Kimberly Hirsh

I’ve only done improv at one place, DSI Comedy Theater (462 West Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC - come visit!). So please know that, while I think the things I’m about to talk about probably apply in other improv communities, I’ve only experienced this one directly.

Improv at DSI, and as I understand it, lots of other places, does a great job of providing you with formal mentors. You begin by taking classes, where you have teachers who not only tell you things, but sidecoach you while you’re in the thick of it. They’ll go out with you after class and talk more about what you did in class. If you’re cast on a house team, you get a coach; at DSI, if you’re a company member and you’re on an indie team, you can get a coach. So we’ve got teachers and coaches, formal mentors whose job it is to help you work through stuff and improve.

But I think it’s really beneficial to have informal mentors, too. I think there are two types of informal mentors: the kind you talk to, and the kind you watch.

A talky-talk mentor is really great when you’re having improv thoughts, and the non-improv people in your life can’t relate, and a lot of the improv people who came in at the same time as you are maybe having similar problems. A lot of times improv brings up feelings, and a lot of times your more formal mentors or your comedy friends might not be equipped to deal with how many feelings you have, so it’s really nice if you can find a talky-talk mentor to deal with THAT. When you’re excited about a new thing you can share it with them; when you are struggling you can talk to them and find out that, hey, everybody has kind of the same patterns in their feelings about improv and goes through them around the same times in their improv careers. Bianca Casusöl has generously been exactly this person for me, talking me through some really slumpy times. Go find your Bianca. It might actually be Bianca.

A watchy-watch mentor might not even know they’re mentoring you, which is totally okay. This is someone who every time you watch them you feel like you’re learning something new. Sometimes, um, you have a video of a show that you’ve watched over and over and then after 30 viewings you notice a new bit of object work they did. (No? Just me? Okay.) Sometimes you’re even on stage with them and you learn a new thing. Sometimes, you think you’re doing a thing, and then you look across the stage and see that no, you’re not really doing that thing, but they are, and damn is it impressive and don’t you wish you were doing it better and oh hey wait - maybe you should from now on make it a point to do that more the way they’re doing it, since you’re so blown away. And if you know me at all, then you know what I’m about to say: an excellent watchy-watch informal mentor is Kit FitzSimons (to whom I am also grateful for his work as a formal mentor as coach/director for the Improvised Whedon Company, and a bit of talky-talk mentoring about improv thoughts, too).

Last week I was performing in the Family Improv show at DSI with Kit. We were both on the sidelines; neither of us was in the scene that was going on. Historically speaking, I’ve always prided myself on being activated whenever I’m on stage. As a perpetual chorus girl, I’ve had plenty of stage time when I wasn’t the focus, and I like to imagine I do a pretty good job of remaining present. I try to do the same thing with improv when I’m standing on the side, but I have a habit of putting my hands behind my back against the wall and resting my head back and getting super into watching the scene, which means if a walk-on is called for and I’m the right person to do it I kind of have to peel myself off the wall first. I had to do that very thing in an IWC show in September, in fact. 

But at the Family Improv show, I noticed (and why I hadn’t noticed this so pointedly in the shows I’ve seen Kit in or been in with him before I don’t know because I guarantee you he does it every time), he was not just paying close attention to what was going on in the scene, he was basically AT attention: in position - head and shoulders back a little, arms slightly pulled away from his sides, light on his feet - and ready to jump in at any time if needed, but not pulling focus. And I thought, “I’ve got to be more like that; it’ll make it easier to jump in, it’ll lend more energy to the proceedings on stage, it’ll be better for me and my teammates and the audience.” It’s going to look different on me than it does on Kit, but it’s an energy and focus that I can shift to instead of my heretofore not-unpresent wall-sticking (better than sitting down or zoning out, but could be even better).

The great thing about watchy-watch mentors is you can find them anywhere people are doing improv, and you can have an unlimited number of them, and it costs them literally nothing to mentor you, as they were going to perform anyway.

All this to say, as soon as you feel comfortable enough in an improv community to do so, I would strongly recommend finding yourself some informal mentors to supplement your awesome teachers and coaches.

…because you’re not broken. YOU ARE WHOLE AND YOU ARE ENOUGH.

