Life as a lady of leisure

Since moving to Oakland Township, PA in December 2022 I’ve been in the extremely privileged position of not having to pay rent or work for a living, as we’re living with my partner’s parents. It’s astounding. For the first time in my life, I don’t have to work to survive before I can start thinking about the things I want to do to thrive.  

I have time to write, to work in depth on my solo show, to read, to exercise, to just be. I suddenly find myself able to take the time I need to be creative and do all the admin required to allow that to happen (emails happen in every line of work, I’m afraid). Chris and I can systematically figure out which improv festivals we want to apply to, and when we need to get things ready for them. We can diarise deadlines, take time to prioritise workloads, update our websites, and use social media with purpose, rather than only when we remember.  

So, this blog is really aimed at other artists who have found themselves unable to get things done that they want to do, because they’re spending so much time doing what they have to do to survive. You’re not wrong when you think “if only I had more time…” IT IS SO MUCH EASIER WHEN YOU DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT MONEY OR SURVIVAL WORK.  

Turns out, we don’t all have the same 24 hours in a day. If you spend 9 hours working a gruelling temp job, and commute for 2 hours a day that leaves you with 13 hours to eat, sleep, and maybe even have a little bit of time to yourself before you do it all over again. And again. And again. And again. When I was trying to figure out auditioning, networking, classes, shows, and everything else alongside a 40- or 50-hour work week, I was constantly exhausted, and beating myself up because I felt like a failure compared to friends in the industry who were “making it”. Looking back, I realise that 99.9% of the people I saw as “doing really well” in their careers were either living with parents or carers or financially dependent on someone else. They weren’t making it the same way I was.  

Before I came out to the USA, I had a massive meltdown over the phone to Chris. I was terrified that if I came out here and had three months of solid time to do whatever I wanted, I might realise that I was actually lazy and/or not very talented. That I’d get here and not have any idea what to do with the time I’d been gifted. I couldn’t have been more wrong. My show is in the best shape it’s ever been in, I’m getting consistent work done, and spending time doing things I enjoy. I feel contented and fulfilled and I know that I’m making good progress with the work I want to get done.  

This is unlikely to be news to most people reading this. But if you, like I was (and probably will be again) are someone who has to make a living before they make art, just know that you’re running a race in lead shoes. It’s OK to acknowledge that this is harder for you. And if you’re one of the lucky buggers who comes from means, maybe be honest about that? Privilege isn’t a dirty word, so stop pretending to be a “broke artist” when someone else is paying for you to cosplay poverty. It’s time to retire the myth of the starving artist. 

Why Year Long Classes?

You might wonder why on earth someone would want to take an online class spread over a whole year. Perhaps it feels like too much of a commitment; you don’t know where you’ll be or what you’ll be doing in a year’s time, and you’re more used to a 6-week course. Maybe you can’t imagine needing that much time for one topic. Maybe you’re worried you’ll forget it’s happening!  

While I understand these potential sticking points, I know that spending a full year immersed in a subject will bring you to insights you might not find in a short course. Sticking with a team for a significant amount of time is a powerful tool for discovery and invention, and it is an opportunity to really gel and build community around a shared interest. Since it’s online, you can do it from anywhere, and I’ve tried to pick a time that fits a fair few time zones. And don’t worry – I’ll be sending out class reminders every month.  

Inspiration

In 2021, I took Katy Schutte’s Mythic Improv Journey course, taking us through the pagan wheel of the year. It gave me so much insight into why we have certain seasonal celebrations, and how I as a human and a performer am affected by the earth’s yearly cycles. It changed my relationship to the seasons and my body and made me more cognisant of how I work best through the seasons. This course also taught me just how useful it is to devote a full year to learning something.  

So, inspired by Katy, I’m running several year-long classes this year. The first is Hot Under the Collar; a course on sexiness and flirtation in improv. Of all the classes I’ve taught, this was the most obvious to extend. Every time I’ve taught this course, I’ve found myself brimming over with new ideas for how to make people comfortable using their sexuality. The more I teach, the more I discover new ways to help people be present, flirty, and sexy with each other and in themselves. 

the nitty gritty

One of the things that I found most useful in Katy’s course was working with the same group for an extended period. Our check-ins became easier and more heartfelt, we were able to improvise with each other more smoothly, and it felt like the group coalesced into something more than a class: a gang of friends and colleagues working together for a common goal. It gave us all the advantages of being in a long-standing improv team, but with the added benefit of learning from Katy’s vast experience.  

Hot Under the Collar is a class that requires a significant amount of vulnerability from the participants. Overt sexuality is still shrouded in shame and taboo, and it can be utterly nerve wracking for people to expose themselves in that way. Many people have spent their whole lives being policed sexually, so actively pushing into that space can be downright frightening. I know that having a full year to work with the same group, giving students the chance to really get to know each other, and understand each other’s boundaries, and sense of humour, is going to empower people to go deeper into themselves and discover just how much fun being sexy on stage can be!  

