When I first moved to Atlanta from Miami back in 1998, I wanted to find a place where I could practice my sacred art of improv.   I had been doing it since 1984 at that point - in college and then professionally at Mental Floss in Miami.   I had been taught by both good and bad improv teachers and like most actors had come to a synthesis of what worked for me - a good chunk of Viola Spolin with a few splashes of Uta Hagen and Stanislavsky.   By the time I was ready to start doing improv in the ATL, I had been performing it off and on for over 14 years.  You'd think that I would be able to audition and then start performing with a company but as in NYC and LA, many Atlanta companies have a "Pay to Play" (P2P) system.   Rather than just depending on ticket sales, subscriptions and corporate underwriting, many of these theater companies have found that there are plenty of actors, actresses, wanna bees and desperate housewives who will pay for the privilege to be on stage with their favorite comic improv actors.  What they don't tell you is that they can keep you in that P2P system for a long time until you're "ready" to go on stage and even then it won't be on a Friday or Saturday night but a Tuesday or Wednesday night when they can get your friends and family to  pay to watch you perform.  You can say that you are part of the troupe as long as you keep putting out for classes.  It's sort of like crack - you pay more and more to get a little bit of a high to perform.  Oh and you never really get paid - since what little money you get in your paycheck will go right back into workshops - uh show business!  Never underestimate how much someone will pay to feel like a star.  

I had researched the few groups that were around at that time and one improv troupe seemed to be the most reasonable in price. They had their theater in a very artistry enclave of Atlanta.   I had gone to watch their show a few weeks before to see if it was a good fit.   It was a very young college crowd but they seemed to stay on a pretty funny intellectual level.  I knew the sort of improv pieces they did (if you know the show Whose Line is it Anyway? there are standards like Irish Drinking Song, in addition getting a location and relationship from the audience and creating a scene the spot with your improv partner).  I found out after introducing myself to the class that some of the founding members of the group had actually gone to school in Miami and had been to see Mental Floss as students.   "You did Fluffy La Puff? Awesome!" said one of the young members.   Fluffy was one of my signature characters.  "I used to go to Mental Floss when I was in high school."    I was hoping that meant I was cool and not old.   So after about two years of not doing improv (being a mom of a toddler can put things like that on hold)  I found that I was back to where I was when I was performing on a regular basis after about two classes -  it's like riding a bicycle - you never forget.   

After about four workshops, I got invited to do "Micetro" which is a sort "Survivor" of improv shows.   You have 12 improvisors start out in the evening and only one makes it to the end.   Sounds like riveting reality TV - the audience decides who to vote off one by one based on how you did in each of the improv sketches.   Now, on those "scripted dramas" having folks voted off the island is just how it goes.  But for improvisors that are just starting out - it creates very bad acting habits.   Rather than learning to support their partner to create a great scene,  they try to out do their partner and undermine them to get the most votes.   The improv "judges" can give side coaching but let's face it, it's the audience that gets the final decision.    So if a new actor saw that they could get a laugh mentioning an jock strap, erection, boobs or cum - they would do it and get the votes.  Even if they got warned by the "judges" about being vulgar, once they knew that wearing the scum box ( box of shame that went over the head of performer who had gone too far) was a twisted badge of honor, it was hard to get them back to playing at a higher intellectual level.  It' s sort of like sharks that taste mammal meat for the first time - it's quick, easy and very satisfying.   Who cares if the blood in the water is your partner's?  

So I'd do these Micetro's and get voted out in the first half because I'd refuse to go code blue but I'd try to support my partner the best way I could.   After the show, we would get notes and usually Joe, my workshop coach and judge would compliment me and say that my scenes were some of his favorites.  He was sorry that I wasn't getting voted through.   Then the younger members of the class would pipe up with "But if the audience isn't giving you the votes it doesn't matter how good your scene was."   That's when I realized something sinister was taking place - the scenes became more about pandering to the audience - not working with them.

