Category: Briealizations

I think People & Chairs turned me onto Ben Noble’s blog, which lead me to his newsletter; a weekly Monday morning email filled with inspiring and helpful tidbits pertaining to improv and creativity in general. The perfect email to receive amongst the rest of the Monday madness of a 9-5 office job.

It seems appropriate then that I should read Ben’s post about his Lighthouse word last year around the same time I began bullet journalling because the two seem to be an intertwining system of motivation and creativity.

Per Ben, a lighthouse word is a single word that will serve as your guiding light for the year ahead. I figured I’d give it a shot. Last year, I chose the word “wake,” because I felt like I may be going through the motions too much, rather than being present, and awake for everything I was doing. I also felt like I was sleeping in too much on weekends and taking too many naps, and that I might be missing out on stuff as a result of that. Since then, I’ve reminded myself that that’s ridiculous because sleeping and napping are both awesome, especially when you already have a lifestyle that keeps you up late at night.

The combination of wanting to be awake, and the mentality of enthusiastic yes anding learned in improv that’s seeped into my everyday existence really helped make 2017 a truly stand-out year. So when it came time to pick my lighthouse word for 2018, I was a bit worried. What could I pick that would be as impactful as “Wake the eff up, Brie?”

I shortlisted a few words and continued setting up my bujo for the year ahead. I thought about things I lacked, areas in my life I’d like to improve. One thing kept coming back to me. Something that frustrates me beyond belief;  when I’m not ready for something that I’ve known about for a while. I pride myself on time management skills, but my husband reminds me that these could still use a bit of brushing up. This is difficult when you have a million separate projects on the go, and they all require a significant amount of brainpower to make happen on a regular basis; like producing multiple comedy shows, acts and classes.

I think my perception of time is off, because there are always things I forget to take into consideration before I have to go out and do, anything! I assume I’ll just leave the house and be ready to go, but no; there are other things that need to happen before I step out the door. Inevitably, I’ll leave much later than originally intended because I forgot that leaving the house requires a fair amount of planning and preparation, and that these things take time.

This seems obvious, but it’s a huge set back for me. I try to plan things out to the T, time-wise so as soon as something like “shit, I forgot I have to put gas in the car” comes up, it throws me off my timeline and puts me behind, which raises my anxiety and brings out all sorts of negativity in me. And that’s just one little thing. There are many of these little things that add up and make me late ALL THE TIME. Since FOREVER! Since I was a kid! I wait to the last minute because I’m focused on other things that I’m not giving myself the amount of time to THINK about what I NEED to do to accomplish what I WANT.

So. I’ve taken some steps and I’ve thought up some strategies because this year, now that I’ve trained myself to be awake, I’ve decided that’s not enough. I also want to be properly PREPAREd.

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PS. It’s super hard for me not to sing that Lion King song almost every time I see this page in my bujo, and I’m trying to be OK with that.

What do you think? Do you have a lighthouse word for 2018? Let me know in the comments below!

“If you continually criticize or silence your children, especially your girls, eventually it might take.”

 

I teach improv.

Sometimes I teach improv to kids.

Sometimes kids are more honest and revealing than their adult counterparts.

I was teaching improv to kids as a way of helping them be more comfortable with presentations at school. At the beginning of class, I asked the students if any of them identified as having stage fright.

Some did. Not surprising. We moved on.

Later in the workshop, we were playing a game called Make a Story. In this game, a group of improvisers work together to tell a story.  The instructor points to the different improvisers, who take turns providing the next chunk of the story. The idea is for the group to listen to each others’ offers, work together as a team and build a cohesive story.

This group was composed of the improvisers who’d waited a while to volunteer to go up. The more outgoing individuals opted to go first, while the more reserved ones wait to get an idea of how the game is played before feeling confident the game won’t bring upon them unbearable discomfort or embarrassment. This is high school, after all.

The more reserved bunch went up and told a wonderful story. Every bit of it made sense logically, and it rivalled any of the other stories I’ve heard being performed by a group of people playing this game for the first time.

When I asked the group how they felt about their story, one girl confessed that she found it very difficult. I asked her why she felt that way.

She said: “Remember earlier, when you asked if we have stage fright? I’m one of those people who hates making presentations.”

I said to her: “But you did great! You seemed so confident. I couldn’t tell at all that you were nervous. Why don’t you like talking in front of people?”