*******

I’ve been having a challenging few weeks. I suffer from clinical depression and social anxiety, and they’re usually in remission, but in times of transition (like, say, leaving a job and starting a doctoral program) they sneak their way back into my life and right around October or November they get their big reveal. So I’ve been feeling weepy and weird, guilty and self-judging. I spent most of the day yesterday working on a statistics midterm, and I had a good cry, and I had a bit more of a cry in the car on the way to improv class mostly just remembering the cry I’d had earlier. I had really been looking forward to class, thinking, “This is going to save my day. I have had a hard, lonely day, and this will fix it, and me.” (You know where this is going, don’t you?)

*******

I got to the theater. I talked to some friends. They also were having rough days. We hugged. I went downstairs. I decided to engage in some generous mischief, the results of which I believe have not come to fruition. I let another friend know about the generous mischief, and she played at (?) being jealous because she herself wasn’t the target of such mischief. I did my best to make it up to her. I had emotionally papier-mached these layers of fun and play over my extremely raw heart.

*******

Class started. We did warm-ups. They were fun. But I was feeling twitchy. And then we got to the meat of class, which involved doing AN EXERCISE.

The thing about exercises is that they are meant to give you specific skills. To achieve this end, they are rigidly structured and intensely focused, and the scenes that come out of them do not and are not designed to resemble what you would want to see on stage, necessarily. So all of the things I’ve been thinking about lately, which are techniques for building strong scenes, actually got in my way here.

Add to that, I got psyched out by the suggestion. The suggestion was “opera singer,” and I was keenly aware of myself as a singer and of the three people in the room who know I’m a singer, of their knowing I’m a singer and making the connection with the suggestion. I got thoroughly stuck in my head, working so hard to THINK through the ramifications of the suggestion with respect to this particular exercise and my own knowledge of opera singers.

My scene partner and I did two scenes. I’m not going to go into detail, but both scenes felt like a struggle. I felt so strongly that I had hung my partner out to dry because of being so up in my head. I felt that, not only had I struggled with the whole point of the exercise, but I had failed to do the two things I think are the foundation of the best scenes: trust and love my partner, even if I didn’t know him that well. 

We got notes. It was hard.

I spent other people’s scenes running through all the things I could have done, what I should have done, and more generally beating myself up over those two scenes. I probably would have learned a lot more by paying attention to other people’s scenes. 

*******

We got up in larger groups to do the exercise again. I ended up with the same scene partner. I told myself this time I was going to go out. I was going to have a strong, positive initiation. I was going to fix the night. (You still know where this is going, don’t you?)

I succeeded at coming out with a strong, positive initiation and maintaining a positive scene. We did a fun scene that met the requirements of the exercise. I got in it with my scene partner. I didn’t abandon him. That scene felt a lot better than the other two had.

*******

We went out after class, and that was fun. I got home. I was still beating myself up over those two tough scenes. That one good scene hadn’t fixed the night. The night hadn’t fixed me. It was more than an hour before I could get to sleep.

*******

This morning, I realized that when I notice myself start to get psyched out, probably it’s time to treat whatever exercise or scene I’m in like a game of Freeze. Get out there, do something, something big and strong and fun, and THEN FIGURE IT OUT. Not stand on the sidelines mulling over everything.

*******

The best thing to come out of this for me is the realization that just because I had a hard time with this exercise this one time, just because I had a bad night, that doesn’t mean that I am a bad person, a bad scene partner, or bad at improv. I had one bad night. Everybody has them. I’ll have a good one soon.

*******

Improv can’t fix me, and I shouldn’t ask it to, and I don’t need it to, because I, myself, am whole and enough. But it can give me tools that expand beyond the theater. Next time I have a bad day, a rough time, a tough conversation, I can remember: having a hard time doesn’t make me bad, and I’ll be having a good time soon.

Modified from a note I published on Facebook…

First, YOUR TASTE GROWS FASTER THAN YOUR SKILL. (There’s a great Ira Glass quote on this here: www.goodreads.com/quotes/30…) So you’re going to know what really good improv looks like, not be able to make it happen yourself, and get frustrated. It’s okay. It’s okay. Don’t stop. DON’T STOP. (Unless you need to stop for reasons other than your frustration. It’s always okay to stop if you need to for reasons - but not because you’re starting to doubt yourself.)

