Day 18: Play!

Get Katy's book. It rocks.

Play, play play play, plaaaaay!

When it's good, it's really good, and yesterday, it was ace! I did a two-person improv workshop with Katy Schutte and it was fabulous. Check out Katy's very cool book, The Improviser's Way, which I have. She has a nose for the joyful, and the book reflects that. 

I got to play with my beloved improv partner, Simon Veal, king of believable, obvious (which is a fantastic thing) and inspired improvising, and someone it is a joy to be on stage alongside. 

Simon makes scenes feel like breathing lungs (also a good thing, just in case you weren't sure). Being in a scene with him is a spacious thing, a place where what needs to be said gets said; sometimes, it's a simple action that calls us back to something that was mentioned in passing earlier on, and that makes it suddenly significant and immensely pleasing. He's the master of simple specifics that make things real and he's a proper delight to play with.

Girl dogs busy being doe-eyed at their second home
while I'm away

It was also a gift to be in a room with a handful of other playing pairs and others who'd come bereft of their other, gathering nourishment to take home and feed to their improv partner or group. Some properly fabulous players. So pleasing to watch people who enjoy playing together. 

I'm staying with my marvellous cousin Ruth, who is 79. She's down to earth, creative, courageous and pragmatic. She gets on with things and and eats things up (sometimes the same things - she fashioned a groundbreaking casserole today to feed a small heap of guests and will eat it up tomorrow). 

This keeps popping up

She is also very funny indeed, generous and loved by all around her. She still swims in the Kenwood Ladies' Pond daily and walks for miles, fills endless black sacks with rubbish on the Parkland Walk and gives her time, love and money to anything she holds as important. I love and admire her. She can't hear it, but I do. 

The dating thing was so-so. Nowhere near as much fun as the play. I think there' s lesson in that. Stop being so fucking earnest, Claybourne; stop worrying, and play!