She replied: “because every time I mis-speak at home, my mom yells at me.”

…

Look, I don’t pretend to know anything about parenting. But something tells me that if you keep telling your kid to just shut up, eventually they’re probably going to get the message. And that might cost them; grades, jobs, promotions. Who knows?

I quickly reinforced to her that her contribution to the story was helpful, wonderful and so. incredibly. valid. But that moment made me feel very sad.

I am a big loud-mouth. I speak loud on stage and off. Growing up in my house, my instead of going downstairs to ask my parents a question, I would typically shout my request down to them, and for the most part, they’d return the conversation in kind. My voice is a valuable tool, and it has always been encouraged as such.

Most people I meet, after knowing them for a month or two will typically express something the likes of: “I can’t believe I used to think you were shy (/quiet.)” (What can I say, it takes me a little while before revealing my true self to people, especially in like, an office setting or an intimate piano lesson.)

You know what? I’m probably reading too much into this, and creating drama where there is none. This girl’s relationship with her mother is probably wonderful, and totally Gilmore Girls and everything is sunshine and unicorns. But I can’t help thinking, if you continually criticize or silence your children, especially your girls, eventually it might take.

They might lose their voice.

They might be profoundly uncomfortable in an improv class. They might never feel confident in a business meeting. They might not speak up in a moment of crisis.

And then what?

More silence.

When I teach the introductory level of improv, I tell people that improv is better when it’s collaborative, not competitive.

This continues to ring true for me as I persist in my own improv journey. Every time I embark on a project that’s competitive in nature, I end up getting my heart broken. Not always by the competition, but certainly by the lack of collaboration.

A very important question in improv, and in life, I guess, but let’s stick to improv for now.

We put a lot of pressure on ourselves, as improvisers, to be funny. We think that because we are performing comedy we need to sling jokes constantly. When we don’t get the laughs we think we should be getting, we can resort to some desperate tactics. Ah, the goofy face / elaborate physicality manoeuvre is one I know better than I would like. Sometimes, beginner improvisers don’t know what to do, so they’ll tend to trod into taboo territory; much like beginner stand-up comedians, in search of a reaction, any reaction. Mostly, I think young as well as experienced improvisers often forget this one very important detail:

You’re not alone out there.

You aren’t. There’s at least one other person on stage with you, sharing the burden with you and maybe, just maybe, that person doesn’t want to be playing with someone in desperate search for something funny. Likely, they just need you to look at them. Pay attention to them. Discover the scene and inevitably the funny together.

I recently took a workshop with beloved improv guru Keith Johnstone, who had us play and observe an exercise between two improvisers, that completely blew my mind. In it, the improvisers would perform a scene, but the scene would stop as soon as one of the improvisers felt they didn’t like the offer given to them. For the untrained eye, this might seem antithetic to the “Yes And” principle, and in many ways, can be seen as such. But this exercise transcended “yes and.” It forced you, the performer, to look at your partner, and get a feeling for what they did or did not want you to do or say.

We’re talking group mind. We’re talking body language. We’re talking sociology.  It’s the power of observation. And most of all people, it’s not always about YOU!

Look at your partner; are they over 40? Hell, 30? Ask yourself; do they really want to play the role of mom or dad… again?

See your partner; is it a woman? Maybe she doesn’t want to enter a scene in which you, a man, make use of your position of power and status to get her to do something morally questionable, because maybe that’s the kind of thing she’s had to deal with over and over again in her life offstage.

Really look at your partner. It’s likely they want the same thing as you. To have fun.

Play being conscious of your partner instead of sticking inside your own head searching for ways to make the audience laugh. The answers will reveal themselves when you look at your partner, see that little gleam in their eye and know in that moment, it’s playtime.

 

I’m finally over my cold and into updating you about my leave status so far. So, step 1: got over cold. Step two, moved about 1/3 of the stuff from my place in Toronto to the new house, including my desk (finally.) I’ve ordered a new chair, which I will pick-up tomorrow as my Toronto office chair has been ripped to shits by my cat, whom I cherish and love… also, who I’ve just been reunited with, since she’s been staying with “grandma” for the past month & change (since DCM) because we were worried the move would stress her out. She has cat anxiety. It’s a thing.

And then I get asked whether or not I’ve written anything yet.

And I feel like I’ve let myself down.

