At the beginning of each class we would do an Improv activity. There were multiple ones we did throughout the semester but the ones that really stuck out to me were: zip zap zop, yes and… word pass and gestures. I’m sure those of you reading this know exactly what these are! To be honest I didn’t like doing these at first. 9:30 a.m was just too early for my brain to be thinking and my body to be moving. I know you are probably thinking, “Wow you must be lazy!” But I promise I’m not!
Improv made me feel uncomfortable. It challenged my thinking and made me feel very awkward. Was this what Lacy was trying to make me feel like? You see, for me, thinking of something to say on the spot while people were staring at me, judging me and waiting for me to speak, scared the heck out of me. What if I said something stupid? What if people looked at me weird because of what I said? One of the ones we did that was most challenging was Word Pass. One person would start off with a word and point to another person who would have to come up with another word related to it. We would have to remember our word and the person we pointed to. Eventually we would have two words and two people that we had to remember. What was challenging was coming up with a word to say related to what the person before had just said. Sometimes it took me a few seconds to think of what to say. Half the time I would say my word it would be completely random and not related to the previous word whatsoever. Did Lacy want us to keep the words related or did it not matter? I got butterflies in my stomach, my heart started to beat fast and my brain would blank out. The reason I got like this was because I have always been terrible with thinking “outside the box.” You had to have an imagination in order to think in the way Lacy wanted us to think. Or at least that’s what I think she wanted us to do.
I think that the Improv’s we did were a form of wobbling because they made me feel uncomfortable, they challenged my thinking and made me think in a way that I was not used to. Looking back at my experiences with doing the activity I can honestly say that it has helped my imagination grow and helped me think outside the box. I can definitely tell that Improv has become easier for me than it was at the beginning of the semester. I don’t think our Improv activities would be the same without the awesome people involved. If someone said something completely random and funny we would all laugh (in a good way). If I couldn’t think of something to say my classmates would help me out. Knowing that they weren’t going to judge what I said made me feel a little bit better. I still wonder if this is what Lacy intended to happen with the Improv activites? She never really told us why we did them....
This was a really great class! It has made me write in a more creative way and showed me a different type of literacy I had never seen before. Thanks Lacy. Hope everyone has a fabulous Christmas!
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