Why am I still doing this?
Twelve years ago, on October 4, 2003, I took my very first improv class. Ever since then, every October, I’ve stopped to commemorate what I’ve come to consider my improv anniversary. The decision to begin doing improv was a watershed moment for me, a moment when I dared myself to take a huge risk, and try something unknown and scary. There was a time before that first class, and a definitive time after, after which nothing has ever really been the same. It seems an occasion worth marking.
You probably know the feeling. Log into Facebook around this time of year, and you’ll find a lot of posts from improvisers marking their own improv anniversaries. These posts sound a lot alike: an outpouring of affection for improv, expressions of gratitude to those who taught you and for the friends that you’ve made, ending with, “here’s to another x years!” I don’t doubt their sincerity, for years, I posted updates exactly like these, all thanks and celebration. Cake for everyone! And, to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with this. But I’ve recently started to think that these improv anniversaries also offer us a unique opportunity: to look around at where we’ve been and what we’ve done, and ask ourselves: “Why am I still doing this?”
Improvisers rarely take this opportunity for self-examination—on our improv anniversaries or at any other time. Sure, we’ll say, after a bad show or rehearsal, wearily and with frustration, “Why am I still doing this?!” While those feelings are valid, they’re purely circumstantial and reactive. The line of questioning I’m referring to is deeper and more active than that. It is a series of questions, all under the heading of “Why am I still doing this?” including, but not limited to: Why am I doing this show? Why am I on this team? Why am I performing/taking classes at this theater? Why am I doing improv? Is this the way I want to be improvising? Am I happy doing this? Do I still experience the sort of wonder that I did when I first discovered it? If not, what has changed?
I think we fail to ask ourselves these questions because we are afraid of what the answers will be, or that they might be “I don’t know.” (I was, which is why I didn’t ask myself. For years.) I think we also just assume that if something makes us reasonably happy, occupies our time, and provides us with a social circle, then that’s enough. For a moment, though, I would ask you to allow it not to be. Push beyond enough, and see what you find.
Take my advice: ask yourself these questions anyway, and ask them now, whether it’s your improv anniversary or not. Don’t delay, and don’t be afraid. This is the best thing you could do for yourself.
If Justin and I had asked ourselves and each other these questions back in August of last year, we could have spared ourselves a lot of pain. A bit of background. In February 2014, Justin’s house team, Chet Watkins, was cut, and, after five years on Megawatt (the Magnet’s house team system), he was not recast in the subsequent round of auditions, to the surprise of, well, pretty much everyone. He was an inventive, consistently strong player, and had an equally strong audition. Meanwhile, my house team, Horses, was spared. We would have one more truly great show after that, and promptly begin a slide into inconsistency that would spell the end for our nearly three-year run in August. During the intervening six months, Justin and I started working together as a duo again, and began to see real progress, both in relation to where we had been before as a duo, and in relation to the creeping stagnation we had both felt in our last year or so of being on house teams. We were building something unique and wonderful together, and it was a great feeling. Concurrently, Justin made it his mission to get back on Megawatt, and the theater gave assurances of his talent and steps he could, and did, take to do so. No guarantees, to be clear, but definite hope.
This was the point at which we should have asked ourselves: “Why are we still doing this?” If we had, we would have been easily able to answer why we were working together: because we loved it, and because our work was really good. If we had then challenged ourselves, and asked, “Then why are we auditioning for something that’s not this?” our answer would have been “Because this is what we’ve always done. This is what we do.” That answer, my friends, is not only not good enough, it’s not an answer at all.
It is mid-August 2014, and we’re on the phone, talking about the coming auditions. In the back of my mind, I knew what we both wanted was to work together exclusively, but instead of acknowledging that fact, we rationalized away our decision to re-audition. Justin had a point to prove: that he belonged at the Magnet. I had just had a meeting with the director of house teams where he told me that if I did get recast, it would most likely be on a veteran team, not one of newly graduated students. (Again, no guarantees, but hope.) That had swayed my decision, but I still had doubts about signing on for another team at all. I pushed these doubts down. We lied to ourselves and each other, saying that us both getting on new teams was “part of the plan,” that the visibility we would gain from being on that stage on a weekly basis would raise our profile and be a boon to our work together as a duo.
