Introduction

It's strange that I'm writing this book. I wasn't supposed to. Since I was a kid, I've loved math and the sciences. From the time I was in second grade I always knew I would be a veteri­narian. "If your dog is sick, just call Mick," was a sign I had always imagined outside of my office.

Then one night in high school I saw a play. I can't remember the name of it, but I do remember the effect it had on me. I knew that although I loved science so much, there was a part of me that wanted to be up there on that stage. I went to that play the very next night, and I was even more astonished. The actors were moving in the exact same places on stage as they had the night before! I had no idea—I thought they just memorized the lines and kind of moved about wherever they wanted—I didn't know it was practiced that much. (While I was in high school, you didn't go to rehearsal; you went to play practice.)

I decided that I wanted to have a go at this thing, so I audi­tioned. My first role was Grumio, in The Taming of the Shrew. I went on to do several more plays in high school, and arrived at Indiana University with a strong desire to be a veterinarian and a conflicting desire to be on stage. It didn't take that long to discover that the latter would win my heart. I began auditioning and performing in play after play, and eventually switched my study to theater. I did indeed love the rush of performing.

Soon, though, I became a little bored. Not with the performing, but with the rehearsing. I felt like the rehearsals were the same thing over and over. I was pretty selfish back then; I wanted the feeling I got when I performed without the repetitious work of the rehearsals. Performing without rehearsals, was there such a thing?

That's when I picked up a book called Something Wonderful Right Away, by Jeffrey Sweet. It was a collection of interviews of people involved in something called improvisation. As the title states, you could create something wonderful right away. To me, that meant all the fun without the rehearsing. A friend of mine, David MacNerland, and I decided to form an improv group, never having seen or per­formed any improvisation. (Maybe David had, I'll have to ask him.) We created a group called "Dubbletaque" and performed for full houses for nearly four years.

Improvisation became my passion, and I moved to Chicago to pursue it.

I studied and performed everywhere I could. It was in this study that I learned for the first time about all of the intricacies of improv­isation: forms, rules, scenic structure, and whatnot. It was also at this time that I began to form my own point of view in regard to what makes improvisation work or not. That is in this book. I didn't really know any of this in college, we were just kind of making it up as we went along.

So many years later, here I sit. I'm not a veterinarian, although my love for math and science remains to this day. I think you might notice that in this book. Ironically, as a director, I now value the the­ater and rehearsing more than ever. There's certainly value in some­thing wonderful right away, and an equal yet different value to some­thing wonderful not right away.

This book is for those that have a desire to improvise scenes better. I truly hope it helps.

"If your scene is sick..."

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