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

Chapter Seven You Don't Have to Go Home, But You Can't Stay Here.

How to Be An Improv Guru.

Sure, you are the best improviser out there at 56. But what good does it do you if no one is quoting you, building a theatre around you or you are not in a least one book quoted for something?

You might not ever have splintered groups of people with different interpretations of your work? But here are some helpful tips to hopefully make that Guru Dream a reality.

Be Opinionated. About Everything.

The premise of improvisation revolves around the idea of "Yes, And." This does not apply to being an Improv Guru. Once you have decided a format of improvisation is the right way to do improv at 26? STICK WITH IT AND DO NOT WAVER. Your opinion is unflinching and your way is the right and pure way of doing improvisation. Pass that mantra to others and people will follow you no matter where you go or what you say. Even if you don't realize that you negated your own theory? Who cares. You will be a guru.

Your opinions on the world should also be completely unflinching. This is everything. You can't half ass even the smallest of opinions. Once you say you think asparagus is the making of true evil? Stick with that. Extra points if you start comparing every minutia of opinions to improvisation. You win in Guru World if you start comparing bad improvisation to asparagus.

The more nonsensical you sound and act, the better off you are.

Stream of consciousness is a fantastic way to glean experimental improvisation onstage. Make sure you also apply that when you are teaching a classs, as your students will sit and wonder exactly what the hell you are talking about. It not only makes you a Guru, it also keeps your students coming back to pay you to try to discern what you just taught.

Don't stop there. Apply words that you would normally not hear strung together in a sentence to regular conversations with non-improvisers:

Friend from High School: I understand you are going home for the holidays. You must be excited.

You: Bees bees bees! Milky bees are the best. Dive in! (Grab friend's shoulders and hug them until it is beyond awkward.)

Make sure you do this in front of your improv peers and students. Make sure you invite that High School Friend to your directed/coached improv show. Who cares if your H.S. friend will head back and give a concerned call to your family about your mental state.

In front of improvisers, this will give you Legacy.

There is no In-between in being an Improv Guru: Be Extremely Other Worldly Nice or Out of Your Mind Crazy Angry.

Know of anyone getting up at an Improv Guru's funeral and saying, This person was a normal family person who lived in a perfectly lovely suburban home with their loved one of fifty years and three children, none of whom ever learned improv and are definitely not teaching improv themselves...?

Improv Guru. There are really only two kinds of personalities for a true Improv Guru: The guru who seems to make the Dalai Lama look like a heartless bastard, or the guru who is more inclined to crack a bottle of PBR over the Dalai Lama's head.

An Improv Guru's funeral will have stories of drunken nights and failed relationships (definitely more than two divorces). People will gleefully regale others with the old story of a circle jerk over a bunch of dudes or the time they walked around a party on coke with a baseball bat. It will be at that funeral where they will remember how that teacher made you lay face first on the stage in a doggy pile and kiss the bards in respect, while gently touching the people around them...then head off to a hot tub for a gang bang.

Your Improv Guru is either giving you neck massages and telling you the world is wonderful and filled with joy and hope, or your Improv Guru is telling you that you are a worthless piece of shit that they would kill if only stupid morality would let them.

Sure. Both believe in a truth coming out of comedy, and the idea that improvisation is indeed one amazing format in the overall scope of theatre (no matter if they are so opinionated to hate Short Form over Long Form or the reverse). A real Improv Guru is giving you the truth coming out of comedy and the overall love of the form by either loving you to death or wanting to put you to death. A real Improv Guru has no gray area in this.

A real Improv Guru has no in-between. Doesn't particularly make you an innovator. It just makes you stand out in the crowd of improvisers.

In the theory of stage combat, if you get close to them, they will want to kiss you or kill you. Gurus live by this. There is never a step a few inches back to not be combative in Guru World.

You either Kiss them...or kill them. Just pick one and then apply Be Opinionated to it.

Be Good at Improvisation.

This always helps. Nothing worse than your followers watching you improvise and saying Gee. The Guru is not that good.

Follow these steps and in no time at all, someone is going to want to ghost write your very opinionated Love the world/Hate The Universe theories of improvisation while getting a translator to figure out what you mean by Improvisation kicks pot belly maggot fun into numerous strains of lusciousness.

People will follow whatever you say. Good Luck!

This is the closest this book will get to teaching you improvisational comedy.

You can always come to a class somewhere in the world with me teaching it. Currently, I'm still alive.

I promise to string comprehensive sentences together while teaching you improv.

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