A bag full of wheres

Tuesday evenings I have improv class, a highlight of my week.*

Last night was no exception. The plan was to drill scenes one after another for the three-hour class so that we can get more experience doing the improv and spend less time talking about it (this is a challenge for my teacher, who looooooves to talk talk talk!).

To facilitate quick and easy starts to scenes we each wrote down 10-15 "wheres" on scraps of paper and put them in a bag. The improvisers starting a new scene choose a scrap from the bag and that location is where the scene takes place.

From what folks wrote down, you would think it had not occurred to us that we were in fact the same people who were going to have to deal with these locations. We all sat there gleefully writing down absurdly challenging locations imagining someone else's horror at having to do an entire scene under water during in the 19th century, or in a dark cave with no flashlight, or in a torture dungeon, or on a Bollywood movie set, or at Sea World leading a tour of mute children.

Even as I try to complain about these ridiculous locations, I can't help but be delighted with the possibility that each one holds. Because of course, there are no bad locations - only bad improvisers. Except for "in a cat's ear," which is just stupid.


*Other highlights of the usual week include salsa lessons on Wednesdays, live bluegrass at Atlas Cafe on Thursdays and usually something else fun on Fridays if we aren't heading off skiing.