The nights I would get ready to do a show, Max could tell that I wasn't having much fun.  "Why are you doing it again - you seem freaking miserable every time you go?"  "It's one of the best improv groups in Atlanta and I can make some connections." I would respond - trying to convince myself as much as him that it was what I really wanted to do.   One night, one of the company performers decided to perform with us.   He was doing a scene and afterwards, Joe  gave him some feedback just like he did for all of the performers in the show.  The player became incensed, called Joe a facist and stormed off the stage.  We thought it was a bit, but he walked out in the middle of the show - I mean got in his car and left.   Everyone tried to make light of it, but good God, the guy pulled that right in front of an audience and embarrassed everyone including himself.   If it had been my company, he would have been gone or at least suspended for a few weeks.   But no, there he was back at a Friday night show like nothing had happened.  He did send a note which was read to us at the next workshop - by Joe.  

It was the holiday season and I had made my usual selection of cookies and decided to bring a few dozen to the theater before the show.  It gave me and the toddler Amber a reason to make chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies, rice crispy treats, magic cookie bars and fudge.   Two of the guys asked if the chocolate chip cookies were the soft batch like the Keebler cookies.   "Actually, those cookies are loaded with chemicals to make them that soft but I just made these fresh this afternoon," I said with my best Bri DeCamp smile.  "Ah, I really like them soft - hey I bet if we nuke them, we can make them soft."  Again, I smiled and said "Enjoy!"   They took four of the cookies over to the microwave and nuked them for 10 seconds.  Sure enough, they were soft, but the chocolate was extremely hot and burned their hands.  When they cookies got cooler after a minute, they were hard as rocks - putrified by the radiation of the microwave.    They threw them out and shoved some sugar cookies into their pie holes and walked away without so much as a thank you.   

That night at Micetro, I was getting voted through and made it to the second half of the show for the first time.   It felt good as many of the other women in the show had been voted off.   Then the second part of the show started and I found that I really wanted to make it through to the end - which meant pandering.   I had promised myself I wouldn't -  but I wanted to make it to the end to prove to myself I could do it.   So I made jokes about my boobs or lack there of, groins, premature ejaculations - nothing was sacred.   I didn't get the scum box but I did get to the top four before I was voted off.   I had made it further than my past three attempts.  I should have been happy - but I felt empty.   I knew I hadn't done my best work and while the audience didn't know or care - I did.    I saw the box that I had brought the Christmas treats in ripped up and thrown into the garbage along with those ill fated cookies.   So quick, easy and disposable once it had been consumed. 

I thought about that as I drove back on I-85 that night.  I was that poor chocolate chip cookie.  I wasn't a soft batch - I was me and try as I might I just didn't want to do improv their way.  When I did and it made me feel as hard and tasteless as those sweet hockey pucks at the bottom of the garbage can.    I had gone as far as I ever had in Micetro, but I didn't want to go back to see if I could win it all - it just wasn't worth it if I was doing the sort of stuff I just didn't believe in.   I was sacrificing who I was for the instant gratification of an audience that only wanted dick jokes.   In an odd way, it felt good to walk away that night on my own terms.   

Now for you improv actors in Atlanta, I want you to understand that this is not a slam against that improv company.   They are good at what they do, it was just not the right thing for me.   That was over 13 years ago, and I'm sure things have changed.  A few years later in 2005,  I started with an improv group called Comedy Cobb which eventually got changed to The OTC Comedy Troupe.  I got to teach my philosophy of the art.  Now I would be a hypocrite if I told you that I never do a dirty scene - but when I do it's because my partner and I are working together - it's a mutual smut fest based on trust.  My group doesn't have eight shows a week and our own space like they do, but I love to perform when I can with like minded folks who make me laugh really hard.  When I get off of stage I feel good about what we've done.    Our shows can be geared to any audience from the edgy college student to kids who still watch the Disney channel.     I think we succeed on our own terms and really isn't that all any of us can ask? 