This, in retrospect, was total bullshit - I mean, since when has anything but one’s actual work been a boon to their work? - but it was bullshit we needed to tell ourselves in order to justify a decision that, deep down, I did not know why I was making, and that Justin was making because he had that point to prove. Ego and fear drove us forward, and, as it turned out, off a cliff.
It’s a week later. It’s about 1:00 pm, and my audition callback is at 1:30, and Justin is asking me, begging me, not to go. He has not gotten a callback - in spite of having another great audition - and I have never seen him more devastated and upset. Our “plan” had completely failed, as plans where the decision is wholly in someone else’s hands so often do. I was very angry on his behalf, but I told him I had to go to callbacks, saying something about “being a loyal person” as unconfidently as you could ever make such a statement. Walking down the stairs to the train, I chose loyalty to that system over the work I truly wanted to do and the person I wanted to do it with, too afraid of the consequences to my status at the theater not to go.
I got placed on a team. It wasn’t a veteran team, but a team mostly comprised of newbies. I knew in my heart I didn’t want to be there, and that that was unlikely to change, and I felt it was unfair to anyone who wanted to be there for me to take that slot. I did something that previously seemed unthinkable: I quit. Composing the email, I felt ungrateful and horrible, like some kind of traitor, even though I knew what I was doing was the right decision for me and my work. (You see, now, how deep the loyalty complex went.) I pressed send on the email and immediately felt a wave of nausea. Realizing there was no taking it back, I then felt something else: free.
The thing was, I’d been free the whole time. If I had just listened to those nagging doubts, if I had just asked myself from the get-go, “Why am I still doing this?” and answered truthfully, “Because being on a team is what I do and I’m too scared to try to do the thing that I really want to do because it feels so much harder.” I would never have signed up to audition.
My point in telling this story is this: simply doing something because you have always done it is a completely insufficient reason to continue to do it. Trouble is, at least in New York, being on house teams feels so important. You tell yourself that being on a house team or performing at a particular theater is part of who you are, that improvising here, within this system, beats the alternative of trying to do this on your own. I told myself that, too, even when my house team shows were shitty for months at a time. Can you imagine? This is part of my identity, and to be clear, it’s mediocre a disproportionate amount of the time. This is part of my identity, and yet I don’t control it. Why would you ever outsource something as powerful as that, with the knowledge that it could be taken away from you, without explanation and notice?
Some would argue, and I think they’d be right, that had Justin and I not gone through this experience, we wouldn’t be where we are now. Had we not had been coerced into prioritizing our own work, I like to think that we would have, but I can’t say for sure. It’s more likely that house team inertia and that time commitment, for either or both of us, would have taken top billing. The very thing we told ourselves would be beneficial to our work together, if it had worked out according to plan, would have, at best, stymied it, and at worst, destroyed it.
in our reluctance to examine our real motives, we nearly ruined our own chances for collaboration and the greater success that we’ve subsequently found. We skirted doing so, because I think deep down we knew a cursory examination of those motives would have turned up the worst parts of ourselves: we were holding on for dear life to scraps of validation, something that felt familiar, and we were both too afraid to admit to each other that just working together didn’t feel like enough. What I later came to realize was that showing those parts of ourselves to each other could only make our partnership stronger, not weaker.
Dare yourself to challenge your own status quo. You might find deficiencies, but you might also find reserves of conviction that you didn’t know were there. The most powerful thing you can do, as an improviser and a person, is to know why you’re doing what you’re doing, and to act accordingly. I can think of no better way to celebrate your improv anniversary than to move beyond online platitudes, to give yourself the true gift of a renewed sense of purpose and the chance to rediscover the magic you found in that very first improv class.
Stay tuned for Part II, coming soon.
