Was high school just one big improv class?

TOTAL READ TIME: 3 Minutes

Kathy J. Sotak. Photo credit Robyn Alwi

Tell me about your screenplay and I’ll share mine.

Some scenes were exhilarating, like when Spontaneity moved me across country after a five-minute pay phone call. Other pages Heartbreak took over, like when holding my first stillborn son, wondering what could have been.

Some stories starred Unbelievable, which included tales of running a 26.2-mile marathon. Then Miracles of two more children entered the scene, afterwards realizing I couldn’t remember life without them.

At places the genre changed to the Hero’s Journey, like Frodo in The Lord of the Rings or Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. You know exactly what I mean. You start off on a simple trail but then it twists and turns through harrowing trials. At the end you look back and can’t believe it. You were changed. Not changed, but enriched. With new perspective. More of who you are. Transformation arrives.

Then of course there are the scenes with Ugly. I’ve tried to edit them out. The ones where I made embarrassing choices and mistakes that hurt other people. The countless times Fear took over and battled with Wounded Ego for the lead role. Although I’ve tried to erase her, the deleted scenes are still there, auto-saved forever in version history.

The act I’m writing now is with a new character named Peace. She has taught me that past, present and future woven together with Love and Grace is the still lake I’m seeking. Peace is having me study Neo from The Matrix. The climax of the movie is the scene where he bursts into a million zeros and ones, becomes one with the universe, then reassembles his body into Wholeness beyond words. This is my quest and nothing less.

As I’m reassembling my full binary code, this summer I went back home to restore deleted scenes from long ago. The file was called Tween and Teenage Years, which I opened up by traveling 1,500 miles to my high school reunion.

I didn’t want to re-open these deleted files:  My teenage self was a physical misfit with acned skin and overweight body. To compensate, Fear and Awkwardness overran my mental and emotional bodies.  I had no choice but to improv, developing an exaggerated, enflamed personality. All these years later I wondered, did the real me show at all during those early years? Or did my embarrassing improv character overtake the lead role?

So here I was, over thirty years later at the reunion to find out. That Saturday afternoon we shoved three tables together at the local bar and we laughed for hours. It didn’t matter what we talked about. We just enjoyed each other’s company. There was no bragging, boasting or comparing. Just a comforting familiarity, a respectful remembering as we were the ones to shape each other’s lives, allowing today. Then it hit me:  It wasn’t just me playing improv back then. We all had to do some form of improv.

With neon lights and 90’s country music playing, there were no characters at the table that day. The only ones present were Comfortable In Our Own Skins.

My Indiana Jones quest is complete for now, where I sought and found these scattered, discarded pieces, introduced them to Love and Grace, then let them comfortably take center stage with the rest of me.