My Guest

Well, I did my guest star bit of improv on Friday night.

I just kept telling myself to go and have fun. I did.

I was intimidated at first. I have never done this short form style, and I really only knew two people that night. It helps when you know people.

We did a warm up game, and they were moving like lightning. The guy who asked me to guest, who is also the leader of the group, told me to get in there and do something. I had to be forced. Not a good start.

Then, we did the show. I had four scenes.
The first went well, and I added some jokes, but it was driven by the other guy I knew. He is brilliant, so it was rather expected.
The second scene I did was with a girl I didn't know. She is a bit of a type A, and our scene was one where you get to speak one word, or many words, or none. She really was only giving me stuff when we could speak many words. When it came to one word, it always seemed to be me giving the one word. Then the silence of no words was terrible. And by silence, I mean from the audience.
The third was with the leader, and it went great. The gimmick is I get a scene book, and have to read all the lines of a certain character, and he has no idea what is going on, and has to improv his lines and create the scenario. He was great at it, and we both added good characters.
The fourth was a fun scene. I worked with two ladies I didn't know, but the whole scene is the guy in the booth throws sound effects at us while we do a scene and we have to justify why the noises are there. Putting ridiculous reasons to something unexpected is pretty much what I do at the restaurant so I was comfortable. I'm quick, and that helps.

After the show, I felt a stab of paranoia that I didn't do well, but I told myself to let that go. I'm working on the inner validation thing, and I needed to create that for myself then.

Plus, the proof will be if I ever get asked back to join them. They have a show in August, so we'll see.