The Great Petri Dish of Creativity

Thursday, May 22, 2008 by John Robison.

A program note: earlier in the week I had a long, glorious posting that outlined the history of how the Roving Imp came to be, in more specifics. After awhile I thought, “This is getting pretty long - I’d better save.” I hit the save button, which caused my program to go haywire, and the entire thing has now moved on to the electronic oblivion. As of this moment, I am still too heartbroken to re-create the entire thing. It’ll come later. Damn my longwindedness.

Every so often, it’s important to take a break to charge your batteries. For the past few weeks I’ve been feeling that my improv was not my best. I haven’t been too happy with my character choices, relationship developing, or hosting ability. I’ve had really great characters and scenes, of course (my child Nazi during this month’s IA First Friday springs to mind), but it’s felt like these stellar scenes have been the exception lately.

So, I took a look at my schedule, and noticed quickly that I have been spending so much time on stage lately that my creativity cultures haven’t had time to grow. I kept scraping out the bottom, occasionally finding a good gem, but at some point you’ve got to stop and just let the universe work its good, relaxing, magic. This is a good time for it. The Roving Imp traditionally takes off Memorial Day weekend (the one other time it’s come around in our history), and we have our regular Thursday rehearsal off as well. Looking at this week, I have exactly one improv-related obligation in a six-day period. Wow. Already, after just a day and a half, I feel strangely relaxed. There’s been no show planning, no extra marketing push, no juggling schedules. I love doing this stuff, but it’s a surprising relief to not have to do them.

The only improv event of the week is my regular improv class on Saturday, which strangely has not been affected by my personal doldrums. My teaching and coaching abilities seem to be unaffected by my creative void. So I have no worries for my students - in fact, this Saturday’s class on “Creating the Second Beat” is easily my favorite to date.

I don’t classify this as burnout… I am still in love with the art of improvisation, but rather have seem to hit the bottom of the on-stage biorhythm. I can’t wait to get my mojo back… and I think this weekend might just be the way to do it. No shows or rehearsals, and just one class.

Oh yeah… no more blogging, either.

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