by Lance Rubin
Finally my name is called. “Great,” Mr. Martinez says as I’m getting to my feet, “so, Winnie, you’ll get up there with…Who hasn’t gone yet?” Please let it be someone who will be kind and understanding when their partner sucks. “Oh, of course. Mr. Evan Miller, ladies and gentlemen.” It’s possible the universe heard my plea. Maybe?
Evan leaps up from his seat, two arms in the air like an overcaffeinated Olympic gymnast, as everyone in the room Woo!s and whistles. Leili tugs at the leg of my jeans and gives me a nod. It should be a calming sight, but instead it brings me right back to my bat mitzvah.
“Go on,” Mr. Martinez says, waving me forward. I’ve been standing in the same spot for at least thirty seconds. “Evan won’t bite.”
“What about that dinosaur scene from last year?” Mahesh says, and most of the group laughs.
“Oh man, good point,” Mr. Martinez says. “The controversial dinosaur bite scene.” What the hell? “I stand corrected. Evan probably won’t bite.” I don’t care how funny and charming he is, if Evan tries to bite me in this scene, I will judo-chop him in the testes.
“I mean, who knows?” Evan says, lifting his arms in a comical shrug as he smiles at me.
“The only thing that’s going to bite is my performance,” I say quietly. Leili laughs, and to my surprise, so do a couple of other people. Dad always says self-deprecation is one of a comedian’s sharpest tools.
“Hey hey, soldier,” Evan says as I arrive at his side, his expression quickly shifting from jovial to concerned. “Are you shaking?” he asks under his breath.
Yes. Yes, I am. And I feel light-headed and might pass out at any moment, how about you?
“Not really,” I say.
“Don’t worry.” He gives my arm a playful nudge. “I’ll do all the heavy lifting.” This is what I’d been hoping for, but hearing him say it pisses me off. Like I’ll need him to make me look good. He’s wearing an Elmo T-shirt, for god’s sake.
“What’s a word to inspire their scene?” Mr. Martinez asks.
“Lovers!” Tim Stabisch immediately shouts.
Oh, gimme a break. I feel myself turn red. Evan does a little too.
“Um,” Mr. Martinez says, clearly thinking he should ask for a different word, one that doesn’t make the improvisers uncomfortable before the scene’s even started. “Lovers feels vaguely inappropriate, but adjusting it to boyfriend and girlfriend seems fine. Does that work for you two?”
“Sure,” Evan says, trying to sound nonchalant.
“Sounds great,” I say, trying to seem like a brave badass. There’s laughter, which I’m into at first before realizing people have interpreted what I said as Finally! I’ve been desperate to jump this guy’s bones for YEARS! I turn red again.
“All right, all right, quiet down,” Mr. Martinez says. “Let’s show a little maturity and see what our two performers decide to do with the scene.” Evan and I haven’t made eye contact since the word lovers was hurled at us. “And remember, guys: no biting.”
So much for maturity. He gets a huge laugh, though I notice that Jess Yang, who I’m remembering very recently broke up with Evan, is definitely not finding any of this funny. In fact, she looks like she wants to murder me.
“Okay,” Mr. Martinez says. “Boyfriend and girlfriend. Go!”
I look to Evan, who’s looking at me. I’m waiting for him to initiate the scene—he’s the one who was all cocky about doing “the heavy lifting”—but he’s gone full deer-in-headlights. I’m quite sure I have too.
Boyfriend and girlfriend. What would happen in a scene with a boyfriend and girlfriend?
Kissing. Hugging. Holding hands. Going on a date. Making out.
I don’t want to do any of that! Especially not in front of Evan’s ex!
“It’s so good to see you!” Evan finally says, throwing his arms out to his sides.
I freeze. I can’t hug him right now. I won’t.
And I don’t necessarily think Evan wants me to, because there’s terror in his eyes, a look like I don’t know why I just said that, but I had to say something!
My instinct is to shout Get away from me, psycho! I know it would get a laugh. But I also know the whole point of this exercise is to agree with everything.
All eyes are on me. The ground is wobbly.