So the moral of the story is to know what sort of cookie you are and be proud if it.  If someone tries to nuke you to make you into something you're not, just take your treats and leave.  Because it doesn't matter how good their bakery is, if you hate their sweets, you'll never be happy.   Now go out there and blaze a trail - on your own terms with your own recipe for success - one that you can actually stomach. 

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 For those of you that don’t know me or what I do on the weekends for fun -- I’m the artistic director of a comedy improv group.  In fact, I’ve been doing comedy improv professionally for over 20 years.   Now many of you are probably thinking, “Wow, she must have started when she was ten years old.”  Well the truth is, yes, I did start when I was ten years old.   Well not professionally, but I did find that as a kid, I enjoyed helping people laugh.  Comedy was a good defense mechanism growing up – I was overweight and not coordinated or good at sports and was of course the last person to be picked forsports teams in elementary school.  My only saving grace was having a good sense of humor and the ability to do spot on impressions from the Carol Burnett show.  In middle school when I was allowed to stay up and watch Saturday Night Live -- Gilda Radner became another patron saint of comedy who helped me entertain the jocks while I warmed the benches.  So from an early age, I learned to not take myself too seriously and it opened meup to friendships with people who could laugh with me and not at me.  My work as an improv performer over the last twenty years has helped me see the importance of adding humor in our everyday lives and the healing power of laughter.    

My group does corporate events and one time we were asked to do a show for the Attachment Disorder Network which is group of parents with children who have severe developmental disabilities.  Keep in mind that we were performing at Simpsonwood which is a United Methodist Retreat Center in Norcross that has large wooden doors and you literally have totake the hand of Jesus to open the door.  Knowing this, I warned my actors to being their G-rated A game.   Well just about 10 minutes into the show, the audience made it clear by their suggestionsthat they didn’t want politically correct.  They wanted us to get blue.  At first I tried to control the scatological references so I could keep it on a high intellectual level – after all I did take the hand of Jesus when I walked in.   But this audience needed to laugh at themselves and take a moment to be in on jokes with other adults who had children with the same problems.   We did two hours of  comedy and when it was over, the room felt lighter.  Was this the cleanest show we’d everdone?  Not by a long shot, but these parents, who always had to be patient and understanding with children who would never understand their sacrifices, were putting their need to laugh first.  I realized in this place that God works in mysterious ways by bringing in a group of actors who are as far from therapists as they can be and in their zeal to just entertain an audience had given a healing performance. Laughter, it's said, is the best medicine. And there's lots of evidence that laughter does lotsof good things for us.  It reduces pain and allows us to tolerate discomfort.   

According to an article in Psychology Today, laughter reduces blood sugar levels, increasing glucose tolerance in diabetics and non-diabetics alike. It improves your job performance, especially if your work depends on creativity and solving complex problems. Its role in intimate relationships is vastly underestimated and it really is the glue of good marriages.  It synchronizes the brains of speaker and listener so that they are emotionally attuned. Laughter establishes -- or restores -- a positive emotional climate and a sense of connection between two people, In fact, some researchers believe that the major function of laughter is to bring people together. And all the health benefits of laughter may simply result from the social support that laughter stimulates.    We love being in on the same joke. Now comes hard new evidence that laughter helps your blood vessels function better. It acts on the inner lining of blood vessels, called the endothelium, causing vessels to relax and expand, increasing blood flow. In other words, it's good for your heart and brain, two organs that require the steady flow of oxygen carried in the blood.   You feel better and think clearly when you laugh.   Haven’t you ever just had a good laugh when friends and finished it with an “Ahhh” and then had a moment of clarity as if whatever might have been bothering you had either gone away or you had a renewed perspective on how to handle it. When 9/11 happened, all the comedy and talk shows stopped producing while the news stations told us the details of all the things that were happening at Ground Zero in New York.  It was a heart wrenching time in our history and not one in which many people were laughing.  Saturday Night Live was supposed to come on September 29, 2001 but it was uncertain if it would air on its premiere date.   Mayor Rudy Giuliani, in what I think was his finest hour, decided that the country had mourned enough and needed New York to get back to normal.    He asked Lorne Michels, the producer, to have SNL premiere as scheduled.  The opening that night was a beautiful tribute by Paul Simon to the police officers and fire fighters that had perished that day. After it was over, Lorne Michels turns to Mayor Giuliani and asks, “Can we go back to being funny?”.  Giuliani pauses for a second and replies, “Why start now?”  And in that moment, America got it’s funny back and weneeded it.   If the mayor of a city that had lost so much could crack a joke, then it was okay for the rest of us to laugh again.  As someone who loves comedy and loves to perform it, that was a very proud moment.  It meant we could laugh and start to think more clearly.  Letterman and Leno came back on the air and we started to have fun again.  

