Does Improv Bond Us Closer
As the world struggles to find connection during a pandemic, does being part of an improv community give you a head start on connection - and is there a difference to the sort of friendships we make through improv?
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This episode features:
Steven Morgan who improvises with Easylaughs in Amsterdam. Details on their shows and workshops here: https://www.easylaughs.nl
Elise Rodriguez from Florida Studio Theatre in Sarasota. Check out their shows and workshops here: http://www.floridastudiotheatre.org and follow Elise here: https://www.instagram.com/draggingthirty/
John Gebretatose from HUGE Theater in Minneapolis. Check out their shows and workshops here: https://www.hugetheater.com/
Hellena Jang from Seoul City Improv in Seoul. Check out their shows and workshops here: https://www.seoulcityimprov.com/
The Improv Chronicle Podcast is produced and hosted by Nottingham improviser Lloydie James Lloyd
Theme music - Sam Plummer
Logo design - Hélène Dollie
Episode transcript:
This…. Is the Improv Chronicle Podcast… I’m Lloydie
As the world struggles to find connection during a pandemic, does being part of an improv community give you a head start on connection - and is there a difference to the sort of friendships we make through improv?
At the end of each episode of the Improv Chronicle, I invite you to get in touch if you have an idea for an episode - and a few weeks ago I got an email from someone telling me that the most profound friendships he has had are through improv. “Is there an episode in that?” he asked… turns out, there is. When I started making this I thought it might border on cheesy… but, for me at least, it’s not. The people you are about to hear from are though provoking and honest. And what they say is heartwarming.
My name is Steven Morgan I'm an improviser with Easy Laughs based in Amsterdam. I'm originally from the U. K. I learned improv in Australia and now I live in the Netherlands. So what sort of friendships have you made from improv? Erm a large number I think actually and often ones which are quite unexpected um, or at least to my er, my perception from before I started in the sense that I've met people who I think that otherwise were from walks of life that I wouldn't have encountered or interacted with um, so for example um, one of the things that before I joined Easy Laughs as a cast member, I it would go to their Sunday workshops a lot which would often see er, twenty to forty people turn up for a two hour workshop and it would just be whoever turned up at that particular time. Sometimes you'd get completely new faces sometimes you get people who'd been doing it for a while who were currently doing a course or sometimes you get people who just happened to be in Amsterdam for some time and er, they just wanted to do some improv while they were in a different city and different country and I think that just the combination of the fact that you're doing all of this, these these these scenes in this work together which involves a lot of trust on a lot of um ridiculous situations then would be followed up by just you know a coffee and some chatting and everything in the cafe afterwards. And it would always be like a really nice experience and I think that when you've got this thing where you you all like the performing, you have something in common, you have something which helps everything else become a little bit easier.
Last weekend I watched an online interview as part of the Sarasota Improv Festival which this year was an online festival the interviewer and interviewee had met and become friends through improvised comedy and their friendship had this incredible chemistry as I watch the interview. So I caught up with them the next day and asked them how improv had brought them together as friends.
Hey I'm Elise I'm an improviser and an instructor here in Sarasota Florida with Florida Studio Theater.
Hi I'm John Gebretatose I am an improviser and er, more here in Minneapolis Minnesota.
Now, you two know each other and have become friends through improv so how did that happen?
We met in Boston at the Boston Improv Festival and ironically I think that that year they were they had a diversity initiative for their improv festival so um, so we met in that context and now I think that has also been a part of our conversation as friends but um, we we met at the festival and then I think I believe John met us up on one day that we were going to go to like tour around Boston with Will Luera who is the ultimate Boston tour guide and we kind of just hung out all day um him and Denzel who is his duo partner hung out with our cast and we all just kind of bonded and we had for breakfast I think it was oysters and whiskey. Well I had oysters and was keeping breakfast and then we had cannoli for lunch
Yeah at that Italian that place was good.
And then we had Italian for dinner so it was it was an interesting day in terms of culinary adventures but it was really cool we got to we got to hang out and know each other and kind of you know just vibe on each other's energies.
How was the making of the friendship affected by the fact that you are both improvises do you think that makes a difference John?
