain self awareness towards our own improv talent.  When I started taking classes at iO, I could tell that I was doing a good job.  People laughed with me and I felt like I was on a roll.  Come February – I was in level 2 at this point – I hit a wall.  Every time I went to do a scene it fell flat and it just wasn’t working.  I wasn’t funny.  I was frustrated by everything I did.  Nothing was working.  I wasn’t having fun.  It became work.  “I thought I knew how to do this” I would think to myself.  I was in an improv slump.

I think I was in it for a good two months before I finally got out of it.  As I’ve improvised more and more, I’ve seen my own personal improv slumps diminish in length and perhaps slightly in frequency.  But they still happen from time to time.  Early on I had the theory: that beginning improvisers had slumps that lasted months; intermediate improvisers had slumps that lasted weeks; more seasoned improvisers’ slumps were only a few days in length; and veteran improvisers’ slumps lasted only a few scenes (something that could be cured within a rehearsal or show).  However, now that I’ve been doing this for some time, I would say there is no set pattern to slumps.  While most of my slumps last for only a week or so, I do sometimes fall into a slump that lasts for a month or more.

The problem with slumps while you’re in them is you have no idea how long it’s going to last.  There’s no light at the end of the tunnel to help tell you how much longer your rough patch is going to be.  I remember the first time I got stoned; I got scared because I had no idea how long I was going to be high.  I was only high for something like 4 hours but by hour 2 I was really starting to sweat the experience.  Improv slumps are like that; at least that’s what I think.

The reason behind them could be anything really.  Trying to diagnose why you are in a slump is one of the hardest things to do.  Are you trying to hard?  Are you listening to your scene partners; I mean really listening?  Is it that you’re overloaded with improv? Are you burnt out?  Are you in your head?  That last one is the best question because it inevitably puts you in your head.  One question that really sucks to entertain is: are you just not good and could this last forever?

I wish I could say I have a guaranteed solution to getting out of slumps but I don’t.  I really even really understand exactly how I get out of my personal slumps.  Even when I do figure out what’s the underlying reason behind it, fixing it may take awhile.  My best guess would be that I stop over thinking it and start having fun.  Oh, that’s another thing: when teams are in slumps the usual go-to that people start throwing out as the cure for the slump is for the team to “just have fun.”  I personally hate that vague term because “just have fun” means different things to different people.  This happened a lot during my second team at iO, Mammal 79.  Some people’s idea in just having fun was doing a bunch of silly scenes and playing very fast with lots of energy.  Others’ idea in just having fun was to play patiently, slowly and begin a witty wordplay scene.  There are other ideas in “just having fun” but these two were the ones that didn’t jive with each other and it was fun seeming improvisers with clashing “just have fun” methods butt heads together in a scene.  Fun in the way that watching a car crash in slow motion is fun.

February used to be my personal improv hell month.  As I mentioned earlier, my slump in classes happened in February.  The following year my improv team was cut in February and I was left off the schedule.  The next February I stopped retaking classes at iO and was still off the schedule.  I also think during those three Februarys I auditioned for Comedy Sportz and never got a call back.  Lop on the misery of it being mid-winter and the loathing of the most commercial manufactured holiday of the year (V-Day) and I was no picnic during that month to say it mildly.  Good thing it’s the shortest month.  But that streak ended the next year.  I went through February of 2004 with no major disasters and no improv slump.  The following Februarys have been okay as well; I’m doing okay this year so far.

You can never ever get rid of slumps forever.  Mostly because each new one is due to a different reason.  One thing that helps get through slumps is commiserating with fellow improvisers who are going through the same thing.  Misery loves company and all that.  The thing that helps me get through is the thought that it’s during the slumps that you actually grow as an improviser.  That and remembering that it’s not the end of the world; after all, “it’s just improv, it’s supposed to be fun.”

Jon

There are several reasons why you wouldn’t want to venture out to rehearsal on any particular day.

1: Your rehearsal is at a ridiculous time that your team has agreed to meet because it is the only time you are all able to be in the same room together.

2: It is 0 degrees outside and/or snowing buckets and buckets.

3: It is July and 80 degrees.

4: You have had rehearsal almost every single day and night for the past three weeks because you are involved in a million projects and the thought of going out one more night makes you feel weary and extremely rundown.