The answer to that questions is… well, I just got my desk in today and hey, don’t rush me, I’ve been sick. That being said, I’ve been writing my morning pages (almost) every morning lately, and though Julia Cameron herself has written that technically those don’t count as writing, I feel like since I’m writing words down on paper, it totally counts for something.

Oh also, I’ve been performing in shows, I even had a paid gig for kids at the library. I’ve been having meetings with creative people; setting out plans for future projects and collaborations. I’ve been trying to catch up on personal administrative things.

And one day, I tried to enjoy the summer. I went to the beach.

But until I have something to show you, I will feel guilty.

I love to travel. This shouldn’t be surprising. A lot of people like to travel. You probably love to travel. People who don’t love to travel have either 1) not travelled or 2) not travelled right… yet. (There’s still hope for them.)

There were a few things I worried about when I made the leap to the life of a comedian. One was: will I ever have enough money to travel again? (Noting that I spent a year in Europe back in the pre-comedy days and it totally changed my life.) It’s well documented that amateur comedians often don’t lead the most glamorous lifestyles. Most of us are just scraping by to make rent and / or feed ourselves. A lot of us end up getting day jobs to make that process a bit easier. (See The Constant Struggle Podcast.)

When I was getting started, it seemed pretty obvious the only way I could ever continue to travel was to become a stand-up comic, get hired by Yuk Yuk’s and only ever travel in Canada. So I gave stand-up the ol’ college try. (Literally. I went to college for stand-up.) Along the way, I got side-tracked with this wonderful thing called improv, and again by the calling of the craft of sketch. What can I say? Humans are by nature social animals. (And empaths don’t do super well listening to that much misery and misogyny.)

In spite of the joys I was getting performing sketch and improv, I kept telling myself if I wanted to travel, I needed to put more emphasis on my stand-up.

I’m only now realizing that I was dependent on an outside source to give me the ability to travel; when, like many other things in my career in comedy, it is in fact possible to just do it myself. Thinking back, in my first year outside of Humber, I co-produced a tour that hit three Canadian cities; Stratford, Ottawa, and Montreal. Afterwards, I was part of a Fringe show that took me to Winnipeg for the first time in my life. I took some personal trips to the comedy meccas of New York and Chicago. Another Fringe took me to Halifax for the first time, where I also took the opportunity to road-trip around PEI in case I never got back! Last year my sketch troupe visited Boston. I began teaching workshops and doing shows that took me back to my alma-mater city of Ottawa, and this summer, I’m booking regular shows in my stomping grounds in the Niagara Region.  And lo and behold, should I be ever-so lucky to have been asked to do some travail that’s taken me the furthest West I’ve ever been in our great country. Vancouver! And on my birthday, no less.

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They have mountains AND water here!

I am grateful. I am happy. I am travelling!

The long and short of it is, if you want to make travelling a priority in your performance plan; make it so, number ones! Just take a look at what the awesome gang at Daisy Productions are doing. Funding can be an issue, so they worked hard to raise a bunch of dollars to take their production LOL LOL LAND all the way to Orlando later this year. With that, they can combine performing AND a trip to DisneyWorld all in one shot! It’s genius. As I type this, my Assembly buds Grim Diesel are currently rocking the Chicago Improv Fest. Improv pros RN & Cawls are currently Down Under teaching courses and no doubt getting more material for their podcast while they’re at it. And I’m here in Vancouver. On my laptop. When I should be on a suspension bridge or something! Maybe not. It’s pretty late.

I guess this is just my own reminder, and maybe it’s helpful to you too, not to wait for someone to tell you what you can do. Figure out how to make it happen, and in the immortal words of everyone in Letterkenny (which I think is appropriate given how that show came to be. Look it up.): PITTER PATTER!

A job posting came up. I looked at it, and thought – what a cool job, but there’s no way I would ever get it. I’m don’t have enough experience.

But someone encourages me to apply. So I do.

I get the interview. I feel confident in the interview. It’s a job in Canadian comedy. I know Canadian comedy. I feel good.

Months pass. Months!

I find out this week, I didn’t get the job.

I don’t have enough experience.

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Today, I used some of the principles of improv to get me through my first stand-up set in two months. In hindsight, I feel really dumb for not having thought of it earlier.  Although, I guess I had to fully understand it in improv in order to be able to translate it elsewhere.

