My History with Acting and Improv

I always loved watching live-action performances and at eight years old when I was cast in my first school play I was thrilled however, felt shy and self-conscious in that position. Fortunately, I didn’t have too many lines. On weekends I often had my younger sister perform plays with me for my parent. That same year for Halloween I was chosen to paint one of the storefront windows in our small downtown. Because my father’s sister was an artist I followed that lead toward visual arts. I never lost my fascination for acting arts though. In high school, I tried to gather my little sister’s friends to develop a play for a school project. In my twenties, as a young mother, I helped create my children’s school play sets and when I became brave enough, I started taking local acting classes and did some performing in a local community theater. I often had my children perform their own devised plays for their friends and family.

Learning and remembering my lines was the bane of it all for me. though. Taking an acting class on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, I was asked to play a part in a short play festival. During that time I watched some of my fellow cast mates do some improv performances at a local coffee house. That is when I first got excited about possibly practicing improv acting.

However, I soon thereafter relocated across the country for a job in a situation comedy production company for which I was doing whatever visual art job or “gopher” work they asked of me. With teenage children as a single mom, I didn’t have any time to pursue Improv. When that job ended, “Last to come, first to go,” they told me, I went back into teaching art at a local high school. My teenage son was taking acting classes and we got him an agent so I was taking him to auditions all over Los Angeles after school. He eventually got a role in a major motion picture, “Almost Famous” (aptly named for him) but it was interfering with his love of sailing in the summers on Martha’s Vineyard. When all his lines ended up on the cutting room floor, he decided that acting was not his passion. At that time I was learning digital art as well as teaching it at the city college of Santa Barbara. I also took a screenwriting class there.

Finally, when I relocated up to Santa Cruz, California, I took another acting class at the city college there and found my way back to improv acting classes. My children were grown and on their own and I traveled to Wellington, New Zealand, fell in love, took more acting classes and started doing improv there. While taking improv classes and workshops by some pros and I taught classes in Santa Cruz County.

When the pandemic hit in March of 2020, I discovered online improv which I call “Zoomprov” and have been enjoying that ever since often more than once a week. I still am pursuing getting a live improv group together in my current United States home of Martha’s Vineyard.