This week we celebrated with our friends as the last of the ladies in the circle gracefully stepped into the world of being 40. We had a laughter filled meal and then headed to a comedy club for what we thought was going to be an open mike night. We were escorted to the front row and I was immediately nervous because somehow I always seem to be the one that gets pushed forward or spotted in the crowd to come and help on stage. It started when I was nine at a production for kids in Leeds when I was selected to go on stage and sing with with Fozzie Bear. Years later and thanks to “well meaning” friends I found myself on stage with Thunder from Down Under. If you do not recognize the name or the genre of their entertainment, please look them up online. I’m not necessarily complaining about that appearance but simply recognizing that I have this uncanny knack for finding myself on stage. The highlight may be my stunning rendition of Hey Jude accompanied by piano and a gentleman old enough to be my great-grandfather; the resort in Cabo San Lucas has not invited me back. Given the already fantastic odds against me based on my history, being in the front row seemed to me to be a bad sign.
I moved to the furthest end of our row where there would be less attention in this tiny place and when the lights dimmed I took a deep breath. Loud 80s music and five high energy people erupted on to the stage and I remember thinking that this was going to be worse than I originally envisioned. The Master of Ceremonies moved into place and explained how Impulse Theater worked. As I listened the blood started to course back into my veins and I relaxed and leaned in a little closer. What was he talking about and what was Impulse Theater? Where was the open mike, raucous jokes, people (me) being hypnotized and taking off all their clothes; was I safe? As it turned out Impulse Theater was quite different from what we expected. The MC told us loosely what was going to happen on stage based on the audience shouting out one word answers to his questions. It was chaotic and unusual in the respect that not only did the actors have to improvise every scenario, they were also given objectives and potential obstacles. In one exercise they were only allowed to speak in nonsense language, in another no words were allowed at all, and in another the MC randomly yelled “forward” and “back” and the actors had to reverse the improvised script or move forward just as would happen when hitting forward or rewind on the remote during a movie. Nothing was rehearsed, there was no time to prepare, no-one knew what the audience would throw out, and the actors themselves did not know what to expect from each other.
It was striking how creative it was and how frightening. We all walked away saying that we could never do that, that we couldn’t think that fast and be as creative as the actors we had watched. The truth is that we would not all be as entertaining or as funny as the actors we saw but in reality our lives are made up of scenes of improvisation. Oscar-winning moments, times that we’d like to rewind and say it differently, times that we’d like to fast forward and skip the rough stuff, and times when we are trying to make ourselves understood but we seem to be speaking a different language. There are times we have to take our best guess at what is going on and there are times when we flub our lines and life stops us dead in our tracks and says “Wrong”! We get lots of opportunities to get the scenes of our lives right and perhaps it’s alright that perfection eludes us. The spontaneity and the resourcefulness that we muster in those unexpected moments may truly be what living life is all about, not just delivering the well-rehearsed scenes. When the lights dim we have survived.
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