A Year in Pictures of Working

There's a bit of a trade-off required to be an improviser at iO, the theater where my group (or in the iO language "team"), Otis, performs. You give up a lot of autonomy for the honor of performing there and the opportunities that often come along with it. The theater, for the most part, decides who performs when and with whom, and the theater creates and cuts teams at its discretion. The new schedule comes out every two months and that's generally when performers find out if there team still exists or not.

With few exceptions, none of the performers are paid, but they have a theater to perform in and mostly consistent crowds to perform to. And if you perform there long enough you get to know people who know people and you may get to participate in industry showcases.

After a team is cut from the iO schedule it is certainly free to continue performing elsewhere, but most don't. Most performers simply move on to a new team at iO, or quietly start over at one of the other theaters in town.

The reality of performing at iO is that eventually your team will be cut. And the team after that. And the one after that too. For better or for worse, that is the framework that keeps the theater running.

Most years the theater has an awards ceremony. One of the standard bits from year to year is the Dance of the Fallen Teams. A team currently performing at the theater does a fake interpretive dance piece in honor of all the teams that have been cut the year before, holding up signs for each team, so people can clap for the team or teams they were on that didn't make it. During this last summer's award ceremony, Otis performed the Dance. One of the signs I held up was the sign for James Jackson, my old team that has only performed together once since being cut last September.

There's an old joke at iO that the team that performs the Dance will end up being cut themselves in the coming year. Same goes for teams that buy promotional stickers for themselves. You buy stickers, your team will get cut. They're not superstitions exactly, but maybe shared bitter ironies.

The new schedule comes out in a few weeks. We have been informed that Otis will probably not be on it.

# posted by Arnie : 11:13 AM