I made a joke during our volunteer hours where when I came back from break, I saw someone who didn’t take a break and I told my friend “Ugh, now I feel bad. And the whole point of this was to feel good.” To which she said, “The whole point?” Touché. I had inadvertently revealed my intentions. I was doing good to feel good.
WE Improv is the name of my business. I have a business and running it is how I barely pay the bills. I teach long form improv in Los Angeles. In fact, if you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’ve either taken a workshop or know that’s what I do. Even if you’re reading this because you found me online after reading my book, making you a unicorn, you know it’s what I do because it’s in the book. Begging the question, “why then explain what WE is?” Because a guy can dream that some editor from The Atlantic stumbles on here and decides they want to hire me to expand their readership to include men in their 40s who order merch from the Lionsgate website. So now, with the formalities out of the way, let’s talk more about me.
One of the things I like most about WE is I get to have a small impact on the stuff that’s important to me. Comedy of course. Also I don’t have auditions because I think exclusivity is a creative killer. You can buy pink dad hats on my website. The shows are free to attend and we provide drinks. We take donations and that money goes to a different organization or charity each month. Last month it was Kitten Rescue LA and this month it’s Children’s Hospital of LA (so far we raised waaaaay more money for Kitten Rescue. It’s pretty funny and also maybe sad). Donations for organizations all started because we used to take donations to pay for rent, but we never made rent. So then I figured if I’m paying rent, why not put the donations to something else? And you know what, the money people gave went up. It was like a magic trick. Either way, I was paying to rent the space, but now there was money for causes seemingly out of playing pretend. So we fabricated money out of nothing. The donating set a tone. Around the holidays, teams will make donations in my name, or pay for a scholarship, and when my cat, Lemon died (that’s right, still bringing that up), a very thoughtful team made a donation in her name to the Humane Society. And today, ten of us got together to volunteer at Project Angel Food. One of the performers at WE, Marques, volunteered with his job earlier in the year and after having a pleasant experience, he reached out about having WE volunteer. We picked a date, promoted it at shows and in the newsletter, and we helped make healthy medically-tailored meals to individuals who are fighting critical illnesses. It was honestly very very dope, and I only looked at the clock like four times. I was so impressed by the folks who showed up. This country has invoked community service as punishment, so it’s always a pleasant antidote to be reminded that some people like to do things for other people because it feels good to help someone out. It’s the one selfish thing that actually makes the world a better place. But instead, humans have jail broken selfishness from acts of service so they can do for themselves and have no one else benefit from it.
I worked with youth on probation for two years when I moved to San Diego and one of the main things I’d do with them is help them complete community service hours. Add in that I had to do some for a MIP (Minor in Possession) I got in high school, and I have like over 200 hours of community service under my belt. I’ve done everything from feed snakes at a nature conservatory to beach clean ups, to making sandwiches for the unhoused, to cleaning up an unhoused encampment. At one point we were cleaning up this area, and the smell got worse and worse and we soon discovered we were cleaning up their latrine. They had to call in a hazmat unit. A lot of times volunteering meant getting up at 5:00am on the weekend to drive around and pick up six or seven kids and then do eight hours of picking up trash with a stick with a nail on the end, while also ensuring the kids were doing it too and then driving them each home and not getting back til 6:00 or 7:00pm. It was exhausting and disgusting, but I always felt a sense of purpose and comfort by the end, and I’d sleep like a baby. The kids felt good about it, too. I could tell. They had a lightness to them. When you’d pick them up in the morning, they had a menacing misery about them. They were teenagers, after all. Teenagers being made to get up early and go work on the weekends. If they thought they could have gotten away with it, there isn’t one I’m not positive would have punched me in the mouth and knocked my teeth out. And then pantsed me for good measure. So observing them chatting in the back seat on the way home, or exchanging numbers, or even just quietly relaxing, was uplifting. The shame was they were meant to understand what they’d done was a punishment. It was the consequence of doing something wrong and getting caught. It’s no wonder people found ways to be selfish without being helpful. Helping others and feeling good about is what happens when you’re bad. Probation should be working in a kill shelter. You wanna break the law? If we catch you, we’re going to make you put down animals. That’s something that needs doing that won’t make you feel good. Sorry, ever since I posted about my cat dying on Instagram, the algorithm just shows me feeds of sad animals in cages and it’s infected my brain. It’s like spam. Like if Petsmart.com ran like a free porn site and there were a bunch of pop-ups of sad animals you could save just by clicking here.
Anyway, where was I? Oh right. It was cool that I got the opportunity to choose to volunteer. It was equally cool that other people chose to show up and volunteer. And right there in a three-way tie for cool is that the people who came are people I know because of my small business that literally started out of my living room. And the last cool thing is my business is teaching and showcasing improv. Which means I get to deal in comedy. So that’s fun. But improv is not just being funny. Improv is community, and that’s probably the thing I love about it most. So my business is community. And for a kid who’d get so anxious at sleepovers, he’d cry and get picked up, that’s a real rags-to-riches story.