“I agree,” I finally say, much more quietly than I intended.
“What?” Evan asks.
“I agree,” I say again, a little bit louder. The room is silent. Oh shoot, I forgot to add something. I only did Yes instead of Yes, and. “It’s really good to—” I unfortunately start speaking at the same exact time as Evan, so I stop midsentence.
“Oh no, you first,” Evan says.
“It’s okay, you go,” I say.
“No, seriously, you…” He flings his hand in my direction.
I’m no improv expert, but I know this is the bad kind.
I can see Evan’s faith in me slowly diminishing, like air hissing out of a balloon. He’s realizing he made an awful mistake asking me to come here.
“Okay,” I say. “I was going to say it’s really good to see you, too. Because you’re my boyfriend. And because I miss your cooking.” Aha! There we go: Yes, it’s good to see you, AND I missed your cooking. Boom!
“Aw yeah,” Evan says, visibly relieved that I’ve given him something to work with. “My cooking is really good, isn’t it? And guess what? While I was away, I learned how to make lasagna! Yeah, boyyyy!” Evan does a little showboaty dance about his lasagna, which gets people laughing.
Once again, I’m at a total loss for how to respond. Agree. Agree. Agree. “Oh yeah, you did learn how to make lasagna. That’s great.”
“Uh…duh,” Evan says. “I just said that.”
People roar, which is essentially them laughing at me, which essentially feels awful, and I really don’t know why I came here. Maybe there’s a sledgehammer backstage I can use to bash my brains out.
“And all right,” Mr. Martinez says. “Let’s end that one there. Good work, guys.”
I slink back to my seat, wishing Mr. Martinez had called our scene out for the mound of feces it actually was. Calling it good work feels completely patronizing.
“That was your first try,” Leili whispers as I sit down. “You’re just getting the hang of it.”
I can’t get words out, so I just shake my head and stare forward with my arms balanced on my knees, trying not to cry.
9
I’m only half paying attention as Mr. Martinez explains the next game. It’s called Freeze. Two people do a scene until someone else shouts “Freeze!” and replaces one of them, mimicking whatever position their body is in at that moment. Then that person starts a brand-new scene using that body position to help dictate what it’s about. I don’t totally understand, and it doesn’t matter anyway because I’m not getting up there again. Or ever coming back here. If I learned one thing from my bat mitzvah, it’s that you can stop in the middle. The suffering can end. I’d leave right now if I could, but Leili’s mom is giving me a ride home.
Freeze begins, the scenes washing over me like background noise. I can’t stop replaying what happened. I said I agree. I literally said I agree. The mortification is so palpable and all-consuming, surgery might be the only way to get it out.
“Are you gonna go up there?” Leili whispers at me, her head still facing the improvisers.
“No way,” I say. “Fool me once…”
“You need to, Winner,” she says. “Everyone has bad scenes.”
“I can’t, Lay. I just can’t.”
She shrugs.
I watch as Fletcher approaches the stage after shouting “Freeze!” He taps out Tim Stabisch, who’s in a goofy dancing pose from whatever was just happening in the scene I wasn’t paying attention to. Fletcher takes Tim’s position and
immediately justifies it by making it seem as if he’s being blown backward by wind. It’s very convincing and very hilarious. His scene partner, Mahesh, joins in, spinning around and screaming.
“Freeze!” Mahesh is replaced by Leili. She assumes his position and becomes a passive-aggressive yoga instructor. Hilarious. I truly don’t know how she does it.
“Freeze!” Fletcher is replaced by Nicole O’Connor. (And again, Leili kills.)
“Freeze!” Leili is replaced by Molly Graham-Crockett.
I can’t wait for this game to be over. I sneak a peek at my phone: 3:47. Shouldn’t be long now.
“Freeze!” Leili shouts, and I’m thinking, Okay, we get it, you’re very amazing at this. How about you spread the wealth a little?
But then I feel her hands on my back, gently urging me to my feet.
“Go,” she says. “You have to do this.”
