In Barigui Park, Curitiba, Brazil, capybara thrive. The oversized yet adorable rodents are allowed to simply exist in a perpetual state of brazen vulnerability, casually grazing near the damned waters of the Barigui River, often flopping on the ground, exposing their softest underparts to the earth’s most vicious and unforgiving apex predator (humans) for a belly rub. Fortunately for capybara, and those who fancy themselves a capybara belly rub, capybara never learned to fear humans. And it is for this reason, that if capybara ever managed to regulate their amygdala, develop their frontal lobe, and pump up that prefrontal cortex, they would be great natural improvisers. Just like we all were at one point before we learned to fear humans. This blog serves as a handbook for the Improv School Redlands, but also as a guide for understanding improv, learning how to teach improv (or anything really), ultimately growing as a creative person and, hopefully, becoming more you.
The foundational premise of this blog and the general improv philosophy at Improv School Redlands is: anyone can do it because you already know how to do it. Improv is problem solving, it is storytelling, it is worrying about tomorrow, or regretting yesterday. Improv is existing. Improv is connecting, finding commonality, and enjoying the calm, and even the tension, relationships bring. It is only because of the boundaries within ourselves, often erected as callouses honed to protect against past ridicule and shame, that we ever struggle in embracing wholeheartedly the tenets that stem from the foundational “yes, and”.
As infants we only knew instinct. Whatever was presented to us was as true as anything else. Largely due to our lack of total experience, of course, but still, we accepted anything and everything that was given to us as all the reality there was to behold, like a sticky handful of gritty sand chomped between toothless gums on our first introduction to the beach. This is how we hope to ultimately embrace improv. Like a handful of sand directly into our eager toothless vulnerable mouths. We start first by unlearning, in a sense, the behaviors and mindsets that hold us back from being our most open, vulnerable, and thus our best, improvisers, by recognizing and confronting a “Fixed Mindset” while embracing what Carol Dweck calls, a “Growth Mindset” (2006). I, unfortunately, did not have a Growth Mindset until I was well into marriage, kids and the existential dread of life in an endless tumble from one monetarily dictated direction to another. Then, my wife went to college.
Now, an educational professional tasked with teaching teachers, coaching coaches, and leading leaders, my wife, Kimberly Irene Nieblas, may likely be (at the time of this reading) quite higher up in the echelons of academia than she is at the time of this writing, so let’s just say, she’s very, very smart. So, when book-readin’ and college-goin’ became her forté, she introduced me gently to the harsh reality that I really did not believe myself capable of much. I didn’t try, and barely passed, high school. I tried and failed at college. I was fairly directionless. Toss a neurodivergent cherry on top, and I was flailing, and likely even failing at flailing. Or so I felt. Essentially, at some point, I had been told, and believed myself, that I was only capable of certain things, good at certain things, and inherently bad at others. The evidence for these beliefs were deeply rooted in my inability to do well at something new my first go-around, my excelling at certain things at first try, and the opinions of others regarding my potential. I was stuck because I believed I was, until my wife Kimberly believed in me more than I believed in myself.
So, as of now, riding my wife’s academic coat tails in hopes of what might be a modicum of impact compared to the colossal amount of lives shaped by her contributions to the greater California public school system, I can say that I have, and will continue to work on developing, a growth mindset. Which means, given enough time and effort, I believe I am capable of damn near just about anything and everything. Within my physical and financial limits, of course. I may possess the effort needed to become an astronaut at my age, but I likely am running out of the time and bone cartilage required, so I’ll limit my space faring to my imagination and yours (ask me about my plans to launch my cadaver into space aimed at a planet able to sustain life and therefore becoming the proto-organism for an entire alien race). Or I’ll watch The Expanse. All of which I am confident in my capabilities to achieve. Especially in watching The Expanse.
Once this ol’ noggin recognized the potential, I wish I could say I was off to the neurological races, but establishing that I could, in fact, make decisions to directly direct both myself and my path in life was not a lightbulb moment nor a binary lightswitch. Building the resilience, grit, fortitude, elegance, beauty, grace, poise and luxurious ebony garnet locks that are capable of writing these words took much time, energy, effort, pain, healing, therapy, medication, and help. Around the same time as my growth mindset #GlowUp, my best friend by marriage and comedy partner by choice, Shawnathan Persephone Edward Warniferous III a.k.a Shawn Warner of Metrocom Security, Crossfit Fontana, and most importantly, The Dadcast Podcast: A Comedy Podcast for Dads, introdcued me to improv comedy beyond that which I’d seen on the likes of “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”.
Through some incredibly sketchy “meet-up” website, Shawn found a small group that ended up forming our very first improv troupe, which became known as Tastes Like Burning, helmed by the effervescent and aggressively kind Josh Nicols of Rise Comedy in Denver, Colorado. Shawn and I joined Michael Broadbent, Dennis Johnston, Sally Sparx Spencer, and Ali Rafter, as Josh cultivated an openness and care in us for each other that still resonates to this day. Josh was improv Papa to both Shawn and I, improving our podcasting and our lives with an unbelievable confidence in us and the power of “yes, and”. I owe him so very much and I’m sure my fellow TLBers feel the same. As friendships solidified and team bonds faded into domestic responsibilities, we went our separate ways, but as far as I’m concerned, TLB could still be called to the stage at any moment, so stay ready.