Yeah, yeah there is a common language it does make a difference. I think er, we understand the levels of the spectrum of joy and also like the human reality the existence of a you know being black or brown and or, you know just like that experience in America we we could relate to that so yeah the both yeah, we just could just you know go to any anywhere on the spectrum and support each other.
As I was making this episode I got a WhatsApp message from one of my friends, Mark. Mark I played together in Rhymes Against Humanity - The Improvised Musical in Nottingham, England. Mark wanted to tell me about a friend he made in Korea and tell me how welcoming she'd been when he was traveling there. So of course I checked the time in Korea and figured out a good time to call.
Hi I'm Hellena Jang from South Korea I live in Seoul right now and I'm leading a Korean improv team and also I'm teaching improv in Korean so probably, maybe I'm sure, I'm the first Korean improviser for full time and first teacher in Korea.
What kind of friendships have you made from improv?
I met so many good ex-pat improvisers first in S.C.I Seoul City Improv that's mostly English teachers from oversees, so I've met American, Canadian and Australian and so many and also I I traveled a lot for the improv, so I will be in Chicago and Minneapolis and New York, LA and also Canada, Calgary for the Keith Johnson workshops, I've met so many improvisers and they are such a wonderful person and they are so warm, so still they, we are connected and we ask who each other's safety during the pandemic, So I have a so many beautiful people, through I've met through improv.
Back to Elise and John. Aside from a common interest what specific things do they think being an improviser gives to a friendship
I think that improv primes us to be better at relationships in general and I think that friendships are are one of the second to obviously a romantic relationship are one of the most intimate relationships that we have is a friendship and I think improv primes us to to be connected to pay attention to each other I'll give you an example in fact of John that I always I don't know if you know this John thing I've told you this before but an example was when we were touring in Boston we went to this church and I am someone who is very sensitive to like energy and I get tired really fast um, and John because I I feel like because he's a good human but also because he's an improviser picked up on that and I saw him kind of like trailing behind me like, hey are you okay? We barely knew each other but something in him said let me watch out for her right, like, I have her back and the fact that I'm an improviser allowed me to catch that wave, right, to say oh hey, he's paying attention there's kindness and there's care. So I think that improv primes us to, to be ready to connect and to be ready to be available for each other.
Well the story goes differently to me I was like "Hey why are you guys leaving me? Elise, are you okay?" No, I'm kidding!!
John do you think the bonus that we create as improv friends um, are in any way stronger than regular friendships?
Oh yeah definitely. Well first off, you know, we are in improv connecting and engaging with each other intentionally. We're coming together on the basis of play and that takes intentionality to be to be really invested in each other. There is other friendships you know, people come together because they were like oh we went to school together, or we play basketball ah, you know, you work together. Those things are cool but you didn't come to gather on the basis of something that requires you to really look at and invest in another person without a script, without direction you know, so yeah of course it does and in ten fold because you're hopefully going into it with the idea of being generous, like generosity and you know empathy, you know all the things that you want you want in humanity you wanna show up with that sort of energy twenty four seven so when you can have an excuse, an excuse to be a good person that you want to be anyway, that most people want to be anyway, it's going to make it richer and better. It's different.
For Steve, improv has helped him create brand new friendship bonds, fast.
As someone in their thirties er, I found that there was a point where making friendships became a lot harder, especially as someone who moved away from the country that they from to move to a place where I didn't know anyone so suddenly I had to work out um, you know, who I was what I wanted to do and er essentially recreated a new identity which is simultaneously liberating and terrifying but what I found was that when I was meeting people at er, I don't know ex-pat events or maybe just a friend of a friend and dinner party or just a regular party, sort of thing, the conversation would often gravitate to the same handful of things which where either sports which I have no interest in or my work which I have a similar level of interest in, my day job, and so you know, naturally when the conversation gravitates towards things which you don't want to talk about but at the same time that you don't want to kind of try and wrestle where the conversation is going to go I more often or not just end up asking people questions about themselves which is interesting in itself but there was something about that experience of improv and then meeting and interacting people and you know the fact that you've essentially like perhaps I had been a er, a I had been re enacting a cat um, and had been you know really going for it with the method acting for that particular scene I feel like when someone has seen that and still wants to talk to you that, the the thing that you've broken, you've broken the ice and we shattered the ice essentially.
