This Post Is Not Scripted

Yo Peeps,

Last night I did another subway show with Epione. It was successful and we had a huge crowd. Doing improv in New York has been a wonderful creative outlet for me and I am so grateful for what Epione has given me. But this past weekend I went to Montreal for a goodbye visit. As much as I did and experienced in my four years in Montreal, the thing that sticks with me, that had the greatest lasting impact, is improv.

I started doing improv when I began attending the University of Maryland. I knew I liked theater and I liked to be funny, so I auditioned for the sketch troupe, Sketchup, and the improv troupe, Erasable, Inc. I had no real experience in either field; I had only done basic stage productions in high school. I just trusted my instincts and went for it. My level was so poor, in the first scene of the first round of auditions for Erasable, Inc. I was birdwatching with a friend. She handed me the binoculars and said, "Look a bird!", and I took them and said, "There's no bird!" The troupe member watching immediately told me that in improv you don't block ideas. I ended up getting called back for both troupes (God only knows how!) and in the end Erasable, Inc. accepted me. I learned fast, I loved it, I performed a lot, I realized I was pretty good at this thing.

Then I moved to Montreal. I joined McGill Improv. My very first workshop was an Omega Workshop, for advanced improvisers, led by Marc D. Rowland and also attended by a couple fellows named Sean Michaels and Daniel Peter Patrick Beirne. This was wonderful foreshadowing. I had a blast in McGill Improv, making friends fast, getting to perform silly games with people, leading workshops, eating lunch and playing board games. I even got together a few friends (including aforementioned Sean and Dan!) and started a shortlived side troupe, Sparkletime Jazz. But after a couple years of McGill Improv, I was feeling down about my improvising. I felt like I had not only plateaued, but I had worsened! I was lamenting this to my friends in Without Annette when they all began to surreptitiously eye one another. I asked why they were doing that and they revealed the big secret: there was a new improv theater in town!

It was called Theatre Ste Catherine - named after the dirty hooker filled street it resides upon. I was intrigued so I checked it out. The workshops were run by a scraggly looking fellow named Eric Amber, Jr. He was some dude from Calgary who moved out here and built a theatre. His classes were...rough. He had a harsh teaching style that could easily make a man feel stupid. Well, after four years of improvising, I wasn't about to let him tell me what improv was. I was annoyed, frustrated, and angered by his improv teaching. I found being "directed" to interrupt the flow of a scene. But I stuck to it, with no other choice. After about a month, I was hooked. And I don't mean by a hooker on the street, I mean I liked the improv there.

I began to really improve in this new Johnstone-ian improv style. I loved the platform, the tilt, the narrative structure. The theatre began running a show every Sunday that anyone from the workshops could participate in and I did well in those shows, too! I became a regular, a known face, that fun guy everyone knows. In retrospect, I was a pretty early entrant into the theatre, watching now famous regulars first arrive and witnessing their painful bootstrapping process. I was becoming a top performer in the Anglo Montreal improv scene! The next year I was invited to join Without Annette, which was such a great honor. At the beginning of my last year in Montreal, I was performing or workshopping improv most days of the week. Slowly, my entire social network began to coalesce around improv.

Eventually I had to make a life choice about what to do after graduating. Improv was up there as a real choice - giving up everything and pursuing the improv career. Also up there was becoming the Mazkir of Habonim Dror North America (You can read about these decisions in my blog!). In the end, my values pulled me to New York to work for the movement and improv took a back seat. I still visited Montreal and performed on weekends that I was there, but as time went by, I could feel my skills deteriorating.

When I visited Montreal this past weekend, I was excited to perform at the theater once again, to try and relive my former glory in the slightest bit after a pitiful performance a few months back. But what struck me in my time in Montreal was not my performance (although it was pretty great), it was all my friends' performance. And not just on Sunday, but every day! In the years since I'd left Montreal, my old improv friends had become real comedic actors! I watched their improvised sitcom, The Bitter End, I saw them on the big screen in "Who Is KK Downey?", I watched them run private workshops, I saw them be the stars of the theater! They were really making it! I was so happy for them, I am so happy for them.

But here is the rub: that could've been me! Remember that big choice I made a couple paragraphs ago? What if I had stayed in Montreal and kept performing? Would that be me on the stage, on the screen, on TV? It is a weird feeling to watch an alternate reality. I could almost see a ghost image of me on stage with them, goofing around and making people laugh. I'm not jealous, because I am very happy with where I am in life right now (although scared and nervous). But seeing my best friends succeed, watching them turn Montreal into a true hotbed of cutting edge improvised comedy, was an amazing shock to me.

Now I am moving to Israel, where improv barely exists. I don't speak Hebrew well enough to try and join anything, and I have no idea if my schedule would even allow it. This once prominent part of my identity is falling even further away from me. I left Montreal, I'm leaving Epione, am I leaving improv? Is that part of the larger choice I've made? It's a scary thought. I love improv, I love how it makes me feel, I love making people laugh, I love being creative, I love performing. That's a lot of love to lose!

The only advice I have for myself is to live by these rules: Smile, Breathe, Be In the Moment, Say Yes, Make Others Look Good, Listen, Be Positive.