Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

May I take just a few minutes of your time to tell you about a character I played, who I never thought I'd choose, and I never thought I'd enjoy? Of course I may.

Last Saturday in improv class, John gave each of us a personalized challenge for the French Braid we were about to practice. If you aren't familiar with improv (yeah, like I have any non-improviser readers...?), a French Braid plays three separate scenes in rotation, and with some luck, they often have a blatant or subtle connection by the end of the whole piece. Each scene is visited three times: 1a, 2a, 3a. 1b, 2b, 3b. 1c, 2c, 3c.

My assignment was to play a character who was bold, strong, in-charge, and male. I'm not going to speculate right now on why that character needed to be a man - especially as I've been drafting an in-depth reflection on gender in improv. The point is: as soon as I knew who this character was, he completely ran away with me.

I found myself onstage in 3a, with two other players who were beginning a support-group type of meeting. One of them had been given the challenge of creating physical oddity, so his character had a spinal disorder. I decided to play for contrast: inability to move my spine at all would certainly keep me in an upright pose that lets boldness come through. I'd missed the chance to be that scene's in-charge person, so I was someone who had been in charge earlier in life, and wasn't especially happy about not being in charge now. That meant I was old. And injured. And male. And at a support group.

Then I knew: my character was a Vietnam veteran. He had seen all kinds of shit, was angry at the VA, had been getting screwed for years. Finally those bastards sent him to a support group, with a bunch of hippie feelgood crap and ungrateful punks who had never seen the face of Death. I didn't reveal much at first in 3a - all of that dawned on me while the "group leader" spouted the hippie feelgood crap, and I simmered and grumbled to a barely coherent outburst at the end of the scene. (At least, I think that's about what happened.)

Scene 3b was my flashback. I didn't know that's what it would be, but I threw myself to the floor as soon as the stage was mostly clear from the organic edit, and whisper-shouted "Charlie, two o'clock!" My buddy next to me was going to get us killed because he kept popping up and making noise, and I did the only thing I could: pulled him to the floor, hissing "Get DOWN, motherfucker!" Until that point, I thought I'd pulled off a time jump, and the scene was taking place in a combat zone.

Then Jonah, my bless-his-heart teenage scene partner, popped up again, and asked "Who's Charlie?" Then someone walked on... asking for my vote, I think... and I shot him. "You can't just shoot people!" or something close to that, from Jonah. And I said, "It's my flashback, and I'll shoot whoever I want to!" So I shot everyone else who came onstage (all for non-combat reasons). And it felt like it worked.

Except for one thing: I don't know a thing about guns. I didn't even think about the details of the gun. I realized at the edit that I'd used the only gun I've ever used, and it's made of fingers. Dammit. Now I have to learn something about gun handling, beyond the basic pistol. I should probably also pick up a little military jargon, maybe watch Apocalypse Now or Full Metal Jacket. I really like seeing military characters played with detailed jargon - Guy Maggio is amazing at that. I imagine Ed Doris would be, too... don't know of other improvisers who are vets. If I'm going to revisit this soldier/veteran - I don't want him to become stock or fallback, but I really lost myself playing him - I want to do him justice.