One thing we improvisers tend to be really good at is shitting in each others’ corn flakes. In the absence of any real worthy drama within our own theaters, we’ll look to war with another theater in our area, and we’ll generally pick the most modest of offenses to set us off. See if any of these claims sound familiar, improviser:

“You worded your ad in such a way that it might be construed as a slam on our program!”
“You began doing a show similar to the show that we have done before!”
“When you opened your new theater, you took away talent from our theater.”

That’s right, they ARE familiar. You heard them in New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, North Carolina, Austin, Washington DC, St. Louis, Richmond, Green Bay, Kansas City, and a couple of other places that I’m too lazy to actually research rather than recall.

Why do we do this? Well, within our own theater, if we find ourselves predominantly performing in just one, we talk plenty of shit, but since we’ve bought into a retarded notion that everyone has to be the best of friends in order to improvise on the same stage, despite the fact that it never, ever happens that way. It’s bad form to write in your blog about what a bitch Ronnie Wilson is if you stand a pretty decent chance of being cast on a team with Ronnie Wilson during the next audition.¹ And someone in the theater will be close enough to Ronnie even that if Ronnie doesn’t care (because Ronnie thinks you’re a bitch), that someone feels insulted and hurt, or worse, feels that the mutual distance must be fixed, immediately.

So, because it’s a day-to-day headache to out-and-out despise someone in your own theater for legitimate reasons, it is often much easier to release that frustration in veiled digs and outright message board hostility towards someone else’s project or theater. Ahhh, the message board. How did we fight without you?

So here’s how it goes down. Kelly Poopinski posts something saying, “I really like improv, and I wish the community would get bigger.” This is an honest sentiment from Kelly Poopinski. All of us improvisers agree that we like improv and other people should too. Hey, even Ross White wishes the improv community would grow.

Then Mike Flatulum, who is new to the scene, makes the dire mistake of saying, “Gosh, I wish that the many theaters we have here in our community were working together.” Oh, Mike, don’t you know that seventeen years ago, Joe and Sally were part of the same theater company, and Joe liked Sally but Sally slept with Rick, and Joe harbored resentment against both Sally and Rick that lingers on? And now that Sally is the artistic director of the New Improv Theater Site (NITS), Joe has spread the word around Previous Improv Company of Krazies (PICK) that NITS is pathetic. (Joe has never seen a NITS show, or came to one with his mind made up that it would be bad.) So, Joe posts a veiled reference to the reasons that the two can never collaborate, which boils down to petty personality issues which only really relate to Joe and Sally, and no one else involved.

But because we, as improvisers, are always right, we must immediately enlist the rest of the community around us to come to bat for us. Of course, only one or two people are actually going to post anything offensive or inflammatory– maybe just Joe– but the rest of us have to at least chime in to show our teammates that we were reading the thread and pretending to agree in vague principal that yes, Sally was kind of a dick about things, when in actuality we don’t really care, because we don’t know Sally. Or we saw her show once and we genuinely didn’t care for it. Or maybe we chime in because we’ve been in Joe’s theater for five or six years and we’ve really come to genuinely believe Sally is a dick, because Joe said so and one time she teched a show and blacked it out before we had a chance to say that really funny thing we were going to say.

So we post a few times, usually something innocuous, and then someone who doesn’t know either theater feels compelled to say something about how awful it is that the two theaters are at war. Then, someone in each of the theaters believes they are at war! “If Kevin Polaski says we hate each other, he must really know something about that other theater! They hate us! They talk shit about us whenever they gather! We must hate them back!” is the rallying cry.

But the thing of it is, most people don’t care. It’s not an institutionally held hatred– it’s usually petty and personal, between a few people who have a history that extends well beyond theater and almost always involves sex somewhere along the line. (Maybe just not directly with each other.) Most of the people in each theater don’t know a lot about the other theater, or do, but don’t care because the other theater’s environment just isn’t their cup of tea. It might be geography, it might be established friendships, it might be artistic preference, it might be the cost of classes or the experience of the instructors or the horrible body odor of a member of one company². It might be feelinsg of jealousy or hurt because they were spurned on- or off-stage. Who can say why we choose one artistic endeavor over another? We all have different reasons.