As I went on to pursue more of this personally elucidating art form, pushed forward by an inevitable firing from a job I despised and an endlessly supportive wife endlessly prodding about my endless hopes and dreams, I started attending classes, workshops and performances at historic Los Angeles comedy institutions. All of my sharpened skill, improv prowess, and brazen humility in the art of improv were sharpened and challenged by the likes of Colleen Doyle and Jason Shotts at iO West (RIP), Julian Gant, Jeff Galante, Navaris Darson, Colleen Smith, and Mary Scheer at The Groundlings, and the first ever sketch team I had the pleasure of calling home, Pretentious About Make Believe, directed by the incomparable and debonair, John Mahone at The Second City Los Angeles. Our near year long run of main stage performances elevated my craft and my desire for more. Co-written and performed by Kyle Encinas, Kassie Johnston, Michelle Nussey, Mirando Soriano, Tony Kim and myself, John was able to craft our sketches into a weird, hilarious, avante garde stage show that captivated audiences from all over Hollywood Blvd. and, dare I say (because Michelle is an Aussie), the world. On November 5th, we performed our last, and I was positive that the next year was going to be my breakout or breakthrough year. 2020 was going to be great.
Until it wasn’t. At least not for everyone, and not in every way. In one particular way for me, it was. The time alone with my wife and kids at our home in the Inland Empire (I.E. 909 Represent!) was an opportunity for us to reflect, be grateful, and disinfect the InstaCart groceries like a sextuplet of bio-environmental systems engineers. It also gave me an opportunity to sit with myself and just feel. Which was hard. Most of the feeling was due to uncovering and dissecting the reasons for the ways I acted that I did not like and wanted to change. As much as I embraced a much more growth oriented mindset while pursuing my artistic endeavors, the isolation of COVID-19 brought to light the fixed mindsets and attitudes that plagued my attempts at progress. My perfectionism, ADHD, anxiety, depression, and frankly, lack of a true understanding of who I was, not just as an artist, but as a person, began to become larger issues than I was previously willing to admit. I needed help, so I sought it, and no matter how many articles, YouTube videos, podcasts, self help books, and therapy sessions I inundated myself with, no matter how much I grew, the foundational tenets of improv remained the most consistent and impactful perspectives across all forms of comfort I’ve sought as I moved forward in my mental health journey.
Then, in 2022, the year of our Lord, Creativity, I taught improv for the first time, substituting for my friend, Ali Rafter, who started Improv School Redlands from the ground up, one space worked brick at a time in 2019. Ali, a long time artist, actor, writer, director and improviser, as well as a staple in the Inland Empire and Redlands performing arts communities, somehow saw in me a partner and eventual successor to the beacon of positivity and joy she began at Improv School Redlands. I’ve never been much for taking risks. Attempting to “run away” when I was younger consisted of no more than 1/3rd of a residential suburban block, not because I assumed such a small distance was all that was needed for my caregivers to worry, but because I was terrified to go further. Now, I’m on the precipice of yet another risk, more real than any domicile escapism I’d ever dreamed. And I’m terrified.
Yet, history is fraught with ancient risk takers leaping into the dark and embracing the unknown to varying returns. From our slippery tail clad greatest grandparents who jettisoned themselves from the primordial soup (to some awe and some resentment), to your mid 90s elementary school party boy, Double-C, Chris Columby (that genocidal bastard), people just can't seem to leave the unknown unknown. Sometimes it works out, like when Mary Anning, who at the age of 12, discovered the first complete Ichthyosaurus skeleton recognized by the scientific community. In 1811. At the age of 12. Despite the eras’s scorn for a woman in science, Mary “Dino-Finder” Anning rewrote full chapters of Earth’s history, proving extinction exists (thanks, Mare) before possessing a formal education, or rights.
Sometimes it doesn’t work out, like when Maurice Flitcroft, a crane operator from Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, England, decided, at the age of 46, to play professional golf. Due to an oversight in the entry process, Maurice Flitcroft managed to join the qualifying round of the 1976 British Open, where he famously recorded a 121-stroke round, an all-time high for the event, on a course where the typical par is around 70. Some might say that he didn’t make a mockery of golf or himself, but embraced the soulful essence of the amateur’s dream, putting heart above skill, and in that spectacular failure, he found an unexpected triumph, against all the odds in the hearts and minds of every weekend warrior seeking a tee time. So, great for him, I guess. But still, Maurice failed when he leapt into the dark, and although he is a legend for it, becoming an imprint on history for embarrassing yourself unashamedly isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. And it’s not mine either.
So, I need help. Like everyone needs help, but often enough, much like everyone else, I don’t really fully know or understand what kind of help I need or where I will get it. All I know is, Improv School Redlands is turning a new page on a new chapter. The leap into the dark I am taking, and inadvertently asking you to take with me, is me taking over as owner of Improv School Redlands from Founder and one of my very best friends, Ali Rafter. Reasons encompass timing, schedules, location and more, but ultimately it comes down to the fact that Ali and I are deeply invested in the future of the Improv School Redlands so we are making choices aligned with how we are both expecting the school to best grow, build and celebrate the community we all have poured so much of our passions into.
I don't know what the future holds. I have a lot of ideas, and a lot of your ideas have become my ideas as I have continued to mine your creative souls for how to shape this school of ours into a place for us all, but at this point they're almost nothing more than neurons. However, wheels are spinning, emails are flying, and wouldn’t you believe it, we have class every single Sunday night, so, hopefully I’ll see you there and we can all do our best to navigate the uncertainty of existence. Together.
So, as we search for the great human “through-line” piercing each level of existence that is improvisation, we will delve into the intersection of improvisational theater, education, and pedagogical (instructional) frameworks as well as the psychological, social and emotional inner workings of our lumpy gray matter. Improv is everything and I’m going to prove it. With science. As the capybara lies unguarded in the grass, so too we learn to lower our defenses and embrace the unknown, allowing the natural, albeit often repressed sense of play present in all of us to guide ourselves back to the uninhibited agreement of our youth, and the mature, refined voice of a well developed artist.
Yes, and to you all.