New Friends?

I finally attended an improvisational workshop here in London hosted by the improv group, Fluxx. I wanted to go last week, but work kept me late. I didn’t really know what to expect. But to say the least I’m glad I went.

Since I’m starting to master the public transportation system, =) I knew what bus to take to my destination. I had a printout of the map and had an idea of where I was going. As I proceeded to find the building, it was smaller than I thought. It was this run down community center and I saw someone walk in so I followed after. The problem is, there were no signs that I could follow that pointed me to where the workshop was. So I spend about 10 minutes walking around this small building trying to find the right room. To be honest, there weren’t a lot of rooms. After walking around, there was only one big room, and I was shy to walk in and ask if it was the right place. So I continued walking around this small building trying to convince myself that there was another room. But there wasn’t, just a large gymnasium-like on the second floor with a couple people in it.

Suddenly, my stomach didn’t feel so well and I really had to go to the men's room really bad. (You must be wondering why I’m adding this, but it’s what happened!) Anyway, so I had to look for a men's room. I find a really small one in the first floor that didn’t look too “clean.” I knew I had to do the “deed” because I didn’t want to spend 2-3 hours having this “feeling” with me during the whole workshop. Anyway, there’s only one stall in the bathroom, and it’s like the smallest stall I’ve ever seen. I felt like a pro basketball player sitting down it was so small. I also decided not to turn on the lights in the bathroom for some odd reason. As I sat down, I was so pissed at my body for having the worst timing ever. Here I am trying to meet new people in this improv workshop and I am in this strange building “dropping the kids off at the pool.” Anyway, the worst part is that someone entered the bathroom and turned on the lights. That was the worst feeling. I wonder what he was thinking when he saw my feet under the stall. It must have been something like: “This guy is in the toilet by himself with the lights off!” Anyway, I digress.

So I enter the gymnasium-like room and ask if it was for the workshop. Sure enough it was. I couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable at first since I didn’t know anybody, so I did the standard thing of introducing myself, hoping my American accent will make me unique. Luckily my fake British accent decided not to show up. I met Steve and so we chatted a little bit. Then more people showed up and eventually we had about 14 people in the workshop. We started up with these warm up exercises while we breathed loudly and heavily. We stretched everything in our body, it was quite relaxing, but weird at the same time. The funny thing was that the instructor wasn’t wearing any shoes, and he had holes in his socks and each of his big toes was peeking through. I tried not to look because every time I did, I would start to giggle. Its like they were staring at me. It’s stupid I know, but I laugh at stupid things.

So a few impressions of the workshop: 1. It wasn’t as comedic as I thought it would be. We were focusing on higher level techniques that I wasn’t use to, and it was more serious acting that I thought. 2. I think the people in this group have been working together for a while because there was a lot of physical action between the actors. Touchy feely stuff that I couldn’t convince myself to do just yet. Not that people were making out, but like really passionate hugs and one of the guys (Tim) pinched the other actress (Sarita) on the butt! I thought to myself, “Did he just do that? Did he just pinch her ass?” That was really weird.

Overall the people are really nice. Tim, the guy that pinched the Sarita’s butt, is actually from Chicago. And he’s a SOX fan!! Anyway, he collected my info and a real nice woman, Sarita, the “pinchee” collected my info as well and mentioned that there was a show this Sunday that I should attend that they were all going to. So we’ll see if I get to go to that. I’m glad I went and it’s nice to meet people outside work. There’s another workshop next week and I do plan on going to that as well. I guess you can say I've started stepping "outside of the box" - One big toe at a time.