So my first round of House Teams has ended and I’m feeling rather sad about it. Sad that it was over before I really got totally comfortable being on stage. I base my performance on how much I don’t notice my stage jitters during scenes. Without acknowledging those jitters, I’m comfortable, I can think straight, and I can concentrate on whatever it is happening at the moment. But when I notice the jitters, I feel like a surfer who realized I’m unprepared to swim. Drowning is imminent.
On my first show, I made a tactical error of drinking two red bulls before performing. Already a jittery mess, being on stage and on a double dose of stimulants felt like being in a car crash in slow motion. I felt bad for my veteran House Team partners as they had to work real hard for any of the scenes I was in to make a lick of sense. That’s the thing about not feeling good on stage. It’s embarrassing and you feel like you’ve disappointed everyone. As if they can’t even look at you without disgust. “You’re a disgrace to this craft. Go home.”

Of course these were just my internal thoughts. Actually, all I got was encouragement and compliments from the other actors on my first show. The truth is,  the other actors are just as concerned about their performance as I am with mine. Meaning, they didn’t dwell so much on how I performed, they’ve got themselves to worry about. This was all part of the learning process, that’s why the House Teams are only performed by students of the training center and its alumni.

“Learning proce—wait, the audience paid with hard earned $5 to watch you learn?! What about the audience, man!?”
Norm Laviolette, co-founder and an instructor at the Improv Asylum told our class , “It’s never the audiences’ fault if the show is bad. It’s how you handle yourself on stage.” Although  true and possible to accomplish with experience, for a new comer like me, being able to handle yourself well on stage is close to nonexistent when you do something  and your audience are as responsive as the people you find at the Port Authority at 3AM on Christmas Eve.

“It’s not the audiences’ fault.” I agree. They came to the show with the intent to laugh. So I feel more disappointed when I make them do the exact opposite of of their intentions.

On the third House Teams show, the entire place was sold out and the energy was so high, it carried all of us from one funny scene to another. It was crazy! Using another surfer analogy, it’s like we found the perfect wave and rode it to as far as it would take us. It was such a good ride that when it was over, I completely forgot to bow to the audience. And like all things that feels awesome. It’s addictive. As much as I hated sucking on stage, I love—uh — not sucking even better! The only way to learn how not to suck is to continue doing it, so yeah…. that is exactly what I intend to do.

On that note. This Sunday, January 17th is my improv graduation show. You’ll see a decent roster of people doing sketches and improv. I was given the responsibility of designing the pamphlets, which also gave me practice on using the wacom tablet.

So far all I’ve heard are compliments on the design so… either they’re telling the truth or the group of them had a meeting and decided to to give the asian kid a break by complimenting my design no matter how shitty it is. Knowing these people, the latter would never happen. Anyways, inside the pamphlets are our bios, I’d post them on here but I doubt the other actors would appreciate that. SO I’ll just crop into my part of the inside.

This is the big thing this week. I’ve got friends from Jersey and New York, taking a hike up to Boston to see this. Pressure? What Pressure? Why would you even mention “Pressure?” I don’t see no “pressure.” this is no sweat. I got this.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 14th, 2010 at 9:52 am and is filed under asylum, improv. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.