New choice

Last night I was at home on my sofa, all geared up to sit there all night and mope and feel sorry for myself, and then somehow I managed to shake myself out of it, and I stood up, changed my clothes, put on my make-up, left the house, walked down the road, got on a bus and a train and then walked to a strange bar, walked purposefully down the stairs into the dank basement room and joined a circle of a group of total strangers who were all pointing at each other and shouting loudly. It was a warm-up game for an improvisation comedy workshop, and I went along because I went on an improv beginners' weekend course a month ago, and it was absolutely excellent.

It's excellent for me in particular, because I am a control freak and I like boundaries and rules and clarity and I hate surprises and unplanned events. I particularly hate the thought of failing, especially when I have been seen to be trying hard at something, and most of all what I hate is the thought of making a fool of myself in front of other people. And improv is all about doing all of those things for fun. And after a while, the threat of not being 'good enough' or 'funny enough' starts to evaporate, and you just laugh and find yourself rolling on the floor with people you've never met, pretending to be a cup of tea for the amusement of others. Last night, two men were in a zoo scenario, talking about shooting one of the animals with a tranquilizer gun, and so a few of us started being the animals, and crawled on stage on our hands and knees, and then I got quite close to the zookeeper, who felt threatened and shot me, and I reared up and then died on my back, and lay there while the two humans decided what to do, but meanwhile the rest of my pack of animals started dragging my carcass across the floor back to our lair. I ended up covered in basement pub dust and giggling like mad.

One of the best exercises I've had to do is called 'New Choice'. You're working with a partner and improvising a story, but at any point, after any one of your suggestions, if they don't think it's good enough or it jars for some reason, they can say 'New choice' and you have to try again. So it might go:

J: I was walking along the street last night...
P: New choice
J: ...along the seafront last night, and I saw a dolphin...
P: New choice
J: ...a walrus...
P: New choice
J: ...a man drowning. I stripped off my clothes...
P: New choice
J: ...without stripping off my clothes, I ran straight into the sea and swam towards him. I could hear him screaming, 'Help!'
P: New choice
J: ...I could hear him screaming, 'Sandwiches!'
P: New choice
J: ...'Fuck off! I want to die!' but I didn't believe him. I reached him and started trying to drag him ashore, but he was lashing out...
P: New choice
J: ...he started trying to drown me
P: New choice
J: ...trying to kiss me. And his breath was terrible.

You get the idea. What was wonderful for me was that, the first time I was 'New choiced' I thought I'd feel like the person was saying, 'FAIL, that was a STUPID SUGGESTION you MORON', but in fact, because everyone gets 'New choiced', it feels way more like 'Hey, c'mon, you can do better than that, sexypants' and instead of shrinking in confidence, you actually start to enjoy it. The less you think about it, the more free your choices feel and the more funny they often are. It is all amazingly liberating and, for £5, I challenge people to have a more fun night out in the smoke. I'll be going again.

And then, of course, because I'd finally forgotten about vanishing guy for a whole two hour period, when I then checked my emails on arriving back at home, I found he'd messaged me. A lame message, an 'urgh, thank god I dodged your bullet' message of 'I need to sort my head out and I don't want to hurt someone who I like and respect.' Like and respect so much that you leave them hanging for FOUR DAYS while you piss about being selfish. Wow, I'm flattered. Anyway, I sent him a blinder of a reply this morning, three paragraphs of unadulterated pleasure that should, if I'm any good at this writing lark at all, make him feel like a total twunt. Case dismissed. Let the weekend begin.