I was feeling very nervous for my set tonight. It was a competition-style show, which I detest. Actually, I’m sortof anti-competition as a whole. I’m very socialist in that way. (Down with the free market!) I posted about it on Facebook, my hands were shaking, it was all the nerves I’ve had since starting stand-up all 5 years ago.

So I thought to myself: why don’t you get nervous in improv anymore? What’s different about this?

And I remembered a few things that’ve really hit me in the past few months of my improv study:

  1.  Fuck the Audience – I got in trouble with my longform class (now team) about this one. But I stand by it. If you keep trying to please the audience, you’re never going to get the response you want. It’ll never feel authentic, it’ll always feel forced. At the end of the day, you have to trust in your own brain that what you’re doing is funny. That you, yourself find it funny. And people can laugh, or they can NOT laugh. You have to be OK with that NOT mattering. That frees you up a bit. And the nerves calmed down.
  2. Fuck Memorization – (for this one, I got a bit of help from my friend Pete, who attended the show.) I asked him why he thinks I feel so comfortable when I host an improv show, which is basically being alone on stage, with a mic (or not) and getting the crowd pumped up by being funny and generally charismatic (much like a stand-up set.) But when the moment comes for me to shift that into that stand-up mode, I panic. I decided it was because you have to have all your jokes memorized, and I’m not great at memorizing lines, (which is one of the reasons I’ve never booked a commercial.) When hosting, you’re more free to keep things loose. Pete suggested looking at my set-list just as a guideline; that I wasn’t expected to go up there and say things word-for-word. (Which is the opposite of a lot of my stand-up teachings.) Don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean I should throw away the joke-writing process. I’ve studied that enough to know how a set-up and a punchline works, and how important timing and delivery are, but looking at it in looser terms, instead of memorizing and reciting it as you have a million times, makes the process feel more natural, and for me, less nerve-wracking.
  3. None of this actually fucking matters – It’s one set in a million. This, I had reminded to me in an episode of The Backline Podcast earlier today. If you have a bad set, just get up on stage soon and try again. Your next one will go better. (My fiancé keeps telling me this too, but for some reason it never quite sinks in.) This obviously applies to stand-up just as it does to improv. (although I don’t have bad improv sets anymore) *blows on fingernails. (Yeah, right!) Seeing this as just a show, and not some big deal competition helped me relax a bit.
  4. CONNECT – OK so, this may be counterintuitive with point #1. But when I say “Fuck the audience” I really mean forget them in your process / choice of joke-selection / choice of joke-writing. When it’s time to actually get on that stage, I LOVE looking at the audience and connecting with them. It’s something I enjoy a lot while hosting improv shows too, so why WOULDN’T I apply that to my stand-up? It used to scare the crap out of me to break out of my routine and make eye-contact with the audience. But looking at them in the face, reading their body-language, it’s so important! Hosting shows has really helped me understand the energy of a room. I know when to pick up my own energy, and when I can play around with dipping it and sometimes killing it completely. I WANT to make the people in the audience feel like we’re sharing an experience together.

So, I applied these techniques to my set tonight, and I sincerely feel I had a pretty good one. I tried out some new jokes that worked really well. The audience was VERY receptive and it was an all-in-all good time.

I’m not saying this is a surefire trick to a 100% success rate. I know it’s not going to work in a quiet room of only other comedians, but tonight, it worked.

Tonight for the first time, I  used improv to help my stand-up.

Yes, And I fucked the audience.

 

So, I got my taxes done this weekend.

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I try to do this thing, where I take note of everything I’ve accomplished. Not financially, necessarily. But achievements contributing to my dreams, and life-goals and whatnot. On that end, 2015 was great. I did a LOT of shows. I met a lot of great people. I created a lot of fun stuff.

That being said, nothing makes you feel worse about trying to be a self-employed comedian than adding up what you’ve spent to create a show; commission art for the show, book the venue & any additional supplies for the show, comparing it to how much your return on the door of said show was and multiplying it by however many shows you decided to self-produce in a year.

ESPECIALLY when you’ve lost most of your venue receipts because you’ve moved twice in the past year and it’s hard to keep your life in order. It leaves you  VERY LITTLE proof to show the government you’re anywhere close to achieving those dreams, and life-goals you thought you were closing in on.

If nothing else, Tax Season 2016 has taught me to be more vigilant and organized. Next year, I will prove not only to myself, but to the Canada Revenue Agency that I am actually closing in on something.