Improv Is Easy! @improv-is-easy - Tumblr Blog

Life is a Harold

It’s been over eight years (?!) since I performed a Harold, but I just did one in a dream, complete with thinking on the backline and running to the booth to set up a song cue for my second beat.

Whoever said life is a Harold... they weren’t kidding.

#improv #improvisation #Harold #Harolds #The Harold

improv-is-easy

Seriously, don’t respond to your partner’s idea with “Eh, I don’t like this.” Even just saying “Meow meow meow” would be better.

improv-is-easy

Years later, I think it would be hilarious if the second line of an improv scene was “Meow meow meow.”

#improv #improv comedy #cats #cats are assholes

buttermore

Anyone can do this.

For ten years, I was fiercely loyal to an improv theater system that, by design, was never going to be loyal to me.

I invested my entire self-interest and emotional well-being in doing right by the theater, and in finding success on their terms. I believed that I was part of a community. What was good for the Magnet would ultimately be good for me, if I would only just be patient.

I gave the best years of my life to a theater, instead of giving them to myself.

Here’s why.

When you first fall in love with improv, it’s a truly beautiful thing. Those first feelings of true discovery, of completely surprising yourself with your actions and your words coming out before you have the chance to consider them, of putting your complete trust in your scene partner, my gosh, there’s absolutely nothing in this world like it. It’s like accessing a part of your brain you didn’t know existed. You know this feeling, too, it’s something akin to, “I want to do nothing but this for the rest of my life.” It is why we’re all here. Improv is magic.

Improv is unique as an art form, because, honestly, you only need to be alive in order to do it. And that’s how it’s sold, too. In free drop-in classes, that’s the sales pitch: “Anyone can do this!” You believe it, because it’s absolutely true. You sign up for a Level One, you take it, and you’re hooked. You sign up for another class, then another, then another. Somewhere around your third or fourth class, the message changes from “Anyone can do this” to “Anyone can do this, but not you.” And you believe that, too. They’ve been right so far. They’re probably right about me.

The longer you stay in the system, the more limited you feel. You start off in Level One feeling like you can do anything, and you wind up in higher level classes feeling like you can’t do anything right. But you’ve already given this so much time, and so much money, you’re in too deep, and the non-improv part of your brain that craves the ladder of success starts to kick in. You keep trying, surely if you just keep working at this, if you just want it badly enough, they will want you. Maybe you apply to higher level classes and you don’t get in. Maybe you ascend to the final level and you don’t make a team. Maybe you do make a team, but once it’s gone, you never get back on, no matter how hard you try or how much you want it. Maybe you get to be on a bunch of teams, but when you bring them the project you’re really excited about, they don’t want it. “But not you” can also look like “You, but we decide how.”

By the time this happens, whenever it comes, you have given so much of yourself to this place that you don’t know where the theater ends and you begin anymore. That’s because, at some point, a switch happened without you realizing it. At some point, you stopped declaring your love for improv, and started declaring your love for the place you were doing it.

This switch is a curious thing. In a way, I suppose it makes sense: improv is ephemeral, humans have an inherent discomfort with ephemera and the undefined, they need to draw lines, to put things in a box, to transform the abstract into the concrete. People also have an inherent need to belong to something greater than themselves. The types of people who fall so deeply in love with improv are also, not coincidentally, generally the sorts of people who have struggled with belonging at various points in their lives. I know because I was one of them. These theater allegiances become a point of pride for people, a badge of honor that one can wear as a mark of self-definition. It is no longer, “I’m Kelly Buttermore, and I’m an improviser.” It is instead, “I’m Kelly Buttermore. I do improv at the Magnet.”

And that’s what I said, for a very long time. Listen, I moved to New York when I was 22 because I wanted to write for Saturday Night Live, that’s why I started taking improv classes at the UCB. Yes, I *did* fall in love with improv, and it did change my life and alter its course, inarguably for the better. I came to the Magnet from the UCB because it felt like a place where I might belong, where I might fit. And for a while, it surely was that place. What I didn’t realize at the time was that by putting my deep-seeded need for acceptance and belonging above my own personal ambitions, I was essentially putting down a security deposit on a life and a career that I would rent but could never hope to own.