Second, IMPROV GROWTH IS A SPIRAL. You’re moving up on the spiral, but you’re also moving around. So you feel like you are in the same place or even behind where you were months and months ago, but you’re actually on your way up. You’re maybe even right at the point where you are moving solidly up to the next level, and in the next week or two something amazing is going to happen. Trust. Trust. Trust yourself. Trust your teammates. Love yourself. Love your teammates. Trust and love. (Don’t forget to love people who aren’t yourself and your teammates, but don’t forget to love yourself and your teammates.)

LASTLY: Get up on stage with people who you think are better than you. Make sure they’re people you trust and love, who trust and love you right back. Fill the audience with people you trust and love, who trust and love you right back and are going to be blown away by what you do no matter what. Get on that stage and have a great time and worry about nothing except saying yes and going big. And then do it again and again and again.

Lately, I’ve been feeling rutty/restless in my improv. I had a run of shows that didn’t feel great, AND they were my last shows for the next few weeks so I had of course wanted them to be amazing. What’s that saying? Expectation goeth before a disappointment?

I had a conversation with Bianca

Casusöl a few weeks ago where she said that when you feel that way, it’s right before you’re about to grow. I knew she was right, so when I started feeling this way about a week and a half ago, I tried to keep that foremost in my mind: this dissatisfaction with my own performance meant that I was about to take a leap, to jump up higher on the improv learning spiral.

I started the jump yesterday, but I hope it’s not done yet.

The Improvised Whedon Company is preparing for a show inspired by the movie The Cabin in the Woods. Last night, we were working a scene where Sean Williams and I were two workers in The Facility. The scene went something like this:

Sean: Uh, I’ve got 300 crates of waste here, where do you want me to dump them?

Me: flipping through pages on imaginary clipboard Hold on a sec… There’s so much paperwork in this job. flip flip flip Uh, looks like those should go to Level 7.

Sean: Level 7? They just sent me down here! It’s always like this. I had to drive through all of these levels, and past all the monsters and the werewolves and through these ghosts just floating around, and I’m really getting tired of it. Well, I guess I’ll go back to Level 7.

Me: Uh, wait - go back a bit. Did you just say there are ghosts just OUT, floating around?

Sean: Yeah, they’re just floating in the hallway.

Me: That isn’t supposed to happen! goes over to pick up imaginary phone and call someone to fix this

Now, let me explain why I’m proud of this.

One of the most basic things we learn is to listen to our scene partner, but it’s also one of the easiest things to forget. Obviously with only a year and a half of experience under my belt I’m still working on it, but I’ve seen it be a struggle for improvisers much more experienced than myself. And the key symptom of not listening is failing to latch on to a thing your partner says in the first few lines that is a gift that can be the foundation of your whole scene. A new improviser will sometimes be so eager to get to the AND, they forget the YES. 

It’s a classic piece of UCB-style play to be grounded in the real world and then latch on to that first weird thing that pops up. It’s not a super-advanced move, but it’s one that requires sharp attention, clarity, and quick thinking to actually do on stage. In the world of Cabin in the Woods (SPOILER ALERT!), monsters belong in boxes. Ghosts should be carefully contained. Ghosts in a box are mundane; ghosts in the hallways are A PROBLEM. I was immensely pleased with myself for accepting Sean’s offer. Was my move to get on the phone with someone the best thing to do next? I’m not sure - but I’m proud as hell that I recognized that offer and grabbed it and didn’t let go.

It feels weird and a little wrong to admit this, but my favorite part of performing isn’t the performance itself.

Now, obviously, that’s key to the experience. And I love doing it.

But my heart flutters most before a show and after a practice or, in the case of improv, show. (In the non-improv theater, you stop getting notes after previews are done. In the improv theater, you may or may not get notes after a show. But I’m always happy when we do.)

I have a problem with presence, i.e., the being in the moment kind. (And now, we can begin a run of presence/present/presents puns! I’ll let you do that. Come back when you’re done.) I’ve got a bit of a Janus complex, always looking back and looking forward (at this very moment, I’m frustrated with myself for not focusing harder in statistics class today, and excited about having my team over for a movie night), and struggling to be in the moment. So, it makes sense that my favorite part of performing isn’t the actual moment when I’m most in it (though I’m proud to say I am present-as-all-get-out on an improv stage, saving analysis for after the show’s over).

