prusik | Well, that's over and done with... oh, wait

The improv audition actually didn't go badly. I'm sure they will have seen many, far better people by the time they're done. However, I didn't embarrass myself. I probably played it way too safe. However, given that it's the first time I've ever done improv in front of an audience, I'll settle for making it through the audition with uninspired competence. (Hey, at least I didn't pimp out my cast mates. e.g., "Hey, why don't you dance the salsa?")

As it turns out, knowing that you have absolutely no chance of making it to call-backs, much less into the troupe doesn't actually make you any less panicky. Audition seemed like a good idea when I signed up. It steadily seemed less so as I approached the actual time. I arrived early to fill out paperwork like I was supposed to. The theme to Hockey Night in Canada would not leave my head. A story ostensibly set after 2035 but really during the Cold War failed to hold my interest. I knew I was in good hands when several of my co-auditioners started warming up with an invisible ball in the lobby before the audition. Oddly, this doesn't make you any less panicky either.

In the story I'm currently working on, my main character is at varying levels of fear and panic for about the first half of the story. (I figured out very quickly that full bore panic gets old very quickly.) I ended up spending the wait time before my audition detailing into my Moleskine my physical reactions to being scared out of my skull. If nothing else, at least I now have a better handle on how my main character might react until he finally gets to calm down.

I have the attention span of a ham sandwich. Spacing out during warm ups was probably inevitable, but not my best move. Our ten minute improv set went by way too quickly. I suspect I might have been better during our second ten minutes if we could have had that. This probably means that ten minutes is about the audition length. You really don't want the audience to wait so long before you're finally interesting to watch.

I managed to manifest all the problems that I know I have. e.g. I. Would. Not. Look. At. The. Audience. I'm not very aggressive in jumping in at edit points, so I never edited anything and spent most of the set accepting and embracing offers rather than making them. (There are more problems, but life is too short to recount all of them.) I've done better work, but I've also done scenes that died horrific deaths. This was somewhere in the middle. It's probably an accurate representation of where I am as an improv player. I figure, at worst, they got to see that I know how to support my cast mates.

No, it was not 10 minutes of sheer genius. Honestly, I don't remember if I was even funny. (Probably not.) But it's better than I might have done last year. All in all, the whole process was painless, and I've gotten over the hump that I needed to get over. So that's over and done with.

Except that it isn't. I signed up for Improv Workshop Level 5, aka "Show Time!" last month. I have four 45 minute shows in my future regardless of what happens with this audition. (I find this vaguely unfair, BTW. Normally, there are two Level 5 sections. Each section gets two shows. This time around, there's only one section. We get all four.) I'll be fine once I'm doing the shows. Like I said, the ten minutes went ridiculously quickly. However, the days of the shows will be distinctly unfun.