Thursday, May 05, 2005
Continuing Education
Spurred by a desire to A) do something more with my life than drink PBR and read legal arguments scrawled in crayon or blood by clinically insane people and B) emulate the life of my personal comedy hero, Joe Piscopo, I have been taking improv and acting classes for the past year. I highly recommend this to anyone; it’s a much better creative outlet than, for instance, writing manifestos on the evils of technology or making macaroni mosaics, and it’s even allowed me to meet people who don’t make puns based on the titles of recent Supreme Court cases. Recently, however, class has taken on an aspect of group therapy that I find decidedly troubling.
No, there are no group hugs going down and any psychotropic drug use is recreational rather than clinical, but people are weeping out their personal traumas like Halle Berry receiving an Oscar from Dr. Phil on a Barbara Walters Special. For instance, the Nineteenth Century Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen elicited the following response from one of my colleagues:
"This really reminds me of my first divorce, because my wife, who was really just insane from the beginning -- I mean I should have known when she would not stop crying at the rehearsal dinner, for God’s sake -- anyway, she and I always had arguments over these stupid little things like how she could not cook a pork chop to save her life or how I quit my job without telling her. It was always some stupid thing. And then one time she threw the blender at me. Just chucked it right at my head. And I kind of feel like it’s the same deal with Torvald and Nora here."
And on the subject of Sam Shepard, a different classmate:
"Yeah, I totally don’t get this play. It’s all like weird and out of order and shit. But that one part, where the girl gets raped? Yeah, it totally reminds me of this time in high school when this guy told me we were going to a party at his church but then he took me to his basement instead and tried to take off my bra. Oh, and he totally tried to get me to touch it, too. But I was totally freaked out and violated and shit. It was so weird."
Sadly, I have very little to contribute. The emotional cruelties of my office’s recycling guy just don’t compare. And everybody occasionally gets groped on the train, right?
I’m beginning to think a life on the stage is not for me.
Spurred by a desire to A) do something more with my life than drink PBR and read legal arguments scrawled in crayon or blood by clinically insane people and B) emulate the life of my personal comedy hero, Joe Piscopo, I have been taking improv and acting classes for the past year. I highly recommend this to anyone; it’s a much better creative outlet than, for instance, writing manifestos on the evils of technology or making macaroni mosaics, and it’s even allowed me to meet people who don’t make puns based on the titles of recent Supreme Court cases. Recently, however, class has taken on an aspect of group therapy that I find decidedly troubling.
No, there are no group hugs going down and any psychotropic drug use is recreational rather than clinical, but people are weeping out their personal traumas like Halle Berry receiving an Oscar from Dr. Phil on a Barbara Walters Special. For instance, the Nineteenth Century Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen elicited the following response from one of my colleagues:
"This really reminds me of my first divorce, because my wife, who was really just insane from the beginning -- I mean I should have known when she would not stop crying at the rehearsal dinner, for God’s sake -- anyway, she and I always had arguments over these stupid little things like how she could not cook a pork chop to save her life or how I quit my job without telling her. It was always some stupid thing. And then one time she threw the blender at me. Just chucked it right at my head. And I kind of feel like it’s the same deal with Torvald and Nora here."
And on the subject of Sam Shepard, a different classmate:
"Yeah, I totally don’t get this play. It’s all like weird and out of order and shit. But that one part, where the girl gets raped? Yeah, it totally reminds me of this time in high school when this guy told me we were going to a party at his church but then he took me to his basement instead and tried to take off my bra. Oh, and he totally tried to get me to touch it, too. But I was totally freaked out and violated and shit. It was so weird."
Sadly, I have very little to contribute. The emotional cruelties of my office’s recycling guy just don’t compare. And everybody occasionally gets groped on the train, right?
I’m beginning to think a life on the stage is not for me.