People came back to see shows on the Great White Way, and Broadway was back to it’s pre-9/11 levels in just five months and unlike the airline industry – without government subsidies.   If we ever needed laughter and a sense of humor with the way the world is going – it’snow.  There is a constant stream of gloom and doom about the economy on the news and yet when things are bleakest, comedy seems to be the first thing people turn to.  This year instead of a crop of movies like No Country for Old Men or The Wrestler- Hollywood is finding that the end of 2009 is one of the strongest ever.  Why?  Because people want to escape to Avator, Up in the Air, It's Complicated and Sherlock Holmes.  People want to escape and laugh more than ever. The media loves to report on the negative side of things and we’ve been getting tons of it lately.   But they are not always right.   Remember the Y2K apocalypse that wassupposed to wipe out civilization as we knew it?   For years we were warned about the possibility of major blackouts, airplanes falling from the sky, and food shortages when the clocks chimed in midnight on New Year’s Day 2000.    Survivalists stocked up on ammo, bottled water and canned tuna ready for the anarchy that would ensue.   News reports gave you the impression that you had better kiss your kiester good-bye because once theyear 2000 hit, none of the computers would be able to handle it and would think we were back to they year 1900.   So on New Year’s Eve 1999, I sat on the couch after Max, my husband and I put our toddler Amber to bed and watched TV thinking it would be the last time for a while.  We watched other parts of the world ring in the New Year, Australia, Japan, Italy, and London, all with no loss of electricity.  New Years 2000 was turning out to just like any other New Years.  When the countdown for our Georgia’s New Years happened, I was very anxious and went to bed.   The next morning,  the year 2000 had arrived, the electricity was still on, I did not have to climb over airplane parts to get the paper and my kiester was  exactly where I had left it.  Years of anxiety had produced a normal New Year’s Day.  The biggest losers were the survivalists who had more tuna then cream of mushroom soup and let’s face it you can only do so much with tuna noodle casserole.   I remember going to the park with Amber (Daniel was to be born 12 months later) and feeling this huge sense of relief that civilization had not collapsed.  What bothered me was that I had spent years worrying about something terrible that they news media reported with absolutecertainty was going to happen, but never did.   

It can be hard to keep your sense of humor in these challenging times, but it pays to laugh each day.  Not laughing can have negative consequences on your mental health. According to the book, 5 Habits of Truly Happy People by Marci Shimoff and Carol Kline, our habits do affect our happiness, and neuroscientists have recently discovered why. Habitual thoughts and behaviors create specific neural pathways in the wiring in our brains, the way water flowing downhill creates a groove in the earth. When we think or behave a certain way over and over, theneural pathway is strengthened and the groove becomes deeper. Unhappy people tend to have more negative neural pathways -- their minds are literally stuck in a rut.Scientists used to think these neural pathways were set in stone. But new research shows that when you repeatedly think, feel, and act in a different way, the brain actually rewiresitself. This means you can change your happiness set point.Leading brain researcher Richard Davidson, PhD, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said, "Based on what we know about the plasticity of the brain, we can think of happiness as a skill no different from learning to play a musical instrument...it is possible to train our minds to be happy."Scientists used to think these neural pathways were set in stone. But new research shows that when you repeatedly think, feel, and act in a different way, the brain actually rewires itself. This means you can change your happiness set point.Leading brain researcher Richard Davidson, PhD, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said, "Based on what we know about the plasticity of the brain, we can think of happiness as a skill no different from learning to play a musical instrument...it is possible to train our minds to be happy."These five habits along with a good dose of laughter can help you get through tough times and can help you feel much better. 