I stare at the stage. Molly Graham-Crockett is frozen with a worried look on her face, hovering over Nicole O’Connor, who’s in a crawling pose, like she’s searching for a lost contact lens or something.
“Leili, no,” I whisper, my head starting to get that swimmy underwater feeling.
“You’re the funniest person here,” she whispers back. “Just go.”
I wish I actually felt that way right now, but nevertheless, Leili knows the way to my brain, and her over-the-top flattery has the desired sobering effect.
I look again at Molly and Nicole, hoping inspiration will strike. The only thing that occurs to me is that Nicole, on all fours, could be a dog or a cat. But that’s stupid.
“Leili? You going back up there?” Mr. Martinez asks, trying to figure out why the game itself seems to have frozen.
I suddenly remember: I have experience playing a dog. I was Sandy in Annie, dammit!
“Um…,” Leili says, trying to gauge how much emotional damage she’d inflict by volunteering me to go, thereby leaving me no choice. I save her from having to make that decision.
“No, I am,” I say, already halfway to Nicole, forcing my body to keep moving before my head can reconsider.
“Oh, good,” Mr. Martinez says.
I tap Nicole and take up her position.
I bark.
Molly immediately gets it and starts patting my head. “Aw, what a good little doggie.”
For a moment, I’m blank before realizing I know exactly what to do. One day during Annie rehearsals when I was feeling particularly down about playing a dog with no lines, Dad encouraged me to come up with my own backstory for Sandy. And what I ended up with was that Sandy is incredibly resentful of Annie, of having to tag along all the time, and, also, always paranoid that Annie is out to get her. Dad and I have refined this bit together over the years; we actually still do it from time to time. “You think you’ve got a hard-knock life, girl?” I’ll say to him. “Try being a frigging dog!”
I stare Molly down, taking two steps away from her. “Don’t put me in a box, okay? I’m more than just your ‘little doggie.’ ”
Oh god, I’ve just broken the cardinal rule of improv by not agreeing. But everyone watching erupts in laughter, startling me. My doggie legs momentarily tremble.
Molly is taken aback, even her freckles looking bewildered, and seems at a loss for what to say next, which for some reason eases my nerves. “I’m sorry, doggie,” she finally says. “Don’t you like it here at the park?” She gestures to our surroundings.
“Of course I like it at the park,” I say. “The park is the best. I love the frigging park.” More laughs. “I just feel a little nauseous.” I eye Molly with disdain. “Did you put something in my food?” Sandy’s constant suspicion that Annie has poisoned her food is one of the main bits Dad and I do. There are yet more huge laughs, each layered with a note of surprise, like people were not at all expecting me to be this funny.
I want to savor this feeling forever. I want to bathe in it. I want a wizard to cast a spell that turns this feeling into a person so I can marry it.
“No!” Molly says, almost laughing herself. “Of course not!”
“You better not have,” I say, dead serious. “I know where you live.” I can pick out Leili’s voice in the laughter that follows, even though she’s heard me do this bit before.
“You need to trust me, doggie.” I’m not sure why Molly isn’t coming up with an actual dog name for me, but whatever. “I’ve been your owner for twenty years!” Whoa, twenty years? How old a character is she even playing?
“Yeah, twenty years of pain!” I shout.
People are practically rolling with laughter. Even Mr. Martinez.
As the scene continues, the laughs stay pretty consistent: I’ve got tons of Sandy material to draw on from years of doing this bit with Dad. I keep waiting for someone to freeze us, but nobody does.
I notice, though, that Jess Yang isn’t even smiling, let alone laughing. It’s disconcerting. And Rashanda, sitting next to her, is chuckling a bit but clearly trying not to for Jess’s sake. Whatever.
“Okay, let’s stop there,” Mr. Martinez says a minute later, bringing me out of my dog trance. “That’ll be the last Freeze scene of the day. Great work, guys. Really nice.” I suddenly realize how much pain my knees are in from being on all fours so long. But it doesn’t matter because people are cheering and Woo!ing as I get to my feet, and Molly holds out her hand for a high five.
“That was awesome,” she says.
