And Everything Is Going Fine
Spalding Gray
“I like telling the story of life more than living it.”
- Spalding Gray
One of the highlights of this year’s SXSW was seeing “And Everything is Going Fine,” a film about late performance artist Spalding Gray.
Editor Susan Littenberg and director Steven Soderbergh weave together the story of Gray’s life in his own words, artfully selecting and arranging clips from his performances and interviews from over 90 hours of footage. The depiction of Gray’s life that emerges is moving and poetic, and reveals that telling personal stories on stage was Gray’s way of keeping the chaos of the world at bay, if only for 60 to 90 minutes at a time. I related strongly to his journey to finding his artistic voice, and to his comment that writing was so hard because unlike performing, you didn’t get any feedback; I wonder what a Spalding Gray blog might have been like.
We’ll never know, of course, because in 2004, Gray killed himself. The film extensively foreshadows Gray’s suicide, but fails to reference it outright (more…)
More on Improv Lessons for Freelancers
The awesome Zach Ward of Dirty South Improv blogged about Improv Lessons for Freelancers (a session I led with Jordan yesterday at SXSW); he offers a nice distillation of some key points, plus a video of Jordan leading the “Yes” game. It’s fascinating to see the moment when people “get it”…which is why so many of my friends adore teaching Level 1 improv.
I’ll be posting my own overview of the session once I get more than 10 minutes of down time! (SXSW is a rather manic experience…)
Related Links
- Zach’s TED talk on the improv principle of “Yes, and” (video)
- Article from Fast Company: “Do Improv Comedians Make the Best Design Thinkers?” (thanks to Shawn Westfall for sharing this on Facebook)
Hello from SXSW
In the green room at SXSW
Jordan and I just finished leading a session at SXSW called Improv Lessons for Freelancers. I’m still processing the experience, but wanted to say a huge thank you to anyone who helped us promote it, and to everyone who came — I almost felt like Jordan and I were incidental, because without such a smart, positive group of people in the room, it could have gone very differently.
The feedback so far has been very heartening – most rewarding was hearing that people thought we did a good job of facilitating group discussion, because that was very important to us – not steamrolling. Jordan was especially excited when the head of UrbanDictionary.com said he loved the session :).
We’re revved up and thinking about other ways/places we can replicate the workshop. But for now: there are films to watch, people to meet and sunshine to soak up like the thirsty, thirsty sponge that I am. To be continued…
Improv Lessons for Freelancers
My husband, Jordan, and I are leading a session at SXSW 2010 called “Improv Lessons for Freelancers.” (If you aren’t familiar with SXSW, you can read about it here.) Check out the audio promo we recorded, below, and help spread the word!
For the official session description, including a list of questions we promise we’ll answer, click here.
