Emotional noises

My Tuesday night improv class once again did not fail to be outrageous, uncomfortable and thrilling.

The teacher, Gerri, is incredibly focused on each of us as individuals and what we are working on. The starting point for our "work" is our own idea of what we should be improving, which we shared with her in the first class. She takes that and then observes us with unsettling perceptiveness until she can see our souls laid bare, and then pokes us in all of our softest areas.

Last night was week three and she's got everyone's number at this point. Her singular focus with me: emotional noises.

Several of the exercises that we did were toward this end. One was set up as scenes between old married couples where one of them is chatty and prattles on and on and the other has to be extremely communicative and involved but only use emotional noises. "It feels totally retarded, and it is, but it totally works!!" explained Gerri.

After were were thoroughly primed in using non-verbal communications, she put me up for a scene that she had specially set up to help me work on developing characters. I was to be an old black woman. The scene was me at home with my husband making dinner, and then whatever else evolved. The key, as you would imagine, was emotional noises. You see, old black women, and many young ones, specialize in this form of communication.

It was a little awkward getting into it. I'm not great at maintaining an accent or dialect (inevitably, Mexicans become Indians and New Yorkers become Valley Girls) but I did my best and made way more emotional noises than is actually humanly possible.

The scene was a hit with the class and Gerri was delighted. So delighted that she smacked me on the ass several times, then grabbed my face and kissed my cheek. This is how she gives feedback.

Mmmmmm hmmmm mmmmmmm!