And that’s the bait, and the hook. That’s how they got me, and that’s how they kept me. By believing that I was a member of a community, by feeling like I belonged, I believed that I had a stake in the theater’s success. I felt proud that I had been there since the beginning, as if I had gotten in on the ground floor, as if that meant something greater. Surely, as one of the theater’s initial stakeholders, when this place broke through, went public, if you will, I would be one of the first to reap the benefit. I felt assured that, although there were moves and decisions made that I strongly disagreed with, that if I simply waited it out, if I was patient and loyal, that patience and loyalty would eventually be rewarded. Meanwhile, the goals that had brought me here receded farther and farther into the background. I never put together that sketch packet, for example. What was the point? What I had at the theater sure felt a lot like success. But what had I really done, for all those years? I’d sacrificed my own ambitions - ambitions that were strong enough to make me move to New York - to carry out someone else’s vision. I told myself that the place had made an investment in me, and I owed it to the theater to stay. I went to work (literally) for the Magnet, when, the entire time, I had a million dollar idea in my very own pocket.

That million-dollar idea was From Justin to Kelly. And you know what’s crazy? I begged the theater to take it away from me, to put their stamp of approval on it. We both did. And it was only when they didn’t, when they let us get to a certain point but no further, that I realized what I really had and why they didn’t want it: I had something that was inarguably, undeniably mine. They wanted something that was theirs, that could sell classes.

We spent months trying to get them to realize that what we were building was beautiful, different and special, that it had rekindled a love for the art form that had brought us here in the first place. That what we were creating was not only the best improv, but actual theater. “Why doesn’t this improv theater seem to care that we’re doing really good improv?” we said to ourselves. It’s because they didn’t create it. And, because they had said to Justin, “Anyone can do this, but not you.” And they had said to me, “You can do this, but we decide how.”

Gratitude, patience and loyalty. All fine qualities for a person to have. In this particular context, they were qualities that gave all the power to someone else, not to myself; to a system that, by design, needs to make you think you’re not good enough. If you inherently believe that you’re not good enough, you will keep spending money to take classes. And you will be patient. And you will perform for free. And you will feel grateful for the opportunity to do so.

Loyalty to a system can only take you so far when that system is never truly yours, and never was to begin with. I say all of this without bitterness, and without apology. I had to give myself over to this system to realize that I didn’t need it, to realize that I could be strong outside of it. I also have people in my life that are the reason I came to this realization. Without them, I would still be there. I probably would have stayed another ten years. I would say that I am lucky to have somewhere to go, and I am, but more than that, I created my own opportunities. From Justin to Kelly doesn’t need to belong to any theater, because it belongs to us.

I also do not want to lie to you. I really wish I were 28 right now and not 34. In prioritizing my own comfort, I lost a lot of time that I cannot get back. All I can do now is make every moment matter. Since I started doing that, it changed everything for me. You know what it feels a lot like? Improv.

Why do so many advanced-level improvisers long for the halcyon days of Level One? Because that’s where we learned everything we ever needed to know. Listen. React. Agree. That’s all that ever mattered. Improv is inherently, deeply beautiful and powerful. Being part of a system can make you feel like that isn’t enough in and of itself. It is enough. Trust me. If you don’t believe me now, keep reading this blog, and maybe you will.

Anyone can do this. Especially you.

From twitter.

#Soso #UCB #improv #improvisation #comedy #Orange is the New Black #OITNB #Netflix

buttermore

On women and house teams, part I.

For a very long time, I was part of a theater’s house team system. (I’m not anymore, for a variety of reasons that I’ll delve into in future posts. Stay tuned!) For the uninitiated, the house team, in a nutshell, is the ultimate goal for an improviser with an allegiance to a particular theater. Basically, you go through the levels at the theater’s training center, after which you’re eligible to audition for placement onto a team. That team can last anywhere from several months to several years, and gives performers the chance to perform weekly in front of an audience.

