A lot has happened since the last update. In fact, I think a week’s worth of things have happened. I won’t go into great detail on everything, but rather, I’ll give you a succint recap of the week…with color commentary provided by yours truly.

Monday: We did some clowning work in Jet’s class. When I say clowning, I don’t red nose/big shoes (although that would have been a lot fun) but rather; physical, activity based, real emotion filled, performance. We did this exercise where 5 of us had to stand in a line, and pass along an emotion, in our case, sadness, from the beginning to the end, and then back. As we passed it, it had to increase from a 1 to a 10. Now, if you’ve never done the excercise, or something similar to it, the next stuff won’t really make sense, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. It was amazing. Once you start getting to the higher levels of the emotion, it starts becoming very real. We focused a lot on changing our breathing, which really got to the root of everything. Of the five of us, a few of us actually started crying, right in front of anyone. For me after doing level 10, my entire upper body started buzzing. When I sat down, I had to just rock back and forth for about 5 minutes to recover. I had never gotten to a place like that before. I legit, got incredibly sad, right there, in front of everyone. That’s comedy studies for ya! Fast forward to that night. Bobby, Amy, and I went to the iO orientation where Charna Halpern spoke. After that, we saw the Armando Diaz Theatrical Experience and Hootenanny. It was both an experience, and a hootenanny.

Tuesday: I presented my project on viral media in Andy’s class today. We also learned about 3/4 person scenes with Scruggs and rehearsed with Gellman. That night we went to The Reckoning. Sorry…no big emotional revelations on Tuesday.

Wednesday: We did some clowning scenes in Jet’s class that got incredibly fun once we started improvising within the scenes. At one point, I beat my partner with a pair of jeans. Again, that’s comedy studies for ya. In Norm’s class, we finished the improv project involving puppets that we had started on Wednesday. We learned about the Algonquin Round Table in Anne’s class. They sounded as Jokesturbatory as Majors…I was impressed. That night, a bunch of us saw T.J. and Dave. It was maybe the best I’ve seen them. It was truly one of those, “I’m just gonna quit now because I’ll never be as good as them” moments. We were reminded by Anne on Thursday that they have about 50 years of experience between them…so…all in due time.

Thursday: So, here’s a story for Thursday. I got to perform at iO! We went to go see Ted and Melanie (Paul and Jet) and before the show, Lyndsay Hailey came out and told us about a new show that was happening after Ted and Melanie called “Open Basket.” She produced a basket and asked everyone who wanted to, to put their ID’s in the basket. She would then pick two, and the two winners would get to perform with her, Jet, Paul, and Mark (another iO improviser). Well, lo and behold, Amy and I were picked. About 5 minutes before Ted and Melanie was done, Lyndsay came and got us and we went to the green room to warm up. Once we were warm, we huddled with Lyndsay and Mark, and they told us that they were going to take great care of us out there, and that it was going to be super fun. Because: 1. I haven’t improvised in public a while, 2. I was improvising with professionals, and 3. One of those professionals was my teacher, I was quite nervous, so their pep talk made it much better. The performance was such a cool experience. I’ve never performed with improvisers of that caliber before. They’re so grounded. Every seen felt so solid, and every character felt so strong and real. They really did support us out there. It was a great feeling. I got some good laughs and had a lot of fun. Thus, it was a success. After the show, Amy and I were talking to Jet, and she told us that once she saw us out there performing, she treated us just like veteran improvisers, and didn’t pull any punches on stage. That, my friends, was a huge compliment.

Friday: We had a musical improv workshop in the afternoon which, much like our first one, was a lot of fun. Afterward we did some longform for fun which I thought went really well. I think my favorite part was Alex, playing my grandfather, literally climbing all over me because he couldn’t work, and had lost grip of his walker. Good times. That night we saw Where the Wild Things Are. I thought everything about it was great, like, really great, except for the script. It dragged a bit, and I didn’t think any of the characters were motivated enough. Also, there was too much backstory that I felt was left out…which is ironic considering it was based off of a short children’s book. After that, we went to Danna’s rooftop clubhouse to drink, and then we ventured to the Rock and Roll McDonalds. I think I got home around 4. A fine night in Chicago, it was.