I think one of the reasons I like the getting-ready and the getting-notes is because they are small, shared experiences. When you’re on the stage, yo’ure having a big shared experience: you, your fellow performers, and the audience are all in on something together, and it is MAGIC. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. BUT. When you’re in a dressing room or green room or backstage, or when the house is empty and it’s just you and your fellow performers and the director and crew on the stage, that’s it’s very own brand of magic, and I wouldn’t trade that for the world, either.

In my very first community theater production, I would arrive at the theater an hour before call, just to have some extra quiet time in the space. I was 13. It actually ended up causing a problem for the company; they got charged for the extra time I spent in the dressing room. Oops!

At the improv theater now, sometimes I get called down for notes for a show I didn’t even perform in - I’ll have crewed it, or I’ll just be around, or it’ll be a show with a format similar to the shows I’m on even though technically I’m not on the team - and every time - EVERY TIME - I get a warm feeling of contentment. I think it’s because GIVING & GETTING NOTES, as an activity, is targeted toward continuous improvement, and continuous improvement is pretty much my favorite thing. One of the reasons I’m skeptical that I’ll ever “outgrow” doing improv is that there’s no ceiling on it. You can always keep getting better. There’s always the risk of a bad show, and as devastated as I am when I perceive I’ve had a bad show (I’m usually wrong and at worst have had a mediocre show), I find it oddly exhilarating at the same time to know that 20 years from now, I’ll still be having bad shows and still be finding new ways to be better.

Improv is crack for productivity hobbyists, I guess, is what I’m saying.

Sometimes, you get a note in practice that on the surface looks like it applies really specifically to that practice, but after a little while you realize it applies to your whole style of play.

Last night, we had the last Improvised Whedon Company practice before our upcoming show. On at least two occasions, our director/coach Kit FitzSimons (I’ve mentioned him before) paused the scene and said, very pointedly and directly to me, “Don’t run away from it.” At both of these points, I very clearly had something I was ready to articulate in the scene, and I was choosing not to, or stopping short. And I guarantee you that in both cases, Kit knew exactly the thing I wanted to say, could see on my face and in my body that I wanted to say it, and could pinpoint the exact moment when I decided not to.

(This is the point at which I could go off on a tangent about why this might be the case, and whether it’s because Kit is extra smart, really good and experienced at improv, or the secret improv best friend I’ve been waiting for my whole life and just gets me. The first two are definitely true. The third is an intriguing possibility that I probably shouldn’t be exploring in such a public forum. Hey, I said I could go off on a tangent, and now I have!)

Back to the matter at hand: In more than one show recently, I’ve found myself hanging back and running away from an idea. I wonder if it’s an overcorrection, if it comes from trying to curb the impulse to stay so attached to my idea that I fail to listen to my scene partner. I wonder if it is giving me the illusion of that generosity I’ve been pursuing. I guess it doesn’t really matter what the source of it is.

What matters is how to move forward. It helps me to think about what I want from a scene partner. I don’t want a scene partner to get out of my way. I want her* to get in it with me (”it” being wherever the scene is going). I’m not inherently an obstacle on stage; I don’t need to move out of my scene partner’s way to let her shine. I need to get in there with her and we need to move together. We need to co-vary.

And now that I’ve used a concept from statistics to explain improv, my work here is done.

(But my work on stage isn’t, and I will be prioritizing “Don’t run away from it” in shows and practices for the foreseeable future.)

*I default to the feminine pronoun, because it’s mine.

Last week, I had two opportunities to play with improvisers less experienced than myself. (Like most comedians, I have a hybrid inferiority-superiority complex, so it feels really uncomfortable to call anyone “less experienced than myself,” even though I’ve been doing this for more than a year and most of the people I played with had only done it for six weeks.)

Frequently, after a show, I will come off stage and think, “Enh. That was okay.” I’ll be dissatisfied with my performance, but unable to identify why, because I didn’t go in with a goal for the show. I consistently have better shows when I choose a victory condition for myself: just like board games have a certain condition to satisfy, and just like I sometimes like to come up with an alternate so that even if someone else wins I can feel like I won, I have a better time if I pick something different from the obvious victory condition, “Have a good show.”