“Yeah, you too,” I say, slapping her hand, suddenly feeling shy. “Sorry I was so mean to you.”
“Are you kidding? That was HI-larious.”
I keep my head down, smiling as I walk to my seat and plop down next to Leili. “You were so good!” she says.
“Thanks,” I say. “And thanks for pushing me to go up there.”
“I knew you’d come through.”
I appreciate her confidence in me, but it also occurs to me: What if I hadn’t?
“Guys, believe it or not,” Mr. Martinez says, looking up from his phone, “that’s all the time we have for today.” Many of my troupe mates emit disappointed moans. “I know, I know, but we’ll be together again next Thursday, and I am so excited. In the meantime, I want you to try and get your hands on a copy of…” He digs around for a while in his messenger bag before producing a purple book, colorful letters in its title. “This! It’s called Truth in Comedy, and it’s brilliant. It pretty much lays out all the key concepts of improv. If we had anything resembling a budget, I’d have copies for all of you, but since we don’t, people can take turns reading this one if you can’t get your own. Who wants it first?”
Many hands shoot into the air, including mine, but it’s Nicole O’Connor’s that he sees first. Her arms are otherworldly long.
“Great. Nicole, you’ll get it today, then someone else will get it next week.”
“Woooooooo!” Nicole says for the second time this afternoon as she gets the book and holds it up like she’s one of those hopped-up contestants on The Price Is Right.
“Well, great,” Mr. Martinez says, seeming like he wishes he’d given the book to someone else. “Anyway, till Thursday!”
There’s a buzz of chatter as everyone stands and makes their way back down to the auditorium seats to get their stuff. “That was so funny,” a short-haired girl, I think her name is Shannon, says as we walk down the steps.
“Oh, thanks.” I want to say the same to her, but literally all of her scenes involved repeatedly asking her scene partner where they should go for breakfast. She seems like a sweet person, though.
“Yeah,” Mahesh says from behind me. “That was completely ridiculous, in the best way.”
“Thanks,” I say again. I’m not used to compliments from people I don’t know. I can’t believe the past six minutes happened. Dad is gonna be so psyched.
Which reminds me, for the
first time since entering the auditorium, that my dad has been diagnosed with a terrible disease. It’s like leaving Disney World to find a decimated war zone outside.
“Aren’t you glad you came?” Leili asks as we grab our backpacks.
“Yeah, totally,” I say.
“Isn’t Mr. Martinez wonderful?”
“He is.”
A hand lands on my shoulder. “Yo!” Evan says, jolting me out of my own brain. “That was unreal!” My system isn’t quite sure what to do with all this praise. I look down at my feet as I thank him.
“I knew you had the goods,” he says. It’s stupid, but I’m so relieved to hear that, to know I didn’t let him down. “That dog character was amazing. You were so great.”
“You really were,” Leili says.
“Thanks,” I say for the eighteenth time in the past two minutes. I’m finding it hard to respond with anything more than that. I want to make a clever joke or say something self-deprecating, but in my overwhelmed state, none of that’s possible. Part of me is worried that if I say too much, I’ll jinx it.
“Hey, give me your number,” Evan says. “I took a picture of you improvising that I want to send you.”
He wants my number.
Evan wants my number.
Should I give him my number?
Leili’s eyebrows are raised so high they’re nearly hidden by her headscarf. It’s exactly how I’m feeling too.
“Oh,” I say. “Um, sure.” I give him my phone number, then he holds up his screen.
“Look what I put you in as,” he says, unable to contain a Cheshire cat grin.
My contact info is labeled Dog Girl.
I understand this is meant to be some kind of tribute to the fantastic performance I just gave, but after the two-second burst of flattery endorphins has worn off, I’m thinking maybe being listed in his phone with my actual name might be nicer than Dog Girl.
Evan is still grinning like a puppy dog himself, which, in spite of my annoyance, is pretty endearing, so I smile and say, “Ha, yeah, nice.”
“EVAN!” Tim Stabisch roars from the back of the auditorium like a monster. “YOU COMING?”