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fortunate enough to be at this esteemed campus, but when you aren’t happy, you aren’t happy, and the detriments were vastly outweighing the blessings.
    I was still thinking of transferring. I think I had gone so far as to pick up some applications for other schools, and that’s when, during my sophomore winter, I saw the Dartmouth improv group perform. “Ooh!” I thought. “I could do that!” I had always gravitated toward comedy in theater anyway. I got to sit in on one of their rehearsals through a friend from acting class. They invited me to join the group, which was called Said and Done, and it was my salvation. Finally, I had found some people who enjoyed looking foolish and were a bit offbeat and were definitely funny and creative.
    Improvisation was the perfect branch of acting for me—it’s perfect for those who don’t like to prepare, or, as one might also call them, the lazy . There are rules to improv that can help you be a better improviser, but you don’t have to study for a test or rehearse a monologue. You don’t have to “find your moments” or learn your lines. You are in your moment and you make up your own lines. If you are any good, your lines arefunny. And they are funnier than anything you could have thought of if you were sitting staring at a computer (back then, that was the Mac 128k) trying to think up some comedy.

    My college improv group doing that mainstay piece of beginning improvisers: the Machine!
    At one of the first Said and Done rehearsals I attended, I experienced that thing that happens in improv, when the line comes out of your mouth before your brain has registered what you are about to say. We were doing some sort of group poem about money or something, and I said, “I’m so rich that it’s no surprise, when I’m tired, I get Gucci bags under my eyes.” Now, I’m not saying that is the most brilliant line ever, but hey, I was nineteen years old and I hadn’t experienced the phenomenon before. “How did I think of that?” I wondered. I didn’t feel like I had thought of it. It’s a sort of flow that happens when you are completely in the moment and not gettingin your own way. Not trying so hard, not planning ahead, just getting out of your own head and letting the magic happen. You could apply this to any activity, of course. You could apply it to life.
    The biggest rule of improv is called “Yes And.” Basically, this means that whatever your scene partner says to you, you agree and then add to it. So if you are starting a scene and your partner says, “I made you a birthday cake, Grandma!” you don’t respond, “I’m not your Grandma, and that’s not a cake—it’s an old shoe!” You would get a quick laugh, but you would kill the reality of the scene entirely. A “Yes And” exchange would be: “I made you a birthday cake, Grandma!” “Oh, thank you, dear. I feel thirty-five years young!” By agreeing to what your partner laid out and adding to it, you’ve established a relationship and even given your partner something to play with—that this family has a grandmother who is thirty-five years old—and the scene can develop from there. “Yes And” would serve me well, not only onstage but offstage too. Without my realizing it, “Yes And” would contribute to one major career success and one major life event far down the road from the rehearsal room in Hanover, New Hampshire, during the winter of my sophomore year.

Chicago:

Overnight Success in Ten Years!

    By the time I graduated, I had ferreted out a group of friends who are still a part of my life to this day. I ended up meeting a lot of my Dartmouth friends through the theater department. Then there’s another branch of my guy friends at Dartmouth who all came out of the closet in rapid succession after graduation. (This would begin my long-standing tradition of always having a fab group of gay men to hang with at a moment’s notice.) I knew I didn’t want to go through life