This past Thursday I went to my SECOND UCB improv class. It was a little bit funny because we had a substitute teacher, and when he came in he asked if we had any questions about the method of teaching or the class overall, and we sort of all sat there with a blank look on our faces. He went on to sort of lightly reprimand the fact that when you don’t have questions it means you aren’t keeping up as you should be doing, etc… valid point. Until someone finally brought to attention the fact that it was only our second class. He was unaware of that and immediately took it all back.

Something that I recently discovered is that with Improv 101, you are really learning all of the basic basics. It’s truly an introduction to improvisation in its most pure form. This is great for those people who have never done it, or maybe were nervous about taking their first class. But for the people who have been doing improvisation for years, and honing their craft and skill in it since childhood, it can be tedious.

I am one of those people. I have been taking improvisation classes for years. There hasn’t really been a long period of time in my life when I wasn’t taking an improvisation class. Throughout school I took classes, before that there were some, and even in between. So now, with UCB, what I’ve discovered is that you don’t begin to learn their main form of improv, which is long form, until the third round of classes. That’s 24 weeks into the program, aka almost 6 months, aka $1,200.

Although I do enjoy taking the class there and have met some pretty interesting people that I do intend to keep in touch with and hopefully produce some cool things with, I don’t know if I will be able to treck my way through all of those classes to wait to learn something that I already know how to do. It’s a hard pill to swallow but I just don’t know if that’s something I’d be willing to do.

However, for the time being, the classes are very interesting and I am enjoying them very thoroughly. I will take as much advantage as I can while I can (i.e. seeing shows there for free, networking, and even learning all that I can from the classes) until this round is over, and then re-evaluate from there. Perhaps my opinion on the matter with change, perhaps not, but the only way to find out is to get there.

I’ll keep you guys up to date on it all.