5: Rehearsals lately have felt really tedious.

6: You despise everyone on your team and would quit but are afraid Charna won’t put you on another team.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Molly:

1: Uncle Elaine used to rehearse at 10am on Sunday mornings for over a year. This was the worst time slot to rehearse. No one was EVER on time. When people did show up they were tired, or hung over, or half dead. And when people over slept (which often happened) they were asleep so they didn’t call and you would just be waiting around for a half hour before it dawned on you that they just weren’t showing up.

If the only time you can have rehearsal as a full team is at some ridiculous time… you should probably think a couple of thoughts A/ Is this reasonable and do I really have enough time to fit this project into my schedule? Can I give this project the importance it deserves? B/ If I say I am going to be here every week, is this an honest promise to my team or am I putting some sort of crazy responsibility on myself that I can never possibly live up to? Often if no one is showing up to rehearsals because of B/, it’s a sign that they would rather be sleeping. Either way, maybe you all should postpone the project until it becomes a viable option for everyone’s schedule.

2: Nothing is worse than finally getting home from work after impossible transit conditions because of all the snow, sitting down to eat your beans from a can and then realizing that you gotta put all that snow gear on again to brave another ½ hour to Gill Park.

I’m not saying a coach should cancel rehearsal every time it snows in Chicago. But sometimes calling a rehearsal because of bad weather is just as good for a team as keeping it on. No one likes going out in a snow storm. Reward your players or yourselves, by conferring to cancel on bad nights and pamper yourself with a Netflix treat and some hot cocoa. Often times in bad weather so many people show up late and/or in bad moods that rehearsal seems unfun anyway. So, use good judgment and don’t get crazy canceling every week… but when it’s frigid and the schools are closed because of it, don’t make your players wait for the bus in that weather.

3: Nothing begs playing hooky from rehearsal like a gorgeous summer night where everyone is sitting outside drinking beers and you can hear music coming from every car window that passes you.

Lots of nice nights happen in the summer time. You gotta suck it up. Go out for beers after rehearsal with the team and then it can be a bonding experience. Maybe once in a while, if the whole team is feeling antsy, confer with your coach to cancel rehearsal. But then go out for beers together. Or decide to see a ballgame together. Make it about the team even if you’re not doing scenes. Then you will not reinforce the idea that skipping rehearsal to do your own thing is more fun than being with your team. The object of rehearsal is to grow together. Otherwise we could all just practice alone in our rooms and then meet up for shows. Spend free rehearsal time enjoying each other’s company on nice nights.

4: You are probably over involved. Trust me. Everyone wants to think that they can handle 7 projects. But guess what? 7 projects mean 7 rehearsals a week. That’s Monday through Sunday. Or, Tuesday through Sunday if you double up on Sunday. But you’ve also gotta have open nights to perform with these groups. I know it’s like yelling into the wind, but if you find you never want to go to any of your rehearsals because you’re always so burnt out on rehearsals… you should probably reassess what projects you REALLY love and throw the rest away. Saying “No” to a project does not mean you will never be asked again. Also, if you are on a Harold team, you HAVE TO KNOW that this WILL take up a lot of time. It becomes AT LEAST one rehearsal and one show a week. If you’re the kind of team that likes to hang out and bond, then add more nights as you see fit. It’s a major commitment… if you want it to be any good I guess.

5: You don’t have much fun while in rehearsal. You don’t feel like you are growing in rehearsal as an improviser. Everyone shows up late, no one is focused and or there is a lot of talking and not a lot of doing.

There is some responsibility here for coaches. A good coach should always come prepared with a full rehearsal’s worth of work. A good coach should also be flexible to changing her agenda in case what she’s brought is not working or if the players are not responding. A good coach should be able to tell when she is engaging her players and when she isn’t. Rehearsal should be a working session, but our work is also our play. We as coaches need to make sure we are responsible about starting on time, calling players out on excessive tardiness and general disrespect and keeping the rehearsals professional on some level so that actual work can get done. But we as coaches also need to make sure that our players are enjoying their own discoveries. And players, if a coach is not helping you grow as player/team take control of your own destiny and talk to them about it. Talk to your team about what you want more of. Communication is key to any successful improv team. It is like a relationship. A business relationship where you sell a lot of laughs. Don’t wait for someone to be in charge. Each team is in control of its own rehearsals.

