It’s Fall Y’all!
It’s the beginning of the end of the year. Halloween is over, clocks are set back an hour, and now the holidays just around the corner. But before that, we have the Out of Bounds Comedy Festival (or OOB as the locals call it) to celebrate excellent improv, sketch and standup from Austin and around the country. Keep reading for my featured article about apologies and my recommendations for books, habit tracking apps, and all the things to see and do at OOB.
Featured Story
ASK FOR FORGIVENESS, NOT PERMISSION
Here’s a pet peeve: Don’t make me say the thing you are doing, which is wrong, is okay.
For example, say it’s show night and I volunteered to make a playlist for the pre-show house music. Something’s come up and I’m now running late and no longer have time to put the playlist together I send a text out:
“Running late and I don’t have the playlist ready yet. Is it okay if we go without it tonight?”
Not only did I mess up and make everyone’s night a little more stressful, but I’m also asking them to say it’s okay and make me feel better about it.
Nope. That’s not fair.
Here’s what I should text instead. “Running late and I don’t have the playlist done yet. Really sorry everyone. This was my job and I messed up. Should I put one together now and be late to call time or head straight to the theater?”
I prefer someone owns the wrong doing. Take the hit. Burn a bit of your social capital. If you want to ask a question about the best next step, that’s fine. But don’t ask everyone to approve your misdeed. Don’t burden them with managing your guilt. That’s the whole point of guilt. You let us down and now you feel bad and that’s part of why you’ll try to avoid letting us down in the future.
Is it okay if I smash into my birthday cake with my hand and gobble it all up?
I’m working on my behavior on both sides of this situation. Something I recently learned from Brené Brown in a conversation on Trevor Noah’s podcast: when someone apologizes, you don’t have to say it’s okay.
This is so hard. It’s my instinct to say it’s okay right away. But it’s not always okay. That’s why they are apologizing. Instead she suggests you say, “Thank you.” Or, “I appreciate that.”
Dang. That’s hard.
The logic is, you are the one who’s been wronged, it’s not your job to make the offender feel better in that moment. It’s their job to make amends.
In time, you may decide to forgive them, but you don’t have to and you surely don’t have to immediately.
Owning your mistakes and accepting apologies are hard, but understandable. But forgiveness? What even is that?
Forgiveness is a concept I have a hard time truly understanding. It isn’t condoning or accepting or exonerating. It isn’t giving someone a second chance or reconciling or forgetting, It’s not about someone serving their punishment or paying their debts. So what is it? A lot of what I read is that it’s letting go of anger and moving forward, Forgiveness is for you, not for them.
When I see it that way, sometimes I think either I’ve never been angry enough for long enough or I’ve never truly forgiven someone. How does one truly forgive another person?
In improv we often have this metaphor of a box of Kleenex. It’s an endless container of cheap, disposable tissues. Ideas on stage are like these tissues. We don’t have to be precious and hold on to our ideas. There are infinitely more of them and we can just pluck another idea out of the box. In this scene I’m a doctor (pluck) I’m a waiter (pluck) I’m a robot (pluck) a tarantula! Discarding an idea is no big deal. I’ve got more. This approach is freeing and gives a feeling of abundance instead of scarcity.
Those tissues could be ideas, but as you continue your improv journey, they could also be scenes or shows (pluck). Or troupe mates or troupes (pluck). Or friends or lovers or jobs or houses (pluck, pluck, pluck.) There’s always more.
At Lonestar Rage Rooms smashing plates, cups, and furniture. I thought it would be a way to get anger out. But it was too darn fun and I smiled the whole time.
The dark side of this perspective is that there are some things worth holding on to. Somethings that won’t come around again. Something you could have cherished or savored. But instead you wadded it up and tossed it aside.
It’s part of why I love the saying “hold on tightly, let go lightly,” originated by British theatre and film director Peter Brook and first taught to me by the legend of the game Michael Joplin. It’s a balance of deep feeling and commitment alongside lightness and freedom. It’s being accountable for your mistakes and still moving forward. It’s feeling your anger at an injustice and eventually finding forgiveness.
The Yes And List
OUT OF BOUNDS FESTIVAL
It’s the biggest improv comedy festival of the year and it’s almost here! Catch me at these shows:
-→Thursday 11/5 6pm 11pm Hosting at the Dougherty Arts Center
→Friday 11/6 9pm Performing with my duo Get Up at Coldtowne
→Saturday 11/7 3pm Panelist-ing at the Femmes and Thems Forum, then hosting at Coldtowne
→Sunday 11/8 7pm Headlining with Girls Girls Girls Improvised Musicals featuring Dropout TV’s Zeke Nicholson at Esther’s Follies
GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS IMPROVISED MUSICALS
It’s GGG’s 25th year and I’m the only remaining original member. We’ve got lots of special events coming up to celebrate.
→Saturday 11/7 3pm GGG is hosting the Femmes and Thems Forum at Coldtowne. Expect snacks, panel discussion, promos, and breakout groups
→Sunday 11/8 7pm Headlining OOB at Esther’s Follies
→Friday November 13th at 8:30pm regular Second Friday Show at the Fallout
→January 2027 TBD– Big 25th Anniversary Show!
FINCH APP
I started my family on Finch, a gamified habit-tracking mobile app, in hopes of finding someone else besides me to remind them to brush their teeth. It’s almost a year later and although I can’t testify to the state of my children’s oral hygiene, it’s been working great for me! It gives me the positive reinforcement I crave to do the things every day that make me my best, like walking outside, reading a book, and talking with a friend.
Here’s my friend code if you want to be buddies and cheer each other on: G5VJGJBE8Y
THE GIVER
This YA dystopian novel by Lois Lowry is a modern classic in line with Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World, I’d missed it since I was no longer in middle school when it came out in 1993. Luckily my son Max had to read it this year in 7th grade and I joined in. The prose was clean and the story moved quickly. It gave us a great discussion afterwards about what is worth sacrificing for tranquility. Thank you public school teachers!
Retreat, Offsite, or Meeting Coming Up?
Whether you need an energizing team building session for your team offsite, a virtual skill building session on giving and receiving feedback, a keynote on thriving through change or anything in between, I can help you out. We just chat on a quick call, I send a proposal and if you like it we lock it in and let the fun begin.
Improv Quotes
“Improvisation means coming to the situation without rigid expectations or preconceptions. The key to improvisation is motion — you keep going forward, fearful or not, living from moment to moment. That’s how life is.”
—Bobby McFerrin
