Yes Please (Sample)

How I Fell in Love with Improv: Boston

I was in fourth grade and in trouble.  The students of Wildwood Elementary School in Burlington, Massachusetts, shifted in their uncomfortable metal seats as they waited for me to say my next line. A dog rested in my arms and an entire musical rested on my shoulders.  I was playing Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, and it was my turn to speak. Dorothy is Hamlet for girls. Next to Annie in Annie and Sandy in Grease, it is the dream role of every ten-year-old. Annie taught me that orphanages were a blast and being rich is the only thing that matters. Grease taught me being in a gang is nonstop fun and you need to dress sexier to have any chance of keeping a guy interested. But The Wizard of Oz was the ultimate.  It dealt with friendship and fear and death and rainbows and sparkly red shoes.

Up to this moment, I had only been onstage twice. The first was for a winter pageant in second grade. I was dressed as a snow- flake and had to recite a poem. The microphone was tilted too high, and so I stood on my tiptoes and fixed it. A year later I was in a school play in the role of a singing lion. My “lion’s mane” (a dyed string mop worn on my head) kept slipping, and I surreptitiously adjusted it midsong.

My parents would later point to these two small moments and tell me that was when they knew I would be a performer. Honestly, I don’t think I had a burning desire to act at that young age. Back then, I didn’t know acting was a job, really. All I knew was I liked roller-skating in my driveway and making people sit and watch. I liked setting up dance contests in my basement and being the only judge. I liked attention. Attention and control.  Attention, control, and, it turns out, laughs.

In The Wizard of Oz, the part of Dorothy isn’t exactly the comedic lead. She spends a lot of time listening to other people explain themselves. She is the straight man among a bunch of much juicier character parts.  The Wicked Witch of the West is more dynamic. The Scarecrow has a bigger arc. Even the Lollipop Guild has a killer song. Dorothy just asks a lot of questions and is always the last to know. I didn’t care. At the time, I was in fourth grade, which, for me, was a heavenly time to be a girl. It was all elbows and angles and possibility.  I hadn’t gotten my period or kissed a boy. My beloved grandfather hadn’t yet died of a heart attack on my front porch on the Fourth of July. I wanted to be an astronaut or a scientist or a veterinarian and all signs pointed to my making any or all of that happen. The worst things I had encountered to this point were lice (which I’d had), scoliosis (which I didn’t), and the threat of nuclear war (a shadow that loomed over everything).  My generation was obsessed with scoliosis. Judy Blume dedicated an entire novel to it. At least once a month we would line up in the gym, lift our shirts, and bend over, while some creepy old doctor ran his finger up and down our spines. Nuclear war was a high-concept threat, two words that often rang out in political speeches or on the six o’clock news. Our spines. Lice. Nuclear war. The Big Three.

AIDS was just around the corner, but we didn’t know it yet. The only AIDS I knew were Ayds, an unfortunately named caramel diet candy my mom had in our kitchen cabinet.  The anxiety-filled eighties would dovetail nicely with my hormonal teenage years, but in fourth grade, in 1980, I felt like I would live forever.

I stood onstage in my blue-checked dress, Toto in my arms, and looked at the audience of parents, teachers, and students. I breathed in and had a huge realization. I could decide right then and there what the next moment would be. I could try something new. I could go off script and give something a shot.  I could say whatever I wanted.

I stood onstage in soft Dearfoams slippers. My mother had bought two pairs at Bradlee’s, and we spray-painted them silver and sparkly red. My hair was braided and I was wearing my own denim overall dress and blue-checked blouse. It was my time to speak during the tornado scene. All of the other actors were supposed to be running around and reacting to heavy winds. A teacher made a whistling-wind sound effect on a handheld microphone and construction-paper tumble- weeds were rolled across the stage. In my arms was Toto, played by a real dog. Some sucker had allowed us to cast their tiny poodle as Toto, which in hindsight begs the question:  What kind of maniac hands over their tiny dog to a bunch of ten-year-olds for an elementary school play?

  We were in the second night of a blistering two-night run. The previous evening I had delivered my line “Toto, Toto! Where are you?” during the tornado scene.  The problem was the damn dog was in my arms at the time. The audience laughed. Lightning struck—and I discovered three important things.  I liked getting a laugh. I wanted to get one again. But I wanted to get it in a different way and be in charge of how I got it. So, I stood onstage that second night and tried something new.

In  the  second  and  final performance of The  Wizard  of Oz, I decided  to take control  during  the tornado  scene. I paused, put the blinking dog down on the stage, and walked a few feet away from it. “Toto, Toto! Where are you?” I said, pretending to look for my lost dog in the fearsome storm. The dog froze and played it perfectly. I got laughter and some light applause for my efforts. I had improvised and it had worked.  One could argue that it worked because of the dog. A good straight dog can really help sell a joke. Whatever.  I have been chasing that high ever since.

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