It should come as no surprise that women are the minority on these institutional teams - after all, there are still statistically fewer women doing improv than men, overall. Looking at the makeup of teams at the three largest New York theaters, the gender ratio sits at about 30% women to 70% men. Some theaters’ teams are more balanced than others, but on average you’re looking at two to three women per team. Speaking from my own experience, I was a member of five different house teams from 2006 to 2014, and for the majority of my time on these teams, I was one of two women. (Though, I should note that in 2009, I was a member of one of only two teams in the theater’s history that was split 50-50 between men and women. That team also happens to hold another badge of honor in the theater’s history, as one of the shortest-lived teams ever assembled. We were, in a word, terrible. Gender equality does not beget quality shows, my friends!)

So, what does it mean, exactly, to consistently be one of only two women represented on stage, on a night that is intended to represent, theoretically, the best talent the theater has to offer? How does being in that minority change the way you play and the character choices you make, and the way you interact with your fellow players? How does it change the way you view your position and your self-worth as a player, both on that team and in that system as a whole? What impact does it have on your relationships and interactions with other women on your team and/or in the system, both on stage and off? How does the competitive nature of the team system as a whole play into the greater notion of what it means to be successful, and what does it mean for a woman to want, need, and attain that success?

I have framed these all as open questions, but, as far as I’m concerned, they are definitive statements. (And there are a lot of them, hence why this post is part I! Otherwise, this post would be about 100,000 words long, and not even I have that much patience for my own writing.) Listen, I would love to sit here and tell you that my house team experience was no different because I was a woman, that I felt entirely equal to my male counterparts on any given night, that I “held my own” every single time, but that is categorically untrue. My experience as a female improviser on these teams *was* different precisely because I am a woman: it was different in exceedingly positive ways, and profoundly negative ways, too. I look forward to sharing these with you in this series of posts.

Today, I want to begin to address this topic by talking about the question of responsibility and representation, and specifically, the sense of responsibility a female improviser feels when she steps on stage as part of a theater-appointed ensemble. I have a theory, and it is this: because they are in the distinct minority on these teams, female improvisers often feel a unique burden of responsibility to represent for their entire gender on stage. We feel that it is our job to play strong female characters on stage, and make the sorts of confident, layered, interesting and - maybe most importantly - funny choices that best represent women as a whole. Because there are fewer of us, and because a selective, competitive process brought us here, we as women on stage in this capacity feel like we have to prove ourselves worthy of being there at all. I can pretty much guarantee that this feeling of responsibility has never crossed the minds of the guys on your team, which, too, makes total sense: white male improvisers feel no sense of obligation to represent their gender on stage, because it’s already wholly, dominantly represented literally everywhere. I don’t fault anyone for that, but I think we can all agree that it’s the truth.

I felt this sense of responsibility on every team I was on, the good ones and the bad ones. It can be incredibly empowering at times, and it can also severely limiting. Let’s start with the empowering part first. It’s an amazing feeling for any improviser to step out on stage and kill it by making a definitive, confident character choice, but I think it feels like a special sort of win for a woman in a male-dominated field. I’ll give you an example: when I was my last house team, I had a go-to character which could best be described as a Grade A Bitch. Whenever I did this, it fucking destroyed every single time, which I think was the result of the combination of me always being so much smaller than my scene partner, and the fact that I’m not a bitch in real life. It was an empowering choice for me at that time, because it allowed me to have the last word and the dominant voice in the scene and on that stage. (The irony doesn’t escape me that I did this by playing a terrible person and a total stereotype, by the way.) In portraying this character, I felt like I staked my claim, and by getting a huge audience response and driving the scene, that I had lived up to my responsibility and showed that I was a masterful improviser who could hold my own among the guys up there.

