Improv 101

With them, I always laugh.  No matter my mood, with them, I can always be cheered up.  Creativity flows when we are together.  Spontaneous ideas collide with each other, brilliantly transforming into something curious and new.  The sub-conscious is brilliant, I tell them.  Trust your first instinct.  They know this, of course, but I tell them anyway.  Together, we create fantastic worlds, places never imagined before, situations so outrageous they seem familiar.  It always fascinates me how powerful it is when we work together as a team.  The audience explodes with applause, laughter, gasps.  They shout out their additions to our creation, a joint process.  At the end, we are breathless from our adventures through make-believe worlds, our sprint through the collective connections of our minds.
 
Even in rehearsal it is this way.  Of course being in front of an audience is a unique experience.  But even when it's just us, there's a feeling of freedom.  A clean slate in front of us.  A bare stage ready to be molded into whatever we put there.  The comfort of being surrounded by other brilliant improv-ers who are ready to leap forward and justify every detail of the world you just established.  The excitment of being in the midst of creation.  To see things come to life before you, all around you.  To jump into someone else's world, without a thought.  Instantly, a whole new character exists in your mind.  And you make it real to everyone else.  It really is amazing.
 
For a few year in high school I was on an improvisation team.  And then in college, Britney and I started a whole new team.  Cast it from scratch.  It started as a dream of ours.  A small, liberal arts school with no theater major, we thought there was a need for improv.  Of course, there were the regular shows, but improv is different.  It's unexpected, it's unpredictable, it's frenetic.  During the shows, even the audience can sense it, I think.  You can see it on our faces.  The ideas passing over our faces like momentary emotions.  And then there's it begins.  It keeps moving and doesn't stop.
 
It's been a whole year since I performed last with Improv 101.  I miss this creative outlet.  But more than that, I miss being with those friends that I love so much.  I miss being part of this amazing group of people.  I miss that freedom to create, that freedom to imagine things differently.  The anticipation of seeing what I'll stumble across when I just let go and immerse myself in the moment.
 
So, this is one part of me that no one here knows.  That is why I love going back to them so much.  It's like that part of my identity is illuminated, brought to the surface, nourished again.  But now, they are leaving, too.  The group that was there when it all began is moving on.  And that's hard.  When I get homesick for these people, for that time in my life that is impossible to recreate or go back to, I guess I'll just have to use my imagination to remember how it was.
 
I am amazed by the power of the mind to explore a world that does not yet exist, to picture things as they could be.  This power of imagination is a muscle a lot of us don't flex very often.  But what if we did?  What if we practiced imagining things as they could be?  And imagining ways to get there?  I'm not talking about theater anymore, but about affecting our world.  Sometimes things just seem so impossible.  Problems seem so insurmountable that we can't even begin to contemplate how to deal with them.  But what if we stopped thinking and started imagining?  Forget the logistics for now, forget the details, forget all the constraints that usually stop our mind from letting go.  What would our world look like if we could imagine it differently?  What kind of person would we want to be?  What kind of community we would want to see flourish around us?  How would we solve big, world issues if we let ourselves wander outside the box?
 
I really do miss my improv friends.  I miss that time of my life.  But I have with me a powerful imagination that is in need of some exercise.  If I let it run free, I wonder where it will take me...what it will show me.