Gratitude for Gifts

The night of my first jam, when I was just starting out—I think I was still in core classes, partway through 501 —I met this kid, Logan, who came in off the street: never improvised, never seen a show, totally fresh. He'd heard about improv and wanted to try it, and saw the theater and came in too late to see a show. We start the jam, and I watch as one of the community's senior improvisers, Thomas, makes this kid look like he'd been improvising his whole life. Thomas packaged up a whole improv tool kit, gifting the premise, game, who, what, where, and put it into an appealing package so Logan had no choice but to open it and yes, and. It set the bar for me. That's what success as a performer looked like.

I've told this story to many people. I've asked senior performers how to do it, and done exercises. Last night I accidentally did it. I mean, I was immediately noted because I was doing it to an experienced performer, and the point of the exercises was for that performer to provide a justification of their choosing with an emotion of their choosing. The coach stopped things, asking me if I knew why he stopped things, and I said "no," and he explained. That was last night an at some point this morning I realized, that I had done the thing.

I am a parent of two kids, both around a decade old. One of the things I heard and tried to always keep in mind was that one day I would put my child down and never pick them up again. As I have gotten older, I've wondered if I've watched my last episode of Gilligan's Island, a TV show I watched too much of growing up and haven't seen in decades. Which is all by way of saying that we don't always realize when the first or last time will be to do something that feels like it'll be momentous, because that's what makes something momentous: A feeling associated with it. In this moment, I'm feeling gratitude—For my teams, teachers, life, and craft. What a gift.