Something I never, ever thought I would do
by Lindsay
When I met Saif a few years ago, and he told me that he did improv, my first thought was “YUCK”.
Being the diplomatic and polite person that I am, I immediately told this stranger that I hated improv. Being the diplomatic and polite person that he is, he simply smiled and asked me why. At that point I realized I was being rude, so I didn’t tell him the truth. I tried to take my foot out of my mouth, but words like, “stupid”, “pointless”, and “pretentious” were going through my mind. Needless to say, I never imagined then that he and I would be collaborating on an improv class now.
Who is this person that I am now, who can do things that the person I was just a few years ago would never think of doing?
At the risk of sounding dramatic, I have to say that doing a PhD has changed me dramatically. It broke down my pride, confidence, and sense of direction in life so completely that I’ve had the (actually wonderful) opportunity to almost rebuild myself from nothing. Part of that is recognizing that some of my previous opinions and preferences may not have been correct. Saif helped by inviting me to his shows, and getting me to talk about what I liked and didn’t like about them. I love the elements of intellectual challenge, creativity and openness; I hated the sense of self-congratulation, cleverness or self-conscious sophistication that I sometimes felt from the performers.
I still remember an improv-like exercise that I did a few years ago, called “Samurai”. In this game, we had to pretend we were Japanese samurai using our arms as swords, and fight with an entire group of forty+ people, one by one, in a large classroom. The gimmick was that we had to move in slow motion and act extra dramatic. Oh man, I almost vomited. I hated it so much. I ended up being a terrible sport and sitting it out in the back. I was irritated with myself for not being able to do something that I was asked to do in class. But I was also irritated with the instructor for asking me to do something for which I saw no purpose.
Though I wish that I could trust others enough to believe in the purpose even when I don’t understand it, the truth is that knowing the purpose of improv exercises has helped me tremendously to appreciate them. Conversations with Saif and Marily about creativity, confidence and empathy have really helped my mind see, ironically, why I should let go of my mind a little bit sometimes.
This post has no thesis, except to encourage you to look very closely at the moments when you feel uncomfortable or unwilling, and see what you can learn about yourself from those feelings. Also, honor those feelings–don’t reject them. If you are like me, and a little more analytical, do what you need to do to make the class work for you — even if that means doing things that aren’t maybe in the spirit of improv, like arguing, justifying and analyzing.
We will see what Saif says about this. 