6: If you think EVERYONE on your team sucks… you might want to open your mind to the idea that it might be you. Maybe.

~~~

Jon:

1: This is probably a result of too many people in your team being overbooked. You really need to ask yourself if your heart is in this one because if it’s not; if you don’t bound out of bed in the early morning, hungrily awaiting scenes with your friends; if you don’t ever think you’d rather be getting ready for bed instead of rehearsing scenes… then it’s probably not worth it. This is one of those times to be patient and hope that down the line your schedule opens up a little more to allow for this project. Also, if you’re rehearsing at this ungodly hour of the day because of YOU, then you really need to check your ego and ask yourself if you’re really worth it. Worth making 7 other people squeeze in rehearsal between sleep and breakfast when the rest of them all have Thursdays at 7pm free. I don’t care how talented you are, you’re not worth it.

2: Same thing if it’s raining cat and dogs. Not as unbearable as 0 degree weather, but the feeling of dreading going outside is the same. The thing is luck could have it where every Tuesday it snows like crazy. Are you going to cancel rehearsal every week? I don’t think so. I remember when I was taking my first Annoyance class, it snowed every Tuesday and it was awful. Getting to class was a journey every time. But I felt great when I was there and class was a blast. But Molly is right; sometimes canceling a rehearsal due to crazy weather is a great idea. It prevents making rehearsal feel like a chore that you have to do.

Also, here’s a science nerd note: usually when it’s snowing like crazy the temperature is actually warmer than usual for the winter season. Snow comes from clouds and clouds act like a blanket, warming the Earth. Light that bounces off the Earth gets reflected back to the ground and so there’s more rays which equals more heat. It’s the clear sky winter days that are the sub-zero weather days. The exceptions are blizzards I think.

3: Mmmmm… warm summer nights. So nice. Can’t get here quicker.

The thing that’s great about summer is that it gets dark late. You get done with rehearsal at 9pm and it’s still light out? Man, that’s great. You might as a group decide to ditch rehearsal in favor of a group hang out on a night like that. And why not? If you’ve been rehearsing every week for months on end with no missed rehearsal (which is saying something since summer has Memorial Day and 4^th of July holidays that usually cause a team to cancel rehearsal that week) then sure, go ahead and treat yourself nice with a night off. But once again Molly is right in that a Chicago summer offers so many of these types of nights. You’re bound to have a night like that fall on your off day.

4: Example: my current schedule has one improv thing per night Monday through Thursday with Friday, Saturday, and Sunday open for possible shows. By Thursday the thought of taking a night off becomes very appealing. This takes commitment and energy. And self analysis. You really have to know yourself and know if you can handle the type of schedule you’ve set for yourself. Because you’re an adult and you’ve done this to yourself. You have to show up at rehearsal ready to do exercises and no one wants to hear you moan about your schedule when you’re the one in charge of it. If it’s too hard then you need to lighten your load. Really think about which project you REALLY want to do.

5: These are the worst. Improv is supposed to be fun and here you are not having fun. It’s become work. Ugh. These times make you question your improv worth and your talent and the reasons you started doing improv. Perhaps it’s a slump. Perhaps it’s your coach. Perhaps it’s a few of your teammates judging each other. This is where communication is key. Your coach is there for you and you have a say in what happens in rehearsal. A coach isn’t the dictator that sets in stone what you’re going to work on. Talk to your coach. Get your team to talk to each other. Get the whole team and the coach talking together to figure out what is going on. Hopefully do this outside of rehearsal time. If you’ve got a good coach, they will be able to diagnose what is wrong and have the ability to adapt to what is happening with the team.

6: I’ve never been in this situation and I hope I never do. But if you despise everyone on your team then why are you doing it? Get out of that situation; for yourself and for your fellow teammates. If this is an iO team, then it does suck because you feel like you’re on a sinking ship with no life boats. If you’ve got problems with the team, first talk to your coach. If that doesn’t help then talk to Charna. She isn’t unapproachable. And not being on the schedule isn’t the end of the world. I was off of it for 16 months and I’m doing fine today.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Molly:

