Two Oceans Twelve

I’ll forgo an apology for this being my first post in months. It’s not worth it.

First of all, I’d like to discuss the glory that is Raygun Reagan, my One Group Mind improv team. I am in awe that I haven’t written anything about them yet, but it’s probably because I’ve been too busy being obsessed with them. I auditioned for One Group Mind in August, and only eight people from said audition were placed on established One Group Mind teams. Yours truly was one of them. I was honestly surprised, but I had felt good about my audition. In all unbiased honesty, Raygun Reagan had been my favorite One Group Mind team when I saw them perform before I was a member. I guess it makes sense that, because their sense of humor lined up with mine, we were destined to be together. I liked them so much that I mentioned enjoying their first show to a team member, Nick, before I knew him or was on the team (I saw him at the Filmspotting Late Live Show I mentioned in my last post! It all feels so full of kismet sometimes).

Starting out on the team I was extremely intimidated. Through no fault of my teammates or coach, Mike, I felt under experienced especially compared to my Second City and iO graduate cohorts. Before Raygun Reagan, I had never even participated in a full, long-form improv set. My first couple shows I was mostly just a ball of nerves without too much to contribute to the pieces. My friends were attending, and my teammates were supportive. I just couldn’t shake crippling anxiety at that point in my improvisational path. Despite this frustration, from September to December I found myself getting closer and closer to my teammates. We make each other laugh until we cry in practices, we share meals and drinks and tales from relationships and dates and jobs, we go to each other’s non-Ray Rea shows, we send mass emails that range in content from homemade fake motivational posters to sheer and unadulterated praise of one another, and we revel in how much we love improvising together. All of this bonding and progress finally paid off in performance at a One Group Mind holiday show. We were the last team to perform out of 12 teams, and it was a 10 PM Sunday slot. The odds were against us having a killer set as the audience was probably tired of watching improv at that point. Eric led us onstage with large amounts of energy, and the rest just feels like a beautiful, effortless blur.

We ranged from loud, high-energy group scenes to almost silent two-person scenes seamlessly. Eric created a flat pattern with me (the same line or dialog or action repeated over and over with very little variation) that had the audience in stitches, and just as the laughter would begin to die down, Ryan would come into the scene for one ludicrous line to punch it back up. Jessie mentioned making a dress out of an American flag in an early scene, and 10 minutes later the idea came back as a forum in which it was argued when a flag became a flag (a la the abortion debate). Liz unknowingly turned Joe holding mistletoe into a statue of Hitler, and 20 minutes later she was appraising the statue at an estate sale. Jen wanted to bring gators to the White House, Nick refused to allow it, and Mike came on a few scenes later as a kid who had been to the egg hunt on the White House lawn and now only had one leg. Becca then became the soccer coach of a team full of amputees. It’s impossible to put into words, but the whole experience was transcendent. Multiple members of my team who have done improv for years longer than I have declared it was the best or most fun show they have ever been a part of. My dear Furman friend Andy saw us for the first time that night and sang the praises of the show for days after. He told me it was the best improv show he’s seen in Chicago including trips to Second City and iO. He said it was probably the first time he had been able to consider improv more than just a lot of fun to watch; that it had a definite art form and structure and proper execution. I hope this doesn’t all seem like hyperbole and gibberish, but it was incredible.

In other news, interning at Annoyance continues to be a great experience. I recently started doing tech (running lights and sound) for a show called A Woman’s Path. The first preview went quite smoothly, and the cast and crew of the show were very complimentary. They’re hilarious and have already been a lot of fun to work with. I’ve done everything at Annoyance from working the box office to making programs to editing show pages on the website to making the curtain speech to washing the windows. I’ve made some good friends in other interns and the bartenders who work when I do, and I’ve even bit hit on while working the box office. (That was a fun night, and the gentleman continues to be a nice… um… acquaintance. This is me attempting to be coy.) I’m taking classes from Susan Effing Messing right now, and she inspires me to be the best improviser in the world! She has a warm, welcoming presence with an allergy for BS. She forces you out of your comfort zone as a person and as a performer. I’m halfway through her class, and I’ll be quite forlorn to finish it. Next term I’m hoping to take a musical improv class as Mick Napier, the founder of the Annoyance, isn’t teaching his advanced improv class until later this year. I’m hoping I’ll be able to stay involved in fun good things at Annoyance even after I’ve completed a lot of the classes there.

I still have the same job. Thus I still have the same commute. I’d still like to not have said commute, but job searching takes time I just don’t really have right now. I usually use the commute to catch up on the sleep I don’t get at night. I’m currently buckling down for the Chicago winter. We’ll see how that goes.