Overdoing It with A Smile

Hosting one of the Coach Ensemble Shows

I met up with an actor who participated in my first Coached Ensemble at Second City recently. The Coached Ensembles(CE) are teams put together from auditions culled from current and past Training Center students and coached by a current faculty member for a 4 week run in one of the Training Center theaters.  I decided to do it because I had always wanted to be a part of those ensembles as an actor in the past and I wanted to establish my "mark" on the Training Center as more than just a Level A teacher :)

It was such a blast to be able to take what I have amassed as a performer and teacher and apply it to a 15 minute long-form showcase.  I scheduled multiple rehearsals, found a unique form for us to play with, and handled the technical specifications of the show.  I could truly say that our show was unique among the other talented teams during our run and I felt I had a very wide and varied level of experience among the actors involved.

Along the way, I had heard rumors about the other teams' approaches to their shows and felt like I had over-prepared/achieved for my first time out.  I had heard that some groups rehearsed a lot less than we did or didn't really decide on a form until the week of opening.  The shows didn't really reflect that any of our approaches hurt their respective teams' shows and since everyone on staff is talented and a good instructor, there were no obvious "clunker" teams.  We all held out own in our own way.  However, that feeling of over doing the process kept nagging at me.

We met up to for dinner and began discussing logistics around an unrelated performance opportunity.  Eventually the conversation drifted to their current involvement in CE and I was told, "I'm so glad that I had you for Coached Ensembles.  I felt ready for the current round of auditions. I was much more confident and felt I had something to show."  We also compared and contrasted my instruction style with their current coach.  I felt pretty damn good about being so overbearing in my execution of getting my team ready for their show. 

I walked away from sensing that there's something special about these CE opportunities and I should use these encounters to explore my voice and artistic vision as a coach moving forward.