(Or: The Musings of a Partisan Improviser.)
(Look away if you’ve had quite enough.)
Ahem.
Tuesday’s election hit hard. I realize many Americans felt otherwise.
Amidst all the grief, the anger, the exhaustion, the recriminations and analysis, the distrust and the disgust, the bewilderment and resentment and disbelief and resignation, the celebrations, the contempt, and the deep, deep, deep, deep shame unleashed on Election Tuesday, I taught an improv class the following night.
While driving to class, I wondered if anyone would attend. An improv class at this particular moment felt frivolous. After all, we’ve collectively hurtled off a cliff, some jumping headlong, others wondering how to pull the rip cord.
And now we’re supposed to play Zip-Zap-Zop?
Katy, my friend who produced this improv class, sent out an email earlier in the day to see if anyone felt up to participating. “Please, please, please show up,” I muttered all afternoon. You see, I wanted to be with other people, other like-minded people who might be feeling the same cultural vertigo I felt.
Dennis drove to the class with me while I muttered away. He’s my home. It meant a lot to have him close while the world, once again, flipped on its axis.
“Why all the drama?” someone who doesn’t know Jim Robinson might ask. “Isn’t he simply swimming in the pulsing, grievance-fueled zeitgeist that is 2024?”
Perhaps. Some Americans–at least in my neighborhood–dove right into the moment, unfurling their enormous MAGA banners the second Harris conceded. Frat boys across the street from the University of St. Thomas–I taught there for over fifteen years–put on red-white-and-blue stovetop hats and got hammered in front of their squat version of Trump Tower. The Bros at the gym have been incongruously giddy.
To be fair, I displayed my Biden/Harris bumpersticker for weeks after the last election. Maybe it’s just a matter of scale.
Or maybe not.
In my head, November 5 put an end to something important: the possibility that our country could embrace decency. Through a stark, reductive lens, one campaign offered hope. One offered fear. Living in hope felt exhilarating. Maybe we could turn a page. Maybe we weren’t going back. Maybe there’s a place at the table for all Americans, as contentious and messy as the ensuing food fight would be.
But slogans are slogans and reality is, well, real. And complicated.
Still, on the dank evening after the election, in the A Space in NE Minneapolis, the entire class (!) gathered to finish a three-session improv class that had begun when it seemed–naively–that postcards and fundraisers and voter registration drives could root out the deep rot in our history.
A killjoy in the best of times, I started the class with a quote from Timothy Snyder’s “On Tyranny.” In order to undermine authoritarianism, Snyder suggests that we ought to:
Make eye contact and small talk. This is not just polite. It is part of being a citizen and a responsible member of society. It is also a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down social barriers, and understand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a culture of denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life.
Katy had (wisely) brought Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, so while the class looked at one another and nibbled I read a second prescription from Snyder:
Practice corporeal politics. Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.
Thusly armed, we made Timothy Snyder proud by making eye contact and burning off the calories from Katy’s delicious Reese’s Cups. We listened to each other to create funny, exuberant, intelligent, ridiculous scenes.
How did this happen?
We acknowledged the moment with Yes, and….
We tried to let go of judgment.
We succeeded in making each other look as good as possible.
Get this: No one made fun of immigrants or disabled people. Or women. Or people of color or LGBTQ folks. Or libs or MAGA hats or rural Americans or coastal elites (hello). Or sissy boys (hi) or butch women.
No one used sexual assault survivors for a punchline.
No one mocked other citizens whose economic disenfranchisement drove them away from the Democrats (funny, funny). No one took on a snide hillbilly accent. No one called anybody stupid or denigrated anybody’s faith.
No one went for big yucks by insinuating that children aren’t safe around gay men, or that beta males deserve to have their heads bashed in with a hammer because, god help us, that’s hysterical.
We didn’t even make fun of Kamala Harris or Tim Walz or JD Vance.
Or Donald Trump.
My blood boils while I type this. Regarding authoritarian leaders, I paraphrase the wise among us and address our former- and upcoming-president:
We don’t need you. We need each other.
And what if someone had punched down in Wednesday night’s improv class?
What if someone–again, god help us–had said, for laughs, “your body, my choice”? What if someone had called a woman the b-word or the c-word? Or denigrated trans kids and their supportive families because that (bad) improviser’s religion requires them to ostracize those who haven’t earned the grace their faith controls?
What if a class member declared that being Black or female (or both) were just the set-up for some obscene joke?
As the instructor, I would have said, “No.”
As a human being, I would have said, “No.”
I trust that the class, in one voice, would have said, “No.”
But here we are.
Some of us are cheering this outcome. I say “us” intentionally. It’s the Us/Them lie that keeps getting us into this mess.
Still, I’m not going to say there are “very fine people on both sides.”
I’ll leave that to our President-elect, the one who cheered on the Neo-Nazis and the Klansmen and the White Nationalists in Charlottesville as they killed a counter-protestor.
Heather Heyer. That’s her name.
Our 45th and 47th president wants us to be afraid of each other. He wants us to make room for hate in our homeland and also in our hearts.
No.
In our improv class (and in the two other improv classes I’ve taught since the election), we won’t tolerate intolerance.
We won’t make room for hate.
In order to create a vital, respectful, courageous environment, we choose to elevate inclusive voices over exclusionary ones.
This has nothing to do with Republican/Democratic affiliation. We’re all capable of hate, and we’re all capable of being genuinely fine people.
Now, what?
A group of us met for breakfast at Cecil’s Deli in Saint Paul this morning (consider this a recommendation) to celebrate our Fall birthdays. Greta, a wonderful theater director/writer/actor/friend, asked the seven of us what we wanted for the upcoming year. A good question, since we cannot go back in time.
I’ll let these captioned graphics do the talking for me.
And…
Oh, I love this (courtesy of Ehime Ora: https://ehimeora.com/about):
Please comment if you’re so inclined.