In general when I REALLY don’t want to go to rehearsal, it’s just cause my day at work sucked awful bad and all I want to do is go home, crawl under the covers and watch TV. But I have found that the rehearsals I drag my ass to usually end up being the most fun. Maybe it’s just cause I’m in such a bad mood that the laughter then feels good, or maybe it’s because my expectations are low. But in general, these rehearsals feel the most rewarding because you got through it when you didn’t think you’d make it to Gill Park in the first place. Find a way to make it to rehearsal. Every time your team rehearses without you they are rehearsing with an incomplete group mind. If we were working on solo shows, we could probably skip over yours for this week. But we’re not. We want to see your face. Also, leave your day at the door. No one wants to hear you bitch and moan every single week that rehearsal is the LAST place you want to be. If you’re not having fun doing improv, then why do it? We’re not getting paid for this shit people. Think about it.

Jon:

Lately I haven’t been getting enough sleep. This is due to a number of reasons. I haven’t gone to bed before 1 AM in at least two weeks and I set my alarm for 6 AM on week days. I actually get up around 6:50 AM. I’m a night owl and I’ll find any excuse to stay up. This week it’s been playing poker on triplejack.com. Last week it was to watch all of the previously aired episodes of the American version of the Office. Currently my day job is at an insurance finance company in the loop. While the work isn’t that taxing, after a boring day at the J-O-B combined with a lack of sleep makes me wish I could just gone home after work at catch up on sleep. I could easily skip a rehearsal or two to be selfish but I don’t. I don’t want to get all old-fashioned on you but I do it because I made a commitment. To both myself and to my teammates. Everyone on the team should be at rehearsal and those that miss rehearsal miss what everyone else is working on. It screws up the group mind and it holds the group back from advancing in progress. It also prevents you from getting better. You don’t get better at improv by missing rehearsals and sitting on your ass at home. Rehearsals are the time for you to play around, challenge yourself, and work on things. It’s also play time. Put in the hours in rehearsal so you can see the result in shows.

I never interned at iO. I just sucked it up and paid the full tuition price. But I do know a lot of people throughout the years who have.

It always seemed to me like if you interned at iO, you had to be at the theater a lot. When I was in the process of going through classes I was seriously dating a guy and I lived in Wicker Park. Wicker Park, at the time, seemed very far from iO and I wasn’t really interested in spending more nights at the theater when I could be home. Plus I wanted to be at iO on my own terms, not when I had to be working.

All this being said, I think when I talk to my friends who did intern, they seem to think it was a positive experience. First of all, they get some kind of deal on their classes, which for some is the whole reason to do it. But because of this I always got the impression that it was hard to get a slot as an intern and I was too lazy to go through the application process. Secondly, it seems like everyone always knows the names of the interns. I guess it could be cool to be an intern just cause if you’re always around the theater then you get to know a lot more people and people get to know you. Easy sqeasy. Lastly, it might give you a slight advantage when you finally hit the stage. You might be able to do it with a lot more confidence because you’ve spent the past year running around behind the scenes of the theater making it a comfort zone. The only thing that I could really see sucking about it all is if you spend a year of your life there every week interning and then you never get put on a team and have to walk away from the theater. The place that you feel you helped build a little piece of. That would B-low.

Once people became an intern, it felt like they were interns for life. Any time I was at the theater, I would always be running into Annie Zipper. No matter what night it was.

“How’s it going here?”

“Eh, fine… you know… I have to go get some ice.”

I feel like interns are always in the process of getting ice.

Once for Halloween, the members of Uncle Elaine went as zombie iO interns to the iO party. All we knew about “them” was that they carried around this frog key chain and were always running with buckets of ice. It was a funny idea… to me. Don’t judge me.

Molly

