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Ever.

In all honesty, it may be the single most horrifyingly embarrassing moment of my life. It was so humiliating, I wrote it down, never expecting to share it, but more as some sort of self-therapy.

You see, I never actually wanted to be a playwright. I wanted to be a comedic actor who worked his way into Second City and ultimately, to the pinnacle of comedic acting – Saturday Night Live.

Like many comedic actors, I studied and took classes in improvisational comedy at Improv Olympic (now called I.O.). The way I.O. works is that once you are through taking their course of classes, which last several months, you can perform on their stage with a troupe of other improvisers as long as you are funny.

If your troupe is funny, you can continue performing. If your team is not, you get shown the door pretty quickly.

At the time that I was there, 1999-2000, the woman who decided your comedic fate was Charna Halpern. Charna is the owner of I.O. and is a difficult woman to impress, having probably seen more wanna-be comedians than anyone in the world. Charna would come watch your show, and then decide if either you or were worth keeping around.

Below is the diary entry I wrote that chronicles the fateful evening when Charna came to see me, the evening that ended my improv career.

I am going to present the unedited version just as I wrote it in 2000, complete with all the spelling and grammar mistakes, as somehow I feel they help convey the utter and abject misery/side-splitting humor of the moment:

Last night Charna, the woman who runs Improv Olympic saw me perform for the first time.

The show could not have been worse. I have been funnier in my sleep.

I don’t think anyone laughed once.

It was the kind of show that makes you want to run out of the theater and hope that you never see anyone who saw it ever again.

So my team finishes and I go sit at the bar were all these veteran improvisers are hanging out. It may have been my imagination, but I swear that Charna, who has never said a word to me, comes up and looks at me, sneers, shakes her head and walks away.

The next team is on stage, but I can’t hear them because I am so wracked with embarrassment and self-loathing that all I can hear is this voice in my head saying “You know the sad thing is you not only choose to do this, you actually pay to do this.”

This girl Rachel is sitting next to me at the bar and she puts her arm around me and tells me to relax, that she’s seen me a bunch of times and everyone, including Charna, knows how funny I am. Rachel even repeats a line I said in my last show that she thought was funny.

Not wanting to appear unappreciative, I try to force myself to cheer up. I mean what the h---, we all sucked. So, I’m sitting on the bar stool, having a drink, trying to watch the team currently on stage, but that little voice keeps getting louder, “Nice job, Scott,” it says. “This sure was money well spent. You’re a comic genius.”

Finally, out of complete frustration, I just start to laugh. I hang my head, lean forward in my chair, close my eyes and tell myself, “Well, at least it’s over. It can’t get any worse.”

I particularly remember that as being the second to last thought I had as I sat there with my eyes closed and felt the chair begin to tip forward.

“Oh god, please no,” was actually the very last thought I had as the momentum increased and the chair flipped forward, launching me into two tables filled with people.

My arms seemed to flail out of control as I fell, hurling my drink across the room, grabbing at the tables in front of me, only succeeding in bringing them and the drinks that rested upon them crashing with me to the floor, soaking me as they fell.

I distinctly remember the complete silence as I laid there face down with my eyes closed, having stopped the performance on stage with my theatrics. In fact, I laid there for about 15 seconds listening to the loudest silence I've ever heard, not moving, hoping that I was seriously injured and would pass out so I wouldn’t have to get up and open my eyes.

But of course, I wasn’t so lucky.

I turned to get up, looking at just about every person in improv who I wouldn’t want to see this, watching me and laughing so hard they couldn’t breath. I think that was kind of a good thing because it prevented them from really commenting on what had just transpired.

As there was no place to hide and as it would be unmanly to run away and/or start to cry I just picked up the chair and sat back down at the bar while people started to applaud.

Charna came up to me and demanded to know if I had been drinking (I hadn't), then precedes to "work" the room, asking everyone I knew if I was an alcoholic or a drug addict.

This is the kind of moment that breaks a man, I thought. The kind of thing that motivates someone to seriously consider becoming an alcoholic. My friends tried to cheer me up, but it’s hard to do that when their laughter prevented them from being able to speak.

Finally, the show continued and ended, at least I think it did as thoughts of taking my own life really prevented me from paying attention to anything. Interestingly, people who never spoke to me before came up to me with praise for my fine performance, offering me hugs, pats on the back and the occasional high five.

Sadly, the night finally drew to a close, and I left the warm friendly confines of Improv Olympic with the words of my coach echoing through my head.

“Look at it this way. You ended up getting the best laugh of the night.”

I never performed at I.O. again. Charna had me removed from my team and asked me not to return.

Not knowing what else to do, I started doing scripted shows and performance poetry (which I only discovered because I was the bouncer at the Green Mill). I wish I could say something inspiring about how I had this drive never to quit, but that would be sort of untrue. I wanted to quit lots of times.

In fact, I often would say to myself 'what’s the point of this if I’m never going to be on “Saturday Night Live.”' But each time I was about to quit, someone from my days at I.O. would ask me to write something, or someone would ask me to audition, until finally, one night, Tim Rater, the former Executive Director at the Metropolis asked me if I wanted to try writing a late night show. He had this idea about bringing late-night theater to Arlington Heights, and the former coach of my improv team, Jim Jarvis, was the marketing director for the Metropolis at the time and recommended me to Tim.

So while I guess it would be dishonest for me to say I had this “never say die attitude,” the bottom line is I never did quit. And interestingly enough, almost ten years later, from among the hundreds of people I went through classed with and performed with at I.O, I only know of four people that are still involved in comedy/theater. 1 is on Saturday Night Live, 1 teaches and performs at I.O, 1 writes for the Colbert Report, and me (I'm sure there are a few others Idon't know about - there's just no way to stay connected to the kabillions of people who were at I.O. Especially if one is too old for Facebook).

And while I certainly don’t have the fame and fortune that the others have achieved, I love what I do, I love seeing the words that I write come to life on stage at the Metropolis, and I am grateful for the opportunity that all the people at the Metropolis have given me. There is no way to describe how it feels to sit in the back of the theater and watch the audience react to something I wrote.

In the nine years since that fateful night at I.O. I have changed quite a bit, I went back to school and got my teaching degree and became a middle-school teacher, I’ve gotten married, I’ve bought a house, my wife just gave birth to our daughter, and while I can’t say that I don’t feel a little twinge of regret every time I turn on Saturday Night Live, I have to think that if it wasn’t for that fall, there’s probably a 99.9999% chance I would be out of comedy/theater completely.

I’m not sure if there’s a message in all this (Don’t give up? Do your best to interupt a cabaret show?), but I get asked all the time how I got to be a playwright. Usually, I give some high-fallutin’ answer about reading and writing and hard-work. But it wasn't until tonight, when I found the above diary entry that I had purposely blocked out of my mind, that it really dawned on me.

It was the perfect mixture of stupidity, clumsiness, humiliation, networking and talent.

I hope you’ll come out and see Indecent Proposals and see where that fall has led. And if you see a tall (and clumsy) guy with a shaved head in the back of the theater, please say hello.

4 Comments • add a comment

Jim Kozyra - 9/18/08 at 2:40 PMRock.

Scott Woldman - 9/18/08 at 8:47 PMWell said, my friend.

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