I moved to Chicago the summer of 2011. Somewhere between July 15th and 17th, to be exact. There was a heat wave the week I moved here and I remember being incredibly uncomfortable most of the time, spending too long lingering in stores because I didn’t have an air conditioner. I moved here with a person who I kinda assumed was the love of my life. He insisted we didn’t need air conditioners, and bought a plethora of box fans to put in many of our windows. That simply made things more miserable, but with more wind.
Our cat, originally his cat, then our cat, then later his cat, and now I guess his mother’s cat, hated our new place – he’s an indoor/outdoor cat, and Chicago is not the place for an indoor/outdoor cat, as many well-meaning people will assume that indoor/outdoor cats are lost and then take them home but eventually put up “Found cat!” posters. It’s odd to get your cat back from a stranger when technically they cat-napped him without realizing it.
He moved to Chicago for grad school, I moved to Chicago because I loved him so that’s what you do when you love someone, and both of us moved here to pursue comedy further. A few weeks after we moved here, he started classes at iO. A few weeks later, I started classes at the Annoyance. A few months later, we broke up. We each kept moving forward in our pursuit of comedy, but I started doing some theatre stuff here and there. Eventually I lost touch with him and stopped doing comedy altogether, finding more enjoyment in acting, writing, producing, and directing independent theatre.
I find it difficult at times to articulate exactly how much I have struggled to enjoy the past five years. There have certainly been high points, but there truly have been solid blocks of low points. It wasn’t until the end of 2014/beginning of 2015 that I felt in control of my own life again. While major contributing factors included the loss of him or comedy, there was also the year my grandmother passed away and the subsequent years of figuring out how to navigate the complete horror show that became of my relationship with my parents and additional struggles with family members. That all put me in a much darker place than anything else I’ve had to deal with during my time in Chicago, though Chicago wasn’t a catalyst for that familial dissolution in the same ways it affected my break up with him, and with comedy.
Even with all of the afore mentioned difficulties, I honestly wouldn’t trade any of it for anything. I am so incredibly pleased with the person I have become thanks to navigating my way through some tough and unpleasant weirdness. I do have one regret: Sometimes, I wish I hadn’t stopped doing comedy.
My time at the Annoyance was like therapy. It helped me through my break up by giving me loving and supportive friends, a way to redirect my anger and sadness into weird characters, the ability to burn out some negative energy, and sometimes just gave me a place to go instead of home when I knew break up was eminent but just couldn’t stand the tension. My time performing in random one-off shows, playing with Improvised Jane Austen, working with my friend Rob on our two-person team, and fucking around with my theatre friends as we masqueraded as an improv troupe occasionally, was mostly positive. Sometimes I miss being a stoic Regency-era bachelor, robot with a lisp, or anthropomorphic plant who’s trying to catch a plane. Improv gave me the ability to be anyone but myself, which was what I wanted more than anything then. After a while, though, after I started to find me again, I didn’t need that any longer.
As soon as I disengaged from the comedy scene, I felt like a cross between a sneaky double agent and a complete nobody. There are so many comedians in this city, and we’re mostly connected via self-defined “generations”. At this point, many improvisors of my “generation” have either moved away or just fallen out of touch. Most likely, were we to bump into each other in a public space, we might make eye contact and look away quickly, attempting to determine how we know each other even though we’ve been friends on social media for years. We might share a brief smile or questionable semi-wave. I feel badly about that, but I also consider the fact that it’s likely my inability to appropriately keep in touch that ekes me further and further from a form of comedy that I used to live and breathe 24/7, and many of the cool folks I’ve met along the way.
However, through theatre, I’ve been afforded so many opportunities to stretch my abilities. I’ve helped create bigger, more permanent worlds for multiple characters to live in. It’s a pretty cool feeling, to be able to do that. I fell in with a group of weirdos who shared my off-beat sensibilities and help foster and nurture ideas we all had to create cohesive, devised, well-scored pieces of art. It was stressful. It was hilarious. It was financially, physically, and emotionally draining. It was incredible. It helped me jump further into the world of directing and producing, working on other projects I loved and wanted to help succeed. It’s still affording me those opportunities as I work on new projects and meet new people with whom I get to create newer worlds and characters to live in those worlds. And it inspires me to continue with half-finished and unpolished scripts, weaving them into projects I never dreamed I’d be able to create on my own, ever, in the real world.
I’m looking forward to spending the next year saying goodbye to this city, and the people who made sure I had balance and happiness when I needed (and resisted) it the most. I still have a lot to accomplish before I am-scray, and now that I’m so keen on being myself, just might make good on that goal to do an open mic one day – one last comedy hurrah before I hit the road.
...I Just Want Your Half. 