When I first started taking improv classes back in December of 2000, I just wanted to learn and have fun. I had been meaning to take improv classes since college way back in 1990 or 1991, maybe earlier. My first experience with improv was a few Comedysportz shows back in Madison, back when Keith sued them and they had to change their name from Theatresportz. Before that, my only formal theater background was an intro theater class at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center back in 1980 or 1981 when I was a really twitchy 14-something. I sort of enjoyed it but mostly it kinda freaked me out. Like I said, I was really twitchy then and I'm only sorta twitchy now.

Near the end of college, I fell in with a serious group of role-players. We played Hero System games, primarily Champions (superhero genre) and Justice, Inc. (two-fisted pulp adventures of the 20s and 30s.) Here was the development of my Dr. Emil von Kreegon character, based on a Peter Lorre impersonation by the All My Packers parody soap opera on Milwaukee's Lazer 103 (WLZR), and a combination of Dr. Tongue (John Candy) and Bruno (Eugene Levy) from SCTV's Montster Chiller Horror Theater segments (e.g. Dr. Tongue's 3-D House of Stewardesses, Dr. Tongue's 3-D House of Beef, Dr. Tongue's 3-D House of Pancakes, ...) Anyway, I loved playing von Kreegon - his character was easy to wear and he was free to do damn near anything.

My friends (Brian Curley, Dean and Dana Edgell, and Drew) ran a homebrew, pre-LARP game at Gen_Con for 7-8 years called Drive-In Hero. Why do I bring this up? This game was the most consistently and thoroughly entertaining role-playing game I've ever played. It was also probably the simplest. I didn't realize it at the time, but it was like improv with training wheels. One sheet of paper endowed each character and gave them objective, another set the environment, and the relationships between characters were obvious (at least at first...) This simple role-playing game was essentially Commedia dell'Arte (pointed out this summer by Jeremy Lamb), substituting character sheets for masks, updating the characters to modern American archetypes, and replacing the farcical scheming and romancing with a Scooby Doo plot. The judges acted as directors and the players improvised the rest. Note the similarity to Commedia dell'High School which originated almost a decade later.

Back to the present. In the past fourteen months of classes and six or so months of performing, I feel pretty confident in my skills (at this point anyways) and despite my occasional grumbling and whining, I love improv and I want to keep learning and performing. Improv is a very important part of my life now and I think it's appropriate for me to reevaluate and clearly state my goals and possibly outline a means of achieving them.