Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails

I love men. Oh, not like that. Well. OK. Like that, too. But that's not what I mean here. What I mean is that I have always had an easier time making friends with them than with the fairer sex. Things are simpler with guys. If you don't like what someone's doing, you say it. If you do, you say it. There's no female crap where you say you feel fat just to make everyone else tell you that you look great. There's a whole lot less censoring. And you don't have to worry about your hair getting messed up because, chances are, they won't notice nor care. Guys are easy to get along with, in my experience. And I have always laughed at (and told) locker room humor, to the horror of my mother. So it was a bit of a sweet surprise to me when I found working with the femi-centric improv troupe, the Dixie Cups, to be such fun. I even posted about it here.

So, if you believe in this sort of thing, the universe read my blog and giggled. For, no more than a few weeks after posting, I showed up to rehearse with See You Thursday (the co-ed troupe of which many of the D-Cups are also a part) and found that I happened to be the only one there wearing a bra. (At least I hope I was. I didn't actually check.) It was me and a bunch of dudes.

I have to say that even though I have always felt like one of the guys, I felt a bit weird standing there in a room full of testosterone. Part of my apprehension came from the fact that I worried they felt overly conscious of my presence, or maybe they really wished I'd not shown up that night, that they'd have to censor themselves or... well... read my post here about anxiety and I'm sure you can recreate for yourself all the nervous chatter filling my brain in the five or so minutes before we began to play.  I quickly talked myself off the ledge, though, and decided to just do my best to have a good time and to learn from my improv-bros.

To let them know that they didn't need to worry about protecting my girlishness or fear that they might offend me, I walked on stage and chose a character who cussed like Eddie Murphy and would make a sailor blush. It may have been my imagination, but I was pretty sure I saw them all relax a bit. More importantly, I relaxed a bit.

And I learned a lot from my boys. Here is what I love about improvising with the boys:

• Relax.
• If you want to do something, do something. After you walk out into the darkness, the lights will come on and you'll find yourself on stage. Usually with another person. (Or two.) And there's a moment where you have to decide whether or not you're going to offer first (speak the first line). With the gals, there's perhaps a sense of politely assessing (in a nanosecond) if she has something she wants to do. And being well-trained in the feminine arts, we often acquiesce. The boys, who never received this cultural training, don't. If they have something, they say it. And if they both have it and say it at the same time, well, that's the scene.
• Enjoy yourself. Even when you're failing. If you aren't having fun, you aren't doing it right. It's ok to fail. Failing means you're trying. The boys taught me to take my failures like a... well, like a man, I guess.
• Process over product. There's a sense, when playing with the boys, of not really caring how the whole thing will turn out. That isn't so much true with the ladies. I think we women are so used to, in our daily lives, worrying and fussing over the end-product and how people will react to us, that we do worry about whether what we are about to say will work for the scene, will support it, will be funny. The boys? They play to play and only wonder about the product after it's done. (We did talk about what worked and what didn't after the fact.)
• Fart jokes are funny. Always.
• Cocky (pun noted) is good. They're all so confident, these guys. Or they seem to be. Or they just fake it. Doesn't matter. Being confident makes you feel confident. And feeling confident allows you to get in there and play hard without worrying. And playing without worry lets you get out of your own ego's way. This sounds like a contradiction. But it isn't. Trust me.

A big thanks to the boys of SYT for letting me into the fort. Learned a lot!