A year of work also gives space for people to reflect on what they’ve done; I am going to be setting some “homework” for students to consider their work in class, take stock of the world around them, or simply think about their own sexuality. The time in between classes will allow participants to engage with themselves on a deeper level, so that we can push even deeper with every session.  

We’ll also have much more time to think about safety and boundaries. All my work centres around consent and compassion and slowing down and spacing this course out gives us more time to examine and understand our boundaries and how we can communicate them with each other in healthy ways.  

Most importantly, slowing down is sexy! There’s nothing hotter than someone taking their time, and a year of flirting gives us time to do just that. We have the space in this course to be lustful at our leisure. 

So, there you have it – my case for year-long classes. It’s a wonderful way to gel with a group, you can delve deeper into a subject, take more time for personal reflection, and ultimately grow your improv further than you might have thought possible.  

This is just the beginning for me; I will be announcing several other year-long courses in the coming month on Facebook and here on my website, so keep your eyes and ears peeled!  

To book or for more information on Hot Under the Collar click here, or email me!  

improv-ing the inevitable

originally published via The Nursery Theatre blog

trigger warning: death, dying, bereavement, medical procedure, covid-19

Death.

It happens to us all. And yet, none of us want to talk about it. It is, possibly, the last taboo in a lot of western society.

The funny thing is that taboo can also be used to describe something that is sacred. Perhaps we should think of death and dying more in those terms.

The current world-wide situation has thrown rather a large spotlight on the inescapable end that we’re all hurtling towards. Personally, I lost both of my Grandparents, I’ve seen friends lose family members, and I work for a start-up within the Death and Dying Space. Death is often at the forefront of my mind.

navigating a global pandemic

The pandemic has thrown a huge spotlight on how unprepared for death most of us are. Although obviously there are many older and vulnerable people who are dying from Covid, who are perhaps more likely to have their affairs in order, there are also thousands of young, “healthy” people on death’s door, who are suddenly coming face to face with death. These people have not thought about end-of-life care. They haven’t had conversations about where they’d like to be, who they’d like to have around them, whether they want to be intubated, or resuscitated, or who gets their stuff. Obviously, the reality of dying of a highly contagious virus means that many of those decisions are being taken out of people’s hands anyway, but it also means that many families are having to make incredibly difficult decisions around whether medical professionals should do everything they can to keep someone alive (which means invasive, painful procedures, which most likely only prolong the inevitable) over the phone, in the middle of the night, unable to ask the person in question what they want.

I’m not writing this to scaremonger or be morbid. I just know that most people my age have probably never had these conversations.

Most people who are over about 75 probably knew at least one person who’d died by the time they were about 10. My Grannie’s sister died on their kitchen table, while my Grannie and her siblings were only tiny. People’s husbands, sons, lovers, friends died being sent off to fight in wars. At home, people died in air raids, from lack of proper nutrition, from infections, and from diseases that are now preventable. Infant mortality and death in childbirth were much higher. In short: death was simply another part of life. We knew what death looked like.

acknowledging our own mortality

Nowadays, medicine has advanced to such a degree that it’s normal for people to live well into their 80s and 90s. It’s much more likely for someone to reach 20 or 30 before having to deal with someone they know dying. As a result, many people simply don’t face the idea of mortality. Often, when people who are dying try to talk about what they want at the end of life, their family and friends obfuscate, because they don’t want to face the reality of losing this person that they love. And, selfishly, they don’t want to have to think about their own death.

The truth is: we all die. Even with the incredible advances of modern medicine, this remains true. And in many ways, the current medicine that we have may prolong our lives further than we would want, if we understood the reality of what those extra days, weeks, or months might be like. For example: intubation (which will very probably happen if you have a severe bout of the ‘rona). This is a highly uncomfortable procedure. A tube is inserted via the mouth, and into the airway. When it’s done as part of a planned procedure, patients are usually under a general anaesthetic, and given muscle relaxants. When it’s done in an emergency (i.e., you’re dying because you can’t get enough oxygen by yourself), there is no time to anaesthetise or sedate you. It is a painful, traumatic, invasive experience. And if you’re at the point of emergency intubation, the likelihood is that you will still die anyway.  It’s relatively rare for people who are intubated in an emergency to survive. And do they have much quality of life?

Now, I think it’s important that people think, and I mean really think about whether they want this sort of procedure done to them at the end of their life, or whether they’d prefer to be made as comfortable as possible as they leave their body. It’s not a comfortable thought. And not a comfortable conversation to have with people who love you. But it’s an important one.

what does this have to do with improv?

