So I've made the leap and moved to Chicago. I'm going to be studying improvisational comedy at the Second City Conservatory. I had my first class on Wednesday and loved it. My instructor is Norm Holly, who is really nice and laid back. I hear that he really doesn't give feedback on what you need to work on. But just taking the one class from him makes me feel like he doesn't have to, because he gets you to a point where you can do it for yourself. Our first "warm up" consists of us walking around the classroom, making eye contact and saying "hi", or some variation. Something that we've all done. But we continued on with it adding a series of questions that Norm would ask us. Such as: 1.) Finish the sentence "You know you're a hipster if... and mine was ... when you tattoo your own skinny jeans on your legs. 2.) Who's the one got away? 3.) Who's the one you should have never been with? 4.) What's the worst place to go for a first day? etc. When we had our answer, we would come downstage and say it, then melt back into the walk. We did that for about 30 minutes or so, and then we did freeze tag which only had the clapping and saying freeze element in it. We didn't have to take the position of the previous player. I felt that our scenes were really good because we had that time to sort of get to know each other while answering the questions. After that we split up into teams of 3 and and did a 5 minute scene in a predetermined environment where our character needed to be informed by a subject that we knew really well. Mine was "movies" (surprised gasp). I won't go into the details of the scene, but it felt really good. The other players in the scene (Brenden and Jessica) were super cool and very funny. The next set of 3 person scenes we did were based on not knowing each other and having a few predetermined objects with us that would inform our characters. I had an abacus and a signed picture of my Mom. That scene went really well too. The last one we did was to get together in a 3 person group and plan out a "blackout" which is a scene that's over on the first beat. Good scene there too. My class is really good and everyone in it is super nice and committed to doing their best. I can't wait to see what other stuff we get into. Waiting an entire week is murder on me. I'd like to thank everyone at Dallas Comedy House and all my friends in Texas. I'd also like to thank Marcus Hall for letting me couch surf with him until I'm big enough to fly away from the nest. I really appreciate you all. Sappy shit.
