Connor Malone, a working actress who also coaches volleyball and designs homes for her family’s building company, had three questions in the spring of 2020: how do my players and I keep training, how do I get my routine back, and how do I stay positive? The answers are the same for any crisis: accept it, act as if it’s forever, shock your system, and work the soil.
A nursing student named Eliana asked how to fix her sleep schedule and stick to a habit. Half an hour later we’d found the real problem: her dream wasn’t specific enough to get her out of bed, and a sentence from years ago was still running. The plane that leaves without you, good fear, why nobody pays a student nurse either, and the morning that builds a dream.
Brian, Joey, Shea and me on the week we ran virtual and in-studio students in the same class for the first time. Two students’ notes and why we treat every piece of feedback as gold, the stress of inventing something nobody has done, why I was on the floor with the cords instead of my to-do list, and what I did with a bad headspace before the best first day of improv I have ever taught.
Jason Jackson on the phone, Joey and me in the studio, one word from a documentary binge, and fifteen minutes of a play nobody wrote: a rat trap in a corner, a man who is afraid of corners, a new guy in HR who turns out to be a therapist, and his sidekick. How a whole story comes from saying yes.
Three words on the wall of the studio and what they mean in practice: act with passion, keep love at the center, and commit to a never-ending pursuit of mastery. Why the 10,000 hours number was never the point, and what is.
Joey, Brian and me on the way I approach a wall: what can I do instead of what can’t I do, put yourself in the thing before you ask anyone else to, and why we want to be known for being excited about change. Then the studio floor Joey painted without telling anyone, the white spots I found on it, mastery for the rest of your life, letting go of the people you love, and the big news: Valleywood, our June movie camp, is on.
Joey walked in seven minutes before the show in a great mood and the room went weird. Nobody did anything wrong. What happened, why it happens in audition rooms every day, and the five questions I ask myself every time I cross a threshold: energy, my state, my goal, seen or invisible, and how can I help.
Joey and I at 11:43 at night after clearing thirteen years of paper out of the storage unit: why a clean space changes how a business feels, why we keep three backups, and the lesson Joey handed me on air. Ask before you get to seven.
Keegan, a high-school senior from the Shadow Mountain drama program, came in looking for part-time work and passed our secret tests. Nine minutes on what an internship here is actually like: wax on, wax off, why we are selective about who is in the building, the terrible interview that became his first lesson, and the difference between have to and get to.
Shea walked into the studio in the middle of a lesson, and the day she should have been on a beach in Barcelona turned into this episode. We made her sing the song she was scared to sing, Brian explained why a gift is a responsibility, and Shea told us how a honeymoon that did not happen became the most productive stretch of her life. Everything is a mindset and a choice, no matter the situation.
Nick, one of our adult students, came on the show honest about a stretch of sleeping in and pushing things off. What I gave him is what I use: decide tonight that you are getting up, lock in how good the early morning feels, cut the decisions you do not need, put a deadline on the thing that has none and tell somebody, set the old goals aside and write new ones for the world you are in, and act as if the change is forever.
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