One Floor at a Time
I want to be careful how I talk about this, but it's sobering when two people your age who had the career you want for the past twenty years put out podcasts about how they are struggling with the next stage of their careers to start the new year. Before I go any further, I want to thank Chris Gethard and Connor Ratliff for their honesty. One of the things that's been so refreshing about improv as an artform is how open people tend to be about how hard it is as a craft. Listening to Suzi Barrett's "Yes, Also..." ,it's a theme to hear people talk about how elusive success is, even in an individual theme, with improv, let alone building a career.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't want a career in performing. I always have, and denying myself that wasn't healthy for me. Sobriety has been a journey of a lot of acceptance and surrender: I'm an alcoholic, a label that's incomplete and shorthand for a lot of things; I will always fight for what I believe in; if I deny myself a creative outlet, I suffocate. For many people, a career in improv doesn't progress past the hobby stage, and a performer can still have a lot of success there. Sometimes, dicking-around (not intended to be pejorative in this usage) with your the friends you made in 101 is it, and that's ok. But sometimes you want to see what's on the next floor of the elevator of success. So you press the next button and ride on.
When I was in 501, the last of the core classes at my theatre, I thought that if I made it into the Conservatory program, one of the main benefits would be that it would take care of the next year. I'd be performing twice a month (on the first and third Thursdays!) and getting a feel for working with an audience. Three months in, and I have that itch to try and do more. I'm hitting online classes hard, trying to get better. I'm skilled enough to know that what I need to do is ultimately get more reps and trust the process and find inspiration. But it's hard not to think about where I want to be. I can stop this ride whenever I want.
Listening to the struggles of people well above me in the process reminds me that whatever number floor I'm on I need to be doing it for me and doing it for what I love. I focus on what I can control, which is the art I make for the audience I choose and choses me. This is a hard time, so when I can stay sober and keep making art that I want to make and makes me happy that proves to me that I'm doing what I want to do. Let's see how high that elevator goes.
