I'm inspired by people who struggle with certain aspects of improv, whatever those may be, and who continually put themselves out there, class after class, and shove the edges of their comfort zone a little bit further each week.
When I was in high school, I was on the swim team. One day at practice, one of the girls on the diving team was learning a complicated new dive with three flips and a twist and a half or some utterly ridiculous thing. She wasn't making it all the way over on the final flip, and she kept splatting into the water like a high-speed belly flop, only right on her face. You could hear the splat all the way across the pool.
Every time, she swam over to the side, pulled herself out of the pool and climbed determinedly up the ladder of the high dive. The coach would holler something encouraging and suggest slight adjustments to her technique. Splat. Again and again and again. She was still at it when our practice ended two hours later.
The next day at school, she had two black eyes from all the face-plants. But she had mastered the dive.
I would argue that improv is much more fun than diving. But it can be that painful (emotionally, if not physically) depending on your reasons for taking it. If your goal is just to get away from the kids for a few hours a week, you won't end up with two black eyes. But if your goal is to overcome something like shyness or to push yourself outside your comfort zone or to get more in touch with your emotions, there will most likely be days where you feel like only a crazy person would subject themselves to this kind of torture. Because it is hard to face your weaknesses and force yourself to overcome them. But it's also incredibly rewarding and life-altering and enlightening. Every time I forget about the deeper aspects of improv and get caught up in the "I need to be funnier" notion, I see a student finally overcome a personal hurdle and I get re-inspired to make myself better, not just funnier.
Obviously, improv is also about being funny and I definitely love the applause. But anyone who is out there working to best some personal demon deserves way more applause than I do for kissing a girl.
(BTW, if you want to see me kiss a girl, your best chance is to come out to Last Laugh Saturday at Hot Java this Saturday night. I'm not making any promises, but I haven't seen Barbi for ages.)
By Sonnjea Blackwell
