Being in a musical was an all-new experience for me, and not just because I played four different roles in the show. It quickly became my favorite acting experience up to that point. I relished the opportunity to act, sing, and dance all in the same production for three nights a week, and I made some great friendships in the process.
As the musical was wrapping up, I had fully been bitten by the bug, and I eagerly looked forward to participating in another show. I learned of tryouts for the theater's next production, Brigadoon, and I attended my tryout with great enthusiasm. To my surprise - and, I'm sure, to the surprise of many of those who knew me - I was cast in one of the lead roles.
However, over the course of the next week, a strange kind of pain gradually developed in my chest. A few more weeks passed, and the ache got worse and worse. I learned that I had torn my right pectoral muscle on one of the last nights of performing in My Fair Lady, and, after about a month of rehearsing for my new role in Brigadoon, I was forced to drop out of the musical so that someone else could fill the part.
I was upset, I cursed my rotten luck and the timing of it all, and I was in a great deal of pain, to boot. Fortunately, physical therapy and time helped my body to heal, though I watched the run of my missed musical opportunity come and go with envy and bitterness.
It was at this same time that a friend of mine took a beginning improv skills class and invited me to attend a performance put on by him and the other members of his class. I had seen a little bit of "Whose Line Is It, Anyway?" on TV, but I had never previously been to a live improv show. It was amazing.
I soon learned that this theater was offering Improv-oke - a combination of improv and karaoke - nights, during which attendees could volunteer to come up on stage and perform along with the actors. I went to one of these and was called up to participate in a game of "Da Doo Ron Ron," and somehow I was the last person standing for this game for three weeks in a row.Once I had been given the opportunity to perform improv myself, I was hooked. I was not great at it at first, and I made several mistakes (I still do), but I kept coming back to it. I took a class with some of my friends and learned the ropes, putting on a few performances with the Village Idiots in Bountiful. A couple of years later, I tried out for and was accepted into ComedySportz in Sugar House and Provo, which gave me the chance to perform in a semiprofessional environment for the first time and to learn from some of the best actors in the state. In 2008, I learned that a Davis County-based troupe was being formed at a familiar location: Rodgers Memorial Theatre.
In the six years since I had had to drop my role in Brigadoon, I had not tried out for anything else with this theater, and, in the back of my mind, memories of my earlier injury and the accompanying fallout still lingered. Nevertheless, I took a chance and returned to my former stage in a different capacity. I found a home with this new troupe, which was named the Improvables, and I have been with them ever since, including a move over to CenterPoint Legacy Theatre in 2011 and an expansion to Playbills' Theater in 2013.
One of my friends recently blogged: When one door closes, another door opens. As far as musical theater and improv goes, that had certainly been the case for me. Through a happy accident, I discovered improv 11 years ago when I had nothing left to lose, and because I took a chance on myself and on it, my life has been the better for it. In fact, I don't think I could ever go back to musical theater - at least not permanently - knowing what I know now and having had the experiences I have had with improv.
This very thought occurred to me just the other night when my Improvables colleagues and I put on a memorable show that included a broken vase (my fault), mouths full of Peeps candy that had three of us nearly tossing our cookies, and water all over the stage and mostly all over me through a game of "Spit Take." And those were just three of our games for the evening's performance.
Why do we do it? you ask? It's hard to explain in a few words, but improv is never the same, and that fact alone keeps me coming back again and again. As the song goes, there's also "no people like showpeople," and my fellow improvisers are among my very best friends today.
Whether or not I excel at what I do is debatable, I suppose, but I try my best at it and give it my all. It's not often for me to toot my own horn, but (honk! honk!) I have been humbled over the years to have had a handful of audience members approach me to say that I was their "favorite" performer. I continue to look forward to each new opportunity to make a nincompoop out of myself in public, and I hope that it is something I can continue to do for years to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment