She Improvises
Back when I had moved back to the High Desert, and was reconnecting with old friends there, I agreed to pick up one of their boyfriends from the auto shop while his truck got work done. As we drove to his job, we joked about mundane things. I dropped him off and went about my day. That evening, I got a text from my friend.
“My boyfriend thinks you’re funny!” She said.
“That’s cool.” I responded.
“No,” She texted. “You don’t get it. He doesn’t think women are funny!”
I know I responded to this, but I remember thinking his idea was weird. Of course women are funny. I relayed this conversation to my mom, who didn’t agree with my friend’s boyfriend’s sentiment, but informed me it was a common thought for a while.
“Women weren’t supposed to be funny,” my mom referenced TV and film when she was growing up, “and if they were, they weren’t pretty.”
Luckily by this point, I’d lived long enough without hearing this to think it might be true (good job, mom and dad). I’d met too many funny women, knew too many people who could not deny when a woman made them laugh, and had made plenty of people laugh on my own, to entertain this opinion that women aren’t funny.
While everyone grows up with expectations by society, women are handed extra expectations. Don’t be loud. Look a certain way. If you want to lead, you’re bossy. If you want to understand things that directly affect you, you’re nosey. If you say you’re uncomfortable with something that directly affects you, you’re judgy. There are so many more tropes that can be said, so much more misogyny that is thrown at us that we internalize, that it can be a life-long project of removing what we’ve learned to find out who we are.
When I heard Liz was teaching She Improvises with The Playful Stage, I knew I wanted to be a part of the class. First of all, Liz is amazing and deserves all of the good things. She is an excellent teacher, informing you of what you need to know, and being patient and supportive as you go through the process of learning the things she teaches you. She’s also very skilled and hilarious, herself, and teaches from her experience in improv.
The class is designed for women and women-identifying improvisers. It is a space where you may be able to play roles you didn’t consider playing before, and where you can make emotional choices in scenes it simply wouldn’t have occurred to you to make in real life. There are mantras! I won’t give them away, but the work in each class focuses on them. There’s even a chance to talk with each other about our experiences around those mantras, although you are not obligated to speak up if you don’t want to. It is a safe space where you can learn about yourself, and from others who may come from a different place than you.
I left this class feeling a stronger sense of awareness to my own choices in scenes. Am I playing a character who wants everything in the scene to be okay, or am I willing to allow the scene to go where it wants to go? Am I playing the one in charge, or the assistant? Am I towing the line of societal expectations, or am I showing the audience other possibilities? These are things I especially became receptive to in Liz’s class, and I would recommend “She Improvises” to anyone who would like to get better at these things as well.
