I was listening to a 12-Step lecture this week about how to succeed in improv you need to be agreeable, to listen deeply, and to be willing to visible. Those are excellent tools for succeeding at almost any work.
When I moved to LA in 1994 after six years of chronic illness, I began taking acting and improv classes. I rationally understood that the odds were small of me making a living as an actor but I thought that immersing myself in the acting world would be good for me. I was right. I didn’t succeed in Hollywood for many reasons, not least of them my inability to get along with other people. I was kicked out of three acting schools for being obnoxious. At the last one, in the summer of 1995, the leader took me aside and said I was probably more suited to solitary pursuits such as stand-up comedy. I concluded he was right and decided to write a book.