~~~~~

Interning at iO just might be THE most thankless jobs at iO. The interns do the hard labor around the theater - stock the bathrooms and bar, take tickets, seat customers, mop up the stages and any messes, take out the garbage, etc. And when shows are going on, it’s almost all downtime, usually spent watching the shows. They do this in exchange of free classes.

If you don’t have the scratch for classes, you can apply to become an intern. If you get the job, all you have to do is put in 5 hours of work one night a week. It’s as easy as that. Just 5 hours of service a week and you get free classes.

Becoming an intern is sort of a crap shoot; just as it is in most places. A lot of the times it’s who you know that gets you in the door. In my opinion, getting an intern job all depends on who you put down as references on the application form. This means, putting down people that work or perform around iO that you know. For me, this is where having friends from college that came to iO before me helped out.

Yes, I was an iO intern once. But only after going through classes the first time. When I went through the training program, I paid for my classes like most people. I had succeeded in getting on a team but that only lasted for so long. After the team was broken up, I found myself off the schedule. But I wasn’t done with iO yet. I wanted to get back on a team, yes, but mostly I wanted to get better. I decided to go back and take teachers I didn’t have but I sure didn’t want to pay for classes again.

I put in the application and put down two friends from college that had established themselves at iO. Halfway into a session of classes, I was called by Mike Click, who was, and still is, in charge of the intern program at iO. Someone had dropped out and they needed someone. Would I be interested in doing it even though I had to wait four week till the start of the next session of classes? Sure I was. I started off doing the closing shift on Fridays or Saturdays, I can’t remember which night it was.

During the weekend, there are three shifts: opening shift, mid shift, and closing shift. Opening shift you stock the bar, mop the stage, straighten the chairs, make sure the bathrooms have ample towels and toilet paper, and then wait around for the patrons to show up. Closing shift you have to take out the garbage, replace the trash cans with trash bags, break down beer boxes, and lock up the back gate. This especially sucks during the winter. Opening and closing shifts also do the normal intern stuff like take tickets, check for student/performer IDs, and help people to their seats. Mid shift is the cushy shift, you don’t have to open and you don’t have to close.

The job itself is pretty easy. Most of it is downtime anyway and you get to watch shows. Some of the shows are pretty good. Some of the shows are pretty awful. But I didn’t care. You learn just as much from a show that fails (if not more) as you do from a great show. The only time it really sucked was when I had to take the garbage out during the winter and when I had to deal with drunk customers. You also come to sort of loath performers that stand around the corner of the bar. At the end of the night, all you want to do is take out the garbage as fast as possible so you can go home and sleep but you have 20 or so oblivious people that stand between you and your goal. This is also the case when you have to fetch a case of beer for a bartender; you come back with a case and you have to wade through people to get access to the bar’s counter. It’s annoying, but I do it a lot currently since it’s my favorite place to watch a show in the Cabaret space. I can’t imagine how frustrated the servers must get at people who stand there since they have to come through that area all the time with trays of drinks.

There are so many people these days that perform and take classes that it’s impossible to know everybody that’s either a student or a performer. As such, most of the time when someone either comes up the stairs for the Del Close Theater or down the ramp for the Cabaret, you don’t recognize the face so you ask to see their ticket or student ID. Most people realize this and are cordial about it. But there are the few entitled student or performer that get pissy about having to produce their ID out of their wallet or purse. I hated these people. HATED. Even if they were funny on stage, I would always look for the opportunity to say in a conversation: “yeah, they’re funny, I’ll give you that… but they are a fucking egotistical jerk.”

After interning the closing shift for a good number of months, I found out that the Monday night - or Armando shift- was opening up. I made sure to mention to Mike that I really wanted that slot. To me, the Monday night shift was the best because you only had to seat for one show and you got to see Armando, which was one of my favorite shows to watch while going through classes the first time through. You had to open and close in that shift, but you didn’t have a weekend night taken up anymore. Back in the day Armando was THE show to catch. A whose who of improvisers played it each week and the theater was always packed with people. The interns at the time had the students wait by the bar so that the paying customers could have a seat. As I student I would wait patiently for it to get close to 8:30pm, when one of the interns would say the interns could sit down - or more likely - scramble for the few remaining seats left. I wish I could remember this intern duo’s names for they were the best interns. They worked as a team and they always conducted themselves with a lot of class.

Interning is a good way to afford classes if you’re poor and it a great way to catch a lot of shows. But if you think interning automatically gets you on a team then you are sadly mistaken. Talent still counts for something. Being an intern doesn’t entitle you to a slot on a team. It just means your classes are free. Also, be nice to the interns because they don’t get tips and are rarely thanked for doing a good job.

Jon