Lesbian Dancing After The Show: An Improviser's Non Improvised Life

Something Like, The Second City.

It was at the height of Oui Be Negroes in 1995 when I was now taking the conservatory classes over at Second City Chicago. During the end of my level four I was asked by a dear man named Ed Garza to attend these other classes as part of a minority outreach.

They fell on a Saturday morning. I had already done the outreach program and was doing the conservatory. I just didn't get doing another one for free.

Also: How horrible of an improviser did they think I was?

He told me: John Hildreth is doing the classes. Show up and support him.

This is what got me to those classes. Ed Garza prefaced it all by saying I was doing John a solid. I dug John a lot (and still do), so I said yes.

The first day of that class, we were told that these classes all culminated in a Second City Audition. Everyone stared at each other dumbfounded. I just shrugged. I had done this before, almost a decade prior. I just didn't think anything would come out of it. I was still there to support John Hildreth, who at the time was on the stages of Second City.

It was different then. Tim Meadows had been on the main stage. John was there. Things were changing at that place on Wells. I never thought they would hire a black woman. They were covering men at that point.

Our classes were going fine. We, like most students of improv, were having fun and it was fun to see actors who were my race discovering what I knew about improv comedy for years: It's the most creative way of expressing yourself and the creative process. It's an amazing format, and it's just fun as hell.

That was during the class. The audition for Second City was a whole different thing.

The audition fell on my mother's birthday, November 3rd 1995. I just turned thirty three months prior.

Every minority actor in Chicago (who was not doing improv on a regular basis) at that audition, who now had a chance to audition for the biggest improv sketch company in the country, that paid, and was a equity house...

...all lost their minds on that stage that day.

People were yelling over each other and running all over the Second City Chicago Main Stage. It was the definition of a cluster fuck.

I remember Me, Ceasar Jamie and Martin Garcia trying to quietly stay out of the fray of the fuck, which was cluster.

At the top of the audition they did A Classic Chorus Line style interview. People were losing their minds right at the top. A panel member would ask a question and people would ramble on and on with others next to them whooping and hollering like it was a Def Comedy Jam Show.

It seemed no one had ever seen "A Chorus Line" and the ones who had (Jamie, Garcia and myself) just stood there. Quietly. Until it was our turn.

I was at the end of the line. I was asked by a panel member: What makes today special?

I could have tried to kiss it and say: This moment. I could have said: This opportunity.

It really wasn't. In that moment of people whooping and hollering. I said to the panel. Today is my mother's birthday.

I saw Martin DeMaat smile. I saw panel members who did not know me smile and jot stuff down. Then I heard one woman scream: Ahhh gurrrrrrl...that is SOooooo Sweeeet. Being pretty facetious and hoping for a laugh. No one on the panel laughed. I ignored her and looked ahead Chorus Line Style thinking: I think you just boned yourself, gurrrrrrrrrrl.