I’m involved at the business end, as a co-owner of a theater currently being dragged through one of these petty spats by good-intentioned people on both sides. And as a business-person, I can safely tell you the following:

• If improv grows in my small market, that is a good thing.
• I see no way in which pettiness and enmity strengthens my goals for my improv theater. So why would I encourage it?
• I may not be at other theaters’ shows or classes on a regular basis, because I’m busy, but that doesn’t mean I think they suck. In fact, in most cases, I’m quite friendly with the members of other companies, having either worked with them on other projects or having performed alongside them for many years.
• I hope you pay no mind to any member of my company who are assholes. I pay very little attention to asshole members of your company³, because I know that they’re not representative of your theater’s ownership. In most cases, I like and respect your theater’s ownership. Your theater’s ownership may have attended my wedding. And I know those assholes are not representative of the many people in your company who are excited about improvisation, yes-and, and community.
• I have seen so many of these spats come and go, I could write a thesis on it for a sociology degree. I could then publish that thesis. And someone would think I was talking shit about their theater in my thesis. And I would still get up in the morning and not worry about it.

So, in short, because I have to go to a theater and perform a show that some people really like and some people really don’t like, here are some parting words.

If you think you’re being a dick, knock it off.

If you think someone else is being a dick, ignore them.

You have better things in life to band against than someone’s improv theater. For Christ’s sake, look at our government and the giant corporations that actually intend to screw you.

If people don’t want to do the same show or class you’re doing, don’t sweat it. There are a lot of factors that go into choosing an experience that works for you, and people aren’t all alike. It’s not an affront.

Let’s stop being rude to each other and focus our attention where it belongs: Having awkward and thoroughly ill-advised sex with the members of our own company, team, or troupe, and then dealing with the fallout from dashed expectations.

Or proposing to have awkward and thoroughly ill-advised sex with the members of our own company, team, or troupe, being rejected, and then dealing with the fallout from dashed expectations.

¹ I’ve also found that it’s retarded to make observations about Ronnie that are neutral, because if Ronnie misconstrues them as negative, you’ll end up with a strained, awkward relationship forever. (Even if you and Ronnie are taking a class in a city you don’t live in. Ronnie could move to your city one day, and end up on your team one day. And you will feel horrible about that awkwardness forever. Seriously. Trust me.)

² You may think I am joking. I am not. I was once in a company with a man who smelled so badly of his own pee that company members left to pursue other interests, and to get fresh air.

³ Someone, somewhere, in an improv company, thinks this statement is directed at them. Get over yourself. Unless you are Larry Howard. Larry Howard, you are an asshole⁴.

⁴ But I love you.

Looking more at how one might take education online, Martha sent me this link: Technology creates lectures on demand. My immediate thought has a pricetag– I don’t see a heavy implementation in the K-12 arena right now because the cost to equip the classrooms is so high. Universities tend to have the capacity to create high-tech classrooms, high schools are generally lucky to have projectors.

And the question continues to come up– who wants lectures? The article mentions that universities are using these lectures as recruiting tools. I’ll admit that I’d prefer a university where I don’t have to show up for class over one where I do, but given the investment in hardware and licensing, wouldn’t you rather look at a university that’s doing something more cutting-edge than having one person stand up in front of a group and disseminate knowledge?

That said, if you are going to be standing up disseminating, then YES, we want your lectures captured and preserved for posterity. I can’t imagine the knowledge that has been lost over time because finer points of lectures were not captured, because interested students didn’t have the chance to go back and review. I see tons and tons of potential for new teachers to succeed by using pieces of older lectures when they’re stuck on a particular topic. I see digital libraries full of lectures and lessons on similar topics, so if a student doesn’t get it one way, they can search the library for a different clip that might shed some light. And I see the role of the teacher changing from “the one true authority” to “the person who shows you how to find and effectively implement information.”

That would be a good thing.

While we wait for Apreso to become affordable, let’s rock handhled cams and YouTube.

If you’re interested, I’m performing live at DSI Comedy Theater tonight and tomorrow, 7:30 PM.