I love improv. I first discovered it on "Whose Line is it Anyway?" back in high school, but other than making my cousins play improv games with me a couple times I never really viewed it as a thing to seriously (or even casually) pursue myself. What can I say, I had some self-confidence issues through high school and college. Now I'm finding my confidence building and have become a lot more open to trying new things and putting myself out of my comfort zone. To foster this further, I have now signed up for my second improv acting class. I took the first one last spring and had an absolute blast. I was still in the middle of my . . . "rough period", so the night I had class became the bright spot of the week. At the end of the first class session I was feeling downright euphoric, I'd had so much fun. It was basically 8 weeks of Whose Line is it Anyway games, and I thought my level of confidence and my ability compared favorably to the other students. There was even a guy in the class that I thought was really cute (not really a word I favor to describe guys very often, but he was). I always enjoyed doing scenes with him, especially the long form improv where we played brothers in a soap opera (I was killed off by the end, haha).
So tonight was my first class of the new session. It's still the beginning one, but it's a different teacher and is starting off with more students (the last one tapered down from 10 to 4 by the last day, so hopefully these people will stick around). Fairly light on the eye candy. There's one extremely tall (I think he said 6'9"??) frat-boy looking guy who's pretty hot, and a young looking female law student who's quite cute. It's a good mix of young people in their 20s and people in their 40s, 50s and even 60s. The teacher's style is way different from the last class. The last teacher was very laid back, whereas this guy is much more of a put you on the spot kind of guy. The emphasis tonight was not on theater games but rather on some high-pressure warm up activities (most of which involved thinking of words quickly). So, it might not be quite as straight-up fun as the last one, but I think it will be very helpful in getting me out of my head and getting me to cut down on second-guessing myself and worrying about what others think of me.
There was one awkward moment. This teacher is fond of making fun of you when you screw up or say something weird. Not in a mean way, though, so it doesn't bother me too much (but it REALLY would have when I was little and more sensitive). The activity was just a getting-to-know-everyone icebreaker where each of us took turns talking about ourselves. He asked pretty much everyone about their relationship status, very curious about who was married, divorced, dating, single, etc. When I told him I was single that wasn't enough. He started to make a big thing of it, asking me why. "Don't you date?" I couldn't very well fall back on the old "I'm focusing on academics" answer, since . . . well, I've been out of college for almost 5 years now (holy crap). So I just kind of laughed and tried to change the subject. Then he called me out on changing the subject. Argh. I know he had no way of knowing what a sore spot that is for me, so I don't really blame him. I just wish I could have handled it better instead of making it so obvious that he had struck a nerve. Oh well, I'm looking forward to the rest of the class, it'll be interesting to see how it goes. Hopefully I'll get better at playing it cool.
Oh, and the title of this entry is in reference to a thing they commonly teach you in improv. When you're doing a scene with someone, you always want to respond to a colleague's suggestions with a "Yes, and . . ." attitude. If you deny anything they try to add to the scene ("No, I'm not a life guard, I'm a police officer!) then you will kill the flow and make things awkward.
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