I think improvisers are sometimes particularly guilty of an “out of sight out of mind” approach to… well, almost anything. We love to “start positive” and “be supportive” and say “yes, and”. We avoid the difficult subjects in our shows and rehearsals, we make things light, and fun, we dance around tough subjects. In our communities, we ignore issues; if someone is a creep, we say “oh he’s a nice guy, he’s just a bit awkward”, we publish diversity policies, but don’t do anything tangible to improve the experiences of BIPOC players, we allow the weird politics of the scene to decide who is and isn’t in the “in-crowd”, while saying that we “support everyone”. Improvisers market themselves as the nicest people on earth, but often that “niceness” is merely unwillingness to engage with difficult subjects, and a commitment to protecting difficult people, at the expense of those they victimise.

One of my favourite improv shows I’ve ever seen was Inbal Lori and Lee White at Sofia Improv Festival. They did a dark, disgusting show that involved a “Psycho”-style creepy mummy/son relationship, and Inbal playing a bloodthirsty dictator; it was deliciously horrible. Why was it so great? Because it wasn’t sickly-sweet, improv candyfloss. Don’t get me wrong; it was hysterically funny. But it wasn’t “nice”. Not even close. I loved every minute.

We encourage improvisers to find their inner child, but we also need to understand how to have a grown-up conversation. If a female colleague tells you someone has groped her; you must talk to her about it. And you must have the tough conversation about whether the perpetrator should be allowed back in your venue. If a BIPOC player tells you they don’t feel at home in your theatre you must have the conversation about why and do the work on changing that. If a disabled player tells you they can’t access your venue YOU MUST FIX THAT. In the same way that if someone you know is dying, you must have a conversation about how they want to go, before it’s too late for you to have it.

And for god’s sake, write a will! Even if you think it’s not worth it. Even if you only have a fiver to your name. It makes everyone’s lives easier.

for the record: 

• I want a non-religious funeral. I want everyone to get shitfaced and tell their funniest story about me (parent-friendly though, PLEASE). I want you all to dress in your nicest clothes, put on your best make-up, and look GOOD. I want party tunes, curated by Harry and Tom. I want to be cremated. I want you all to go to G-A-Y after it’s done and dance and drink and get into trouble.
• I don’t want a huge amount of overly invasive medical intervention. If a doctor recommends you allow them to do whatever they can to make me comfortable, rather than intubating or anything else; do what they say will make me most comfortable. And get me the good drugs.
• Donate my organs, if you can (LOL). Or donate my body to science, if you can.
• I don’t have much in the way of money or stuff, but you’ll find my will in a yellow envelope in the big black folder in my cupboard. I’m splitting my money between Shelter, and my brother and sister, my bro can have my electronics (after you’ve wiped my internet history), and my sister can have whatever of my clothes and jewellery she wants: the rest send off to charity shops. Hazz gets first dibs on any leftover booze, and anything else can go to a charity shop.

BONUS TIP – if you’d like to turn on auto-captioning for any of your workshops, jams, or any other event on zoom, here’s how:

• Login on your web browser, and in the left-hand bar of zoom, go to settings:
• Slide on the closed captioning setting:
• Then, when you’re in a meeting, you can click on Live Transcript:
• And Enable Auto-Transcription:
• And automatic captions will be on! Your participants will be able to choose to have them on or off, so you don’t have to worry about them being distracting for those who don’t need them.
• It’s useful to remind participants to speak slowly and clearly, as auto-transcription isn’t infallible!

Making your spaces friendly to audio-only participants isn’t just about inclusion; it also adds so much to your scenes. In the first audio-only drop-in I ran, the participants spontaneously created an entire world through being off-screen; they were able to use different voices, sound effects, and audio-description to create a highly stylised audio-drama, set on a local radio station. A different part of your brain seems to light up when you remove visual cues, and it led to some hilarious scenes. But don’t just take it from me – this is what one of my participants had to say:

“Your workshop was excellent. Thank you so much for creating the perfect atmosphere for those big hitters to stride out. My brain hasn’t come alive like that, EVER in improv.”

enough of tips! here is a game you can try

One of the exercises I love doing the most with off-screen participants is “You sound…”. It’s a riff on the classic game “You look / you seem”: participants go into paired breakout rooms, player one starts the scene with a sentence, which the second player responds to with “You sound…[an emotional endowment]”. E.g.

“Wow, I didn’t expect there to be so much to do”

“You sound disappointed”

They then continue the scene from there, with player one accepting the emotional endowment.

This is a fun way to get your participants voice acting, listening to subtext, and making strong emotional offers. Wordy games like “I’m a Whisk”, Word at a time Stories, gibberish games, or translator are fun, and you can do longform work by using sound edits such as “Meanwhile” or “Cut to”. I’m in no way an expert on this though; I think the most important thing is to just play around and see what you can do!