Journal Entry #4

November 1, 2007

Dear Fairfield,

There are so many times when you see a bunch of people just having so much fun that you wish you could be part of such a great group. But the other night, I finally got a chance to be a part of one of those fantastic group moments during Your Mom Does Improv!

With a good portion of the members performing in Theatre Fairfield's first play of the season, we had a workshop session during which we all gathered together under the guidance of Tony Da Costa '08 and had one of the best times I've had here at Fairfield.

We began by heading outside onto the field and performing a ritual. Based on the "follow the follower" concept, we all stand in a circle and do nothing, just letting things come to us as they might. At one point a group of students passed by, so we all began laughing because they were giving us weird looks. Eventually, as if all reading each other's minds, we began to morph into zombies, approaching the students' car and chasing it in our zombie-like state as it exited the parking lot. It was the perfect finale to our intense ritual. Of course, public safety ended up coming around wondering what we were up to, but we're pretty sure that was just coincidence.

Then Tony told us to think of an animal, become that animal and embody it, then slowly return to human form while incorporating our animal's physical life. By doing this, we ended up creating characters and interacting with each other in unexpected ways.

Being a little chilly, we then headed back to the main space (in the PepsiCo theatre) and gathered around the piano as our friend, Pat LaRiviere '11, began playing "Drops of Jupiter" by Train. Although we didn't know many lyrics, we all began rocking out with him, eventually leading to everyone singing "Hey Jude."

Lucky for us, Tony had "Hey Jude" on his iPod, so he plugged it into the speakers. We all began dancing and my friend, Alex Conroy '11, picked me up, carrying me around the theatre on his shoulders. Then we all joined hands and formed a circle. We ran around until we all decided to fall on the floor and stomp to the beat until the end of the song.

Of course, after that we broke into some short-form improv skits, but nothing could compare to our amazing little pow-wow. We were all so connected, doing things at the same time on the same impulse. It was almost like a purposely choreographed scene from "Grease" or "West Side Story" - I've always wished life could be part musical.

Looks like I got all my wishes granted!

love,

anna.