1. Don't Believe Everything You Think 
According to medical experts, we have an average of 60,000 thoughts a day -- about one thought per second during every waking hour. And of those 60,000 thoughts, 95 percent are the same thoughts we had yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. What's worse is that for the average person, the vast majority of those habitual thoughts are negative.How many times have you been in a room of people who really enjoyed your presentation, performance, art work, etc. but you zoned in on the one person who didn’t seem to be enjoying what you were doing.  Here’s a something to think about, very negative people who are hard to please know that most people will work hard to get their approval and if they give their approval then they lose their power to manipulate.  So stop giving away your power and stop trying to please someone with impossible standards.   Instead of trying to satisfy that one relative who never likes what you give them, send them a gift certificate and be done with it.  If they complain, let them--  they would have even if you had spent hours trying to buy them the perfect gift.

2. Notice The Happy Things in Your Life -- No Matter How Small
This parable helps to bring this concept into focus:One evening a Cherokee elder told his grandson about the battle that goes on inside people's heads. He said, "My son, the battle is between the two 'wolves' that live inside us all. One is unhappiness. It is fear, worry, anger, jealousy, sorrow, self-pity, resentment, and inferiority. The other is happiness. It is joy, love, hope, serenity, kindness, generosity, truth, and compassion."The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf wins?"The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."  When I start to feel down, I try to notice the little things that make my life better, like a decent parking space, or the nice walk I need to take when I can’t find a good parking space.   Also, try complimenting co-workers or strangers on their outfit and you can see their demeanor change and their smile reflects back on you.  

3. Choose the Happier Thought
The next time you're faced with a challenging situation that gives rise to negative thoughts and bad feelings, find an equally true thought about the situation that makes you feel better -- and lean into it.   When you are stressing about a deadline, try to clear your head of negative thoughts and ask for help – the more you relax the more ideas will come to you.   It’s seeing the glass as half full versus half empty – the glass half full people generally forge on ahead without giving up. 

4. Tend to Your RelationshipsThe best way to keep relationships happy, healthy, and supportive can be summed up in one word: appreciation. "One of the most important things a person can do to raise his or her happiness level is to acknowledge those around them," says Judith W. Umlas, author of The Power of Acknowledgment. "According to a recent Gallup Management Journal article, when someone is acknowledged, dopamine is released -- a neurochemical that's directly linked to being happy!" When we demonstrate our appreciation for the support we receive from others, it reinforces that behavior and deepens our connection to them. 

5. Find Passion and Purpose
Bringing a sense of passion to mundane activities will boost your happiness, but so will taking the time to find your true passions. Think about what activities most absorb you and analyze what it is about those activities that makes you happy.  I stopped doing improv for a few years because I was caught up in work, raising my family and all the other things that are on your to-do list except for those things you really enjoy.   I knew something was missing, I just wasn’t sure what.  I didn’t realize how much I missed performing until John Ritter passed away and it really affected me.   While it was a shock, here was a guy doing exactly what he wanted to do the day he died – being funny and entertaining people – but I wasn’t.   I decided to try doing improv again six years ago.   I’m now the producing artistic director of my own group – which has its roots here at UUCG when I was teaching improv workshops and John Schmedes, my executive producer, took the class. He liked what he saw and invited me to help him start what is now the OTC Comedy Troupe.   So thanks to UUCG, you can now see such OTC comedy classics as “Booty the Vote” on YouTube and I know you must all be so proud.
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