Brian runs an improv troupe and admitted he has no idea how to start a show. So we started one. Jason Jackson, Brian and me, no plan: two college buddies on a new motorcycle, an officer with a government-issued umbrella, rain, parking tickets, and a police dog in training. Twelve minutes, all made up.
Ariella asked how you become your character when the 50 questions give you facts you don’t know what to do with. Why the questions are a starting point and never the finish, how to take one question and write the short story under it, finding the key to a line, why every fight needs context, inside out then outside in with an animal, and how I built a backstory that let me love a man who shot his father.
An episode of Mornings with Matt on the lie actors tell with their eyebrows and the lies the rest of us tell with our phones. Why a character starts with the shoes, what ‘putting mustard on it’ means, and the Epictetus line that comes down to three words.
The title came from Joey’s search history. Jason Jackson, Joey and I made up the rest: Chip, who feeds the horse late; Megan, who is always right; Seymour, a talking horse who wants a female acquaintance and a house to live in; two strays with a Marlboro saddle; and Deputy Officer McGee with a warrant about square footage. How a play finds its ending in a word from the first minute.
Amanda grew up in Indonesia, is signed with an agency, trains with us, and can’t tell her family she’s an actor without hearing get a real job. What I told her: stop putting yourself in the pain, answer the question in three words, and then work like you’re in med school, because that’s where the confidence comes from.
No suggestion, no plan, sixteen minutes. Joey is Uncle Joey, I’m Little Mark, and the science project on the table has popsicle-stick trees, an ant colony in paper clothes, a graveyard with named headstones, a prison, and one detail Uncle Joey really should not have explained. How a scene builds itself when two people agree with everything.
Joey put a chart on the table: podcast numbers up, up, up, then down. What we decided to do about it, the outdoor table I stripped and stained for two weeks in 110 degrees, the difference between honest and petty, and why we overuse the word love.
A coaching call with Tyler Weeks, a coach and actor who had more time than ever and was spending it on video games and TikTok. Why more free time made him less consistent, the one question that gets you out of bed, treating acting like a startup, my non-negotiables, why you post before it feels good enough, and the seven-day media fast I sent him on.
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.
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