Picking up from last time –
I was talking about character work. I went up to be someone who was a birdwatcher who needed shoes, and who wanted to spend time with the birds – in the trees, in the sky, wherever they may be.
My biggest issue my teachers brought up in my Groundlings classes was that I basically always played either a super positive young girl, or an embarrassed young girl. And that’s pretty much all you got from me. And the idea was like, “Yeah. You could play that in a commercial or a show. But this is improv. You can be literally anything! Be an old woman. Be a hoity-toity person. Be a shy person. Be anything other than a wide-eyed excitable girl who stepped out of a musical.
And what was my birdwatcher? …An excited young woman.
I think that’s my go-to when I get nervous. ‘Cause that’s just me… But that’s not acting, consarn it!
A birdwatcher could’ve been a sort of gruffy outdoory person. Or it could’ve been a quiet contemplative person who likes animals more than people. It could’ve been an uptight-ish bookworm who’s super interested in and knowledgeable about the world around her. I could’ve been so many things and I just went up there basically as me.
Aye, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye.
But we all made it through, and people still clapped ’cause of how exciting it was that the shopkeeper figured out the thing.
Everybody lived.
I did feel slightly out of place because it seemed to be a crowd of people really in the iO scene. It seemed like everybody knew BJ but me. And he seemed like a super cool guy, so I wish I knew him!
It was really nice to see someone who loved improv so much! You could tell in his eyes when he was introducing different games and such that he just loved it. And the people around seemed to love him. It was very sweet.
At the end of the night after everyone hung around the bar in the lobby for a while, I told him, “Hey, I don’t know you, but I had an awesome time tonight and you’re really funny.” He gave me a huge hug, and it was awesome.
This night really made me want to do more at iO West. I really like the scene there.