Last week in both of these shows, my victory condition was to give my scene partner both space and support. As a more experienced improviser (still feels weird to say), especially in a short form scene like I played this week, my inclination is to go out with a strong initiation, name my scene partner’s character, and get some stakes on the table ASAP. These are the things I remember from 101 beyond Yes And and mirroring, and when I find myself faltering, I go back to them. But this week, my goal was to let my scene partner initiate unless they clearly were struggling, and then basically to let them drive the scene. I also wanted to provide gentle nudges toward a stronger scene if I could, a thing I’ve noticed improvisers more experienced than myself doing in scenes with me, and am always grateful for.

Achieving both of these components of the single goal is a balancing act. It’s not a balancing act I’ve had to perform much before, having been the junior improviser in almost everything I’ve done. But I felt like I achieved it. So even though I came off stage thinking, “Enh, I could have been funnier,” or “Gah, I keep failing to make strong or any character choices,” and probably a bunch of other mean thoughts about myself that I can’t remember now, I also came off stage thinking, “Hey, my scene partners had a good time and seemed to feel supported. Yay me!”

Not really related: If you need to remember the wisdom of your 101 self, find a small 101 class and ask to pad out their show. Or just go to a jam and play with a 101 student. Their energy, enthusiasm, and commitment to playing rather than working will rejuvenate you.

I’ve only been doing improv for a little while, but I sure do think about it a lot. And something I’ve been thinking about with respect to improv in the past couple weeks is generosity. 

A friend of mine who has almost no familiarity with improv came to my latest show. Completely unprompted by me, he said he could tell from watching the show that Kit FitzSimons is a generous improviser. (If you’ll recall, I called both Kit and Vinny Valdivia generous improvisers in my post, Beginner’s Mind and Advancing in Improv.) I said, “Yes, exactly!” and the more I think about it, I’m not sure there’s a quality I’d rather have in a scene partner or have someone ascribe to me than generosity.

We learn lots of rules and tips and tricks in improv; we learn the power of YES AND, of unconditionally affirming and building upon our partner’s offers. We learn to accept those offers; we learn to listen. We learn to let go of our planned ideas and follow the consequences of the things our scene partners are saying. We learn a lot more, a lot deeper, a lot broader, but these fundamental principles, I think, are mostly teaching us how to be generous.

We learn early to give gifts: to endow our scene partner’s character with a particular quality, to direct them to do something or avoid something in such a way that it’s clear that in the scene they should do the opposite of whatever we’ve said. If we’re playing a character game that’s been established ahead of time, as the Improvised Whedon Company does, we give them the gift of naming their character and identifying their game at the top of the scene, because it’s hard to do that yourself and it not feel like becoming the improv equivalent of a human pretzel. 

I think when we learn to be generous in improv, we learn to be generous in other parts of our lives, too. In a scene, I can give my partner the gift of establishing our relationship and the stakes of the scene up top. Having done so, I feel more empowered to give people in my life the gift of making it clear how much I value their presence in my life, how much I see their strengths, how much I want to see them succeed.

I’m still learning. I’ll always be learning; one of the things I’m gathering about improv is that after you’ve been doing it for twenty or thirty or forty years, you’re still learning. And one of the things I’m still learning, I hope, is how to be a generous scene partner and a generous person. 

In addition to thinking about generosity, I’ve been thinking about success in improv, and what it means to be to be successful. Success in improv for me doesn’t consist of moving to Chicago, New York, or LA. It doesn’t consist of making it onto the mainstage at Second City or UCB or even onto a DSI house Harold team or Mr. Diplomat or DSI TourCo. Success in improv for me means two things: 1. I get to keep playing, consistently, with fun people I adore. 2.One day, somebody says to someone who has been on stage with me, “Kimberly strikes me as a really generous improviser,” and then my scene partner says, “YES EXACTLY.” 

I’ve been trying to read the UCB Comedy Manual, and fairly successfully reading Will Hines’s improvnonsense Best Of, but I keep getting distracted by my own thoughts so I thought it would be smart to write them down.

By far, my favorite improvnonsense post is the “How do I get out of my head?” post, which should surprise no one.

I’ve had a whirlwind of a time in my brief time at DSI Comedy Theater. I started taking sketch in January 2014, and found my way (nudged by the delightful Paula Pazderka) into improv in May 2014. I took 101, 201, repeated 201, and took 301 basically back-to-back. In February 2015, I auditioned for the company and was placed in the short-form ensemble. This puts me on stage with improvisers vastly more experienced than me. 

