THE GIFT OF COMEDY AND CONNECTION
“Improv changed my life.”
How? Almost two years ago, I walked into my first ever comedy improv class, the Level One Intro to Improv 8-wk session, at Santa Fe Improv. An attorney by day, I had yet to recover from the isolation of the pandemic and online court proceedings. Community was a distant memory and fun was a concept I had practically forgotten. Day one of class I thought, how did I not know this art-form existed? I laughed, I bonded with my classmates, I felt overwhelmed. You might not have known it by looking at my face, but on the inside I had come alive again. I made some of my closest and best friends that day. Over the next few months, I progressed through the Levels 1-5 and began performing with a team of other students. Have you ever been in a room where everything said lights you up inside with absolute joy? Well, that’s what I found when I entered the Santa Fe Improv theater on day one and ever since.
Longform comedy improv, in the style taught by the Upright Citizen’s Brigade in LA and New York, which is the style taught at SFI, is a challenging art-form to learn. It attracts attorneys like me; teachers; bio-chemists; engineers, and actors. Both highly intellectual and playful all at once, comedy improv is the hardest thing I’ve ever learned, and yet the most rewarding. It is also the most fun and the most serious. If I could only gently shake each of you, readers, and impart upon you the life-changing impact improv can have upon you, I would. Instead, I write to you about it, and invite you to come to a class. To simply try it.
I’m still an attorney, but I also volunteer and work at SFI in the admin and as an improv teacher. If you give the gift of improv to yourself, and also others, you won’t regret it. Click here to purchase a gift card.
By Lucy River, Attorney and Improviser
ABOUT SANTA FE IMPROV
Santa Fe Performing Arts Collaboration dba Santa Fe Improv is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded to bring the benefits of improv to every New Mexican. Santa Fe Improv offers classes for students of all ages and backgrounds and hosts performances at its theater space located at 1202 Parkway Dr. #A, Santa Fe, NM 87507, where house and student teams perform comedy improv in front of a live audience weekly. For more information visit www.santafeimprov.org. Follow Santa Fe Improv on Instagram.
