Visibly Tight

I have so much catching up to do, and I can see that there is no way I'll be able to stay on top my blogging duties, which sucks because I know I'll want to look back on my day-by-day life here. But I literally don't have a moment to spare. Monday through Thursday, my days are wake up, grab a quick breakfast, hightail it over to class, do improv from 11-1:30, have a one hour lunch break when we bond and talk about improv, more improv 2:30-5:00, plan what shows we'll see and tear ourselves away from each other, shower off the sweaty theater mess, grab a quick dinner at home, hightail it to iO for shows until about midnight, go home and attempt to shake off the improv high and sleep. Rinse. Repeat.

It's glorious.

I'm exhausted.

Our Level One teacher
Lyndsay "Goosebumps" Hailey,
who we love

On Thursday, we found our team name, Visibly Tight. I don't remember the context, but one of our delightfully quirky British member, who goes by the name Fogg, said the phrase while dissecting a Harold. Our teacher, Lyndsay Hailey, took instant delight in the phrase, insisting we must take it as our team name or she would never speak to us again. We listen well to what Lyndsay says.

Since there is no possible way of doing this week justice, let me just say the most important and dazzling part: I love my team so very deeply. I love each and every person on my team. Beautifully, we come together from so many different places - Hawaii, London, Finland, San Francisco, Cincinnati - from so many walks of life, but we all share one mind and our deep, geeky love of improv.  In many ways, they are all people from my home planet. We speak the same language. Think the same thoughts. Over meals, we lean in together and guzzle massive quantities of improv philosophy, history and gossip along with our food. It's magic.

Scott, Senja, Stephanie running a Harold

I love the fact that we are all at, more or less, the same high level with our improv performance skills. I am not the only person who produces an improv show. There is years of experience between us, and we compliment and balance each other beautifully. Most of all, under Lyndsay's expert guidance, we trust each other and are without question there to serve each other. To exalt each other. To hold the net under each other.

Scott, James, David, Senja, Robert
July 12, 2012

I have a feeling we sped through a good chunk of the Level One curriculum early on in the week, and Lyndsay chucked some of it aside to best meet our needs. We ran Openings of Harolds over and over and over again. I loved it. Openings are weird, wooly, woo-woo performance pieces to watch, but I now understand their importance in the form in order to uncover the theme.

I swear I spattered geek juice all over Lyndsay the day she said we'd do an Invocation, one of the pagan rituals/improv exercises invented by Del Close. We invoked a locket. I loved it.

Obviously, I loved it all. Week One has been glorious and hard and exhausting, but I loved it. Around Wednesday, I hit a wall. We all did actually. Our work was pretty sucky as Lyndsay tried to teach us the Armando structure.

Here is a note I wrote to a friend last Wednesday:


Our group has been kicking ass so hard, it's no wonder we would stumble back a couple steps. I think we're just all tired. I know that I did some supremely shitty improv today, and I just about lost it in class when I was just absolutely blank going into a scene with something that the teacher was asking me to do. I actually had to stop the scene (terrible form!) and admit that I had nothing. But they couldn't have been more supportive. They literally all cheered my name, and then once the scene got started I felt incredibly taken care of and supported by the other actors. So though my work sucked, it was absolutely remarkable and pretty fucking magical that these people who I didn't know last week would have my back so thoroughly. It's like fucking bootcamp - except instead of tearing you down, our teacher builds us up and then builds us up some more. But like bootcamp, the bonds we're forming - particularly with my group who are extremely connected and bonding - is pretty profound. I'm so lucky to be a part of it, and I'm sure once I get back on the horse tomorrow, I'll be riding high.

Gotta run now. After lunch with Joe Bill, I swung by the house to do my laundry, and now I'm running out the door to meet my team for the Deltones show tonight at iO.