In April 2015, I started 401.

So, given all that preamble, some thoughts.

In 101 and 201 (and even, to some extent, 301), I was a bold and confident improviser. My theater background and my delight at showing up carried me a long way. I was immensely flattered to receive comments from classmates like, “I always feel safe when I’m in a scene with you.” Being confident didn’t keep me from being eager to learn; I happily received notes and did my best to internalize them. (I did notice as early as 101 that I’m a lot smarter in class than on stage. I blame the adrenaline boost that bright lights and an audience inspire.) I happily initiated scenes when my scene partners seemed reticent. I fully committed. I mirrored the heck out of scene partners.

Before being cast in the short form ensemble, I had been away from improv entirely for over 12 weeks, due to another theatre commitment. I was shocked to be cast. But I had a blast at practices. Again, I was just so happy to even show up.

But something happened. I’m not sure when or how, but being up on stage with amazing, experienced improvisers - people I’d admired from the audience for months - turned me into the reticent scene partner, lacking confidence in my choices, assuming that everyone at practices was watching my scenes and thinking about all the things I’d done wrong (narcissism is a problem, y’all). I got less bold. I found myself questioning the director’s and coaches’ decision to let me in this ensemble. (I KNOW THIS IS SILLY. They wouldn’t put me on if they didn’t want me there.)

I felt myself making choices and then backing off from them. By late June or early July 2015, I was thinking that, despite the fact that I have the most fun at improv practice, more fun than almost anything else I do, maybe I was wrong to keep going with it.

THE STORY GETS HAPPIER FROM HERE.

I had some weird stuff going on professionally in early July that was maybe affecting how I felt about improv, I’m not sure. But I read that improvnonsense post, especially the email from Zach Woods, and something started to shift in me. I felt like okay, maybe I was right to want to keep doing this, even though I was feeling down and like I wasn’t doing a great job. Maybe I just had to move through it.

On July 11, I played in DSI’s Family Improv show with Kit FitzSimons and Vinny Valdivia, two incredibly gifted, experienced, and generous improvisers. If you ever want to feel safe on stage, get up there with Vinny and Kit. 

In addition to that, the entire audience consisted of my sister, my brother, and my mother-in-law. For that one day, we re-named the Family Improv show “Kimberly’s Family Improv.” That was immensely liberating, because I knew everyone there was going to love and support me and be delighted by basically anything I did.

And on top of being on stage with two great players and having an audience 100% composed of people guaranteed to love me, I had decided that my goal for this show was to GO FOR IT. Whatever choice I made, whatever I did, I was going to commit to it like little Improv 101 Kimberly would. (Figuratively little. I mean, I’m short, but I’ve actually lost weight since Improv 101.)

It was the right call. That show was a ton of fun and I left feeling good. My next show I was a kind of weird and slow scene partner, but that was because it was a show I had proposed and it was just the most magical and craziest thing for it to actually be happening, so I couldn’t really believe the glory of it. (I left that show feeling amazing, too. Just more because of everyone else in the show than because of anything I did.)

And then, because life is how it is, I went on a 3 ½ week hiatus with no practices or shows due to life stuff. But I’m going to get back into it within the next week, and I think I’ll stick with that GO FOR IT mantra.

All of this to say:

I need to remember 101-201-301 Kimberly. I need to trust that if I make a move that isn’t the move it should have been, I will only benefit by having more experienced improvisers on stage with me. They’ll shore me up. I need to remember that this is the most fun and that if I’m making the most fun choices, especially in short form, I’m probably doing it right. And that if I’m doing it wrong, that’s okay, because I’m going to keep doing it and I’m going to get better.

My darling fandom,

I adore you. And I’m not referring to any of your specific aspects, but you, as a whole.

I love your stunning illustrations.

I love your clever and creative fanfiction.

I love your conventions and gatherings.

I love the way you make people feel valued and important. I love the way you inspire people to go on to make their own new things after they’ve played and workshopped and learned from you.

I believe, deeply, that you are, more often than not, a force for good in the world.

And I’m so proud to have been among you for so long - immersed in you for fifteen years, now.

Take care, dear.