Hellena definitely thinks improv is a fast track to friendship.
Of course it's easier and faster because improv can make them, so improv open people's heart easily because I think the improv is vulnerability because of that we make er friends very easily. I think basically they are already open mind, so that's why we, we can make a friendship very easily and in a good way.
Do you think it goes beyond just the fact that oh, wait we're interested in the same thing. Is it something innate about being an improviser?
First of all, yes but that's not every thing. I think of course we are doing improv and we are interested in improv, because of that we could meet, but inside of improv we found the part we find the human being. Truth in heart. Do you think when we improvise together we're revealing things about ourselves to each other without even realizing it sometimes? Yes of course. I think doing improv together, improv together is finding ourselves and also finding your partner without realising because it's I think improv is a journey to find someone. Including myself.
Are these bonds that we create stronger? Back to Steve.
I mean that's a very hard one to say because I have no control experiments to, to go along side but one thing I would say is that um, the the improv bonds that I have made definitely feel stronger and deeper I think. As in the people who I have met through improv I felt more comfortable to be able to um perhaps go another level at an earlier point of the conversation. I don't have to hold back as much perhaps because I also feel like you know that that's it's er, this this trust that if there is in that environment then sort of, sort of bleeds through to any conversations that you have afterwards on while, you know I've I've met people who not through improv who I think is great and I've gotten on with them completely fine and really like them I do think that um yeah that that it's it's almost like an accelerated thing with improv.
Hellena believes the bonds we make as improvisers are stronger.
Yes, in Chicago, in Minneapolis I would be in there just three weeks or two weeks or five weeks, but we have some thing in our friendship, so it's been already six years, four years and we are far from the U. S. and and Europe but still we are together in the group. It's it is, it's probably something different from your other relationships I don't have a religion but I feel like it is kind of a religion I think. So we have a something, we've been together and doing improv together for just a few weeks during the short time we find ourself and we rely to them and we trust each other in a very short time. We trust and we believe. We're bonding very tightly because of that still week contact and we miss each other so much and even though we didn't talk like six months, but we do Zoom call, we have so many things to talk.
Friendship and community is something most of us crave as human beings and John thinks that the friendship and community we get from improv is priceless.
Being in Minneapolis right now with George Floyd being murdered by the police you don't really understand um, how community can be so meaningful and so practical, so necessary until somebody's like in a tragedy that's you know that just is like bigger than you know er, like when people, when disasters happen natural disasters or, you know, just kind of any sort of thing like that um, it is a so powerful like I could hit up Elise at four, five in the morning, three in the morning and she would know not to judge it. She's ready right? Absolutely. To know that I do have that option is um, that that you can't put a price on that, that's something like, and to know that we can come together and whether I want to cry or if I just need to listen to Elise talk about whatever because I just want to distract myself that er, you never really know, I didn't understand like the level of importance of community until um the world saw the tragedy then I was like wow okay. I mean I already knew about community but like when the world watches a tragedy happen then it's like, fuck! Yeah, it's nice to have somebody and many more people that understand that I I don't need therapy from them I just need them to hold space that's bigger than just you know what we assume. If you, if you're comfortable holding me onstage being wacky we could play, then when I'm vulnerable offstage I feel it's it's just it just feels way more open and way more free.
Next Time…. On the Improv Chronicle Podcast…
Taking a break… from improv
Online improv has become a big thing during the pandemic but not everyone wants to take their improv online or teach online… so some people have taken a complete break. You’ll hear from people who have decided to spend some time away from the art form they love… and how that’s been for them.
The improv chronicle podcast is produced and presented by me, Lloydie James Lloyd. YOU can help the podcast right now - Please subscribe and rate us on your favourite podcast app, you can make a one-off donation to help the cost of production by clicking the link at the top of the show notes… and If you have an idea for a possible episode go to - www.improvchronicle.com