An honest assessment.
October 27th, 2006 | by Scott Jennings |I stayed out far too late last night with Lauren and Jeremy. We did a good job of not talking shop for like, ten minutes.
Sometimes I get a little caught up in my little imaginary world where my guidelines for What Should Happen get to make all the decisions. And one of these guidelines is, “an improv team shouldn’t work with the same director for more than a year or so, they should seek out new perspectives and be proactive against stagnation.”
We’re getting pretty close to a year of me directing Community Bike, and I don’t mind telling you how extremely pleased and proud I am of the progress they’ve made and the team they’ve become. And since we’re getting pretty close to a year, I’ve heard the back of my head say, “well, good work, now let’s start to see about the next challenge.”
I think part of that is because this team has me in completely new territory as a director. I know exactly how to approach a new ensemble or an ensemble that needs to buckle down and find their voice and their way and pick them up and get them moving. I’m proud of that skill, I enjoy doing that work, and I think that’s what I’m missing right now. Community Bike doesn’t need me to really teach them anything, they need someone who will actually direct. And as much as I like to insist that I’m a director and not a coach (because I don’t wear a blazer and carry a clipboard), this is the first time that I’ve been in a position to truly direct, and it’s a little daunting for me.
(And I might as well interject here because I’m using the word “teach”: I don’t feel the pull to go back to teaching improv classes right now. It’s a completely different skillset and environment, and it doesn’t appeal as much to me. And ever since I made the important improv-slash-life-choice to do only the things I want to do because I enjoy them, I’ve been very comfortable with not teaching.)
And while Community Bike continues to grow and move forward, I’ve felt my skills as a “director” stagnate just a bit. I tried introducing a radically different set of exercises, but there wasn’t much enthusiasm for it and the makeup of the team changed and the whole project was quietly backburnered. We might get back to it eventually, but right now I’m doing more facilitating in rehearsals and notes than anything else, and that’s requiring an adjustment of perspective on my part. And it’s probably unusual for some members of the team, for that matter, and I’m trying to be sensitive to that. After last night’s show, I led a slightly more traditional notes session instead of “we’ll cover it when we watch the tape,” and I think it was productive.
So I casually mentioned to Lauren and Jeremy that my year was about to come to a close, and they gave me a vigourous shaddapayouface. There were nice things to say about me, which I sort of needed, and they stressed their need for forward-thinking facilitation. I mean, I wasn’t relishing the idea of moving on from Community Bike, I was planning to do what was in their best interest and let them seek out a new perspective and move on to share my own perspective with another group of improvisers — just the circle of life, nothing more. But if I’m not done where I am, then I’m not done, and I don’t think any of us truly think we’re done, so I’m going to have to trust myself to move forward with what I have.
A new challenge where I am, then, and that’s all right. I’ll adjust. And perhaps I can find a way to meet an old challenge as well. (That’s an invitation to ask me to work with your group.)
