Improv Experiences Can Help Adults to Expand their Comfort Zones, Increase Joy

“Whose Line Is It Anyway” is a hoot to watch! It’s fun. And wits are working for comedy. How long can you watch and be enthrall with “Whose Line” before you want to do it yourself? A lot of it is highly intelligent, fun, sometimes edgy and fast-paced. It’s hard be get bored.

I want to be Wayne Brady or Colin Mochrie. Since I’m caramel-colored, I mostly want to be like Wayne.

More than 10 years ago I took my most recent improv class at the non-defunct HUGE Theater in Minneapolis’ Uptown area. It was led by a Black person. I found it tiring and difficult. I think that I was thinking too much. I wasn’t letting myself feel enough or loosen up with the improv choices, like the pivotal “yes. And”.

I want to conjure characters as rapidly as Wayne, bringing snappy, rapid-fire dialogue and create scenes like him. In short, I want to walk with Wayne’s triple-threat talent and charisma!

Being what Netflix calls cerebral, I definitely put too much thought into years-ago improv exercises. Well before that moment at HUGE Theater, probably 25-years-ago, I remember that I took an improv class from the Stevie Ray’s in Uptown. In the Twin Cities business community, Stevie Ray is renowned for improve classes and business training. As I remember the classes, which were taught by a white man, those were fun and engaging. Doing improv was wholly new to me. While the memories are faint, for some reason the classes didn’t tire me.

KQED has an article about how knowing and doing improv can lift your life, teaching new habits and talents.

In December 2022, Wayne Brady spoke to Fast Company about the ways in which improv skills, mindset and habits help you in life: “In terms of growth creatively or business-wise, you have to be able to trust and be discerning, but you have to trust. Maybe it’ll bite me in the ass? You know. Probably it’ll bite me in the ass because people are people. And out of 100 people, 60 of them are trustworthy. Okay. How do you move forward if you don’t trust..,” Wayne Brady in “Fast Company”.

Improv lessons and experiences shrinks the fear and fear of failure. As with everyone who has aged by 10 years, I have less fear. I have changed and grown since the most recent class experience. I’m surer and more comfortable in my own skin and more okay with letting myself go with choices and not overthinking them.

In the 2020s I want to return to or try improv study again. It’s sad that, being underemployed, classes are out-of-bounds. I know of no extant classes that are offered for free. I want to grow from the experience, having fun, meeting new friends all the while.

I will have to settle for watching “Whose Line” repeats on over-the-air TV…