Conversely, that burden of responsibility was especially heavy in the shows where I had scenes that didn’t land. I can remember plenty of nights where I was given a great opening line by my scene partner that I either completely denied/negated out of fear, or just simply didn’t know how to reply to. Instead of making a strong choice, I made either a weak choice, or, worse, no choice at all. We’ve all been there, and the resulting scene feels like the longest, most painful three minutes of your life and may lead you to question every decision you made that brought you to this point, or at least it did for me. When those scenes were given mercy edits, I retreated to the sidelines feeling a sense of gratitude that the scene was over and that I could finally stop sweating, but even larger than that, a sense of profound disappointment in myself, like I had failed myself as both an improviser *and* a woman by showing that level of weakness. I felt like I was letting everyone down.

I don’t have a single, easy solution to easing this burden of responsibility, but then again, this blog is not about neatly tying things up, especially since improv can be such an intensely personal and subjective experience for people. I will say this: Knowing what I know now, and doing the work that I’m doing presently, I wish I could go back in time and tell my former house team-member self that, in terms of gender or anything else, the only responsibility I had was to myself and creating good work. The newfound confidence I have in my abilities as a performer since graduating from that system has allowed me to begin to let go of the feeling of needing to represent for my gender. I believe that that level of confidence is more difficult to find in a team system, as it is a system that is built on inherent competition.

That being said, I think there are ways to lift that burden for women who are presently on these teams, I really do, and it lies in a fundamental change in the way improv is taught and the ways that teams are directed, and the way gender is addressed in the improv classroom, with both men and women. That’s a topic for another day, so for now, I’ll leave you for the weekend by inviting you to share your own thoughts and experiences in this area, if you wish! To be continued! See you Monday!

#improv #improvisation #Kelly Buttermore #Magnet Theater #NYC #comedy

chroniclebooks

Somehow, you learn more when you are laughing.

Design legend Saul Bass, who would have been 95 today (via chroniclebooks)

#Saul Bass #improv #improvisation #comedy #learning #education #quote

beingblog

So, what’s it like to be me? You can ask yourself, “What’s it like to be me?” You know, the only way we’ll ever know what it’s like to be you is if you work your best at being you as often as you can, and keep reminding yourself: That’s where home is.

Bill Murray, “What It’s Like to Be You” (via beingblog)

#Bill Murray #quote #improv #improvisation

improvinomaha-blog

If you’re in the audience, leave your phone in your pocket.

Improv Etiquette (via improvinomaha)

improvnonsense

No, I didn’t know him. I never met him. I came up in UCB NY, not Chicago or iO. But I have known for years and years that Jason Chin was a true blue improv nerd who loved improv for the right reasons and with all his being and he spread that enthusiasm around to anyone who was open to it. You...

talkingbreakfast

The world is created by people who say yes.

James Gunn (via talkingbreakfast)

improvnonsense

Can I cherry pick who I want to form a team with? I just finished a class and there were a few people I felt strong chemistry with. Is it okay to reach out to them and say we should form a group, without opening it up to the rest of my class? If so, is there a most respectful way to approach it?

Yes, you can pick.

It is okay to reach out to a small group and make a practice/performance group.

My general advice as to how to do this is that if you don’t make it a big deal, it won’t be a big deal. Be direct, honest and concise when people ask. You say “Yeah, we’re doing this thing, trying to keep it small, see how it goes.” If you’re direct and casual about it — it communicates “this is just a thing we’re doing, it doesn’t mean that we can’t all be friends or do something in the future.” Being honest and direct is respectful, even if what you’re saying is “yeah, we’re doing something without you right now.”

If the OTHER people choose to take that very personally and take great offense to that, that is on them.

I’ve generally been pretty good about this, and I’ve been on both sides of it. I had a very passionate level 1 practice group — it was a group of 12 or so people. I’d contact them each week and some subset would show up. But of that group, there were 6 of us that felt like we were more into it and clicked better.

onceland

turtletotem

I have long said that in order for any comedy to truly succeed as a story, there has to be meat beneath the jokes. There has to be that moment when it is not funny any more.

This. This is that moment.