Tragedy Without Time

More spiraling

It is May 3, 2026. There is a nonzero chance that my mom will die soon. She’s currently sitting in the ICU, hooked up to tubes, on a fentanyl drip, waiting for a month-late heart and lung surgery. This is also my first day back to work at my regular working stiff day job, after a three-week teaching residency at the Commodore comedy theater in Tampa, FL. Sorry to Justin Peters and Kelly Buttermore; I know you asked me to create a Substack post about my time down there, and this is what you get. I promise I will get to the teaching residency eventually.

Kelly, Justin, and I have been planning for me to come down outside of festival season for a while now. I finally cornered both them and my manager at the same time and made vague threats about what would happen if they couldn’t agree on a window of time. My manager said “February or April,” the Commodore came back with “April.” My manager let me have the whole month off, the Commodore asked for April 8th through 28th. I was to teach three classes, a beginner, intermediate, and advanced class. I would teach the Soundtrack as my intermediate class, to be capped off by a showcase later that night. They would add me to every show that had an improv component, and any others that I would care to jump in on.

As I was boarding my flight to Tampa, I got a text from my sister that our mom was in the hospital. The information was sparse, as is usually the case when you play the telephone game. Then I texted everyone who I thought might know something. Then I received a few more texts from people who knew something. She was carted away to a major urban hospital and awaiting surgery (which, as of this writing, still has not happened). I was assured it was very routine but needed to happen quickly.

In Tampa, I did my best to keep occupied. And the Commodore had no shortage of shows, classes, jams, and odd jobs that are needed to keep a theater running. I hosted the Thursday night drop-in with no instruction as to how drop-ins are run. We did three group exercises and a short form game, which everyone agreed was fun but later added that they missed doing scenework. I helped scrub floors for five minutes one day, I took the trash out, I swept, I put out chairs, I stacked chairs, I ran tech, I opened doors, I tended bar. “Anything to keep the dark thoughts at bay!” I half-joked to anyone within earshot.

I am told the Commodore doesn’t teach one specific format, and they don’t have auditions. Once students finish the four levels on offer, they are free to put together their own indie team and book themselves for Thursday and Sunday shows. Successful, and they may move into a Friday or Saturday slot.

My beginner class was about Knowing, Caring and Loving. The foundation of good scenework. A better way to initiate. Everyone was very receptive and there were a handful of people in there who had never done improv before! I have to say, Tampa was more receptive to notes than I ever was as a student. I would tell them what to do and they would do their best version of it. I would give them a few notes, and they would immediately internalize it and it would affect their scenes going forward. It probably took me a good 2-3 years to learn how to be an effective student, and by then I was insufferable in a different way.

I got to spend a lot of time with my Tampa festival friends, like Kelly, Justin, Liz Marcucci, Lauren Ross, Dan Degesse, Kevin Michalski, John Lasavath, and Danny Mora. We got to hang out without the festival, so everyone was more relaxed and there was more time to just sit on the couch and watch TV. I fed multiple people pasta which I had made. I was put up for free in the guest house of a friend of a friend of a friend.

A lot of the trip was me binging the entirety of NBC’s Superstore on Peacock. I also managed to track down the episode of the Librarians that I was in.

The intermediate class was an 8-hour Soundtrack Intensive, the one which I requested to have a showcase at the end. They got to learn all my secrets, and made two of the most important discoveries of all: 1) anything can be used as a suggestion, even nothing, and 2) my soundtrack secrets were applicable to more than just music! There was still a majority of level 1 and level 2 students in this class, mixed with some higher level students and regular performer/teachers from the Commodore. Some of the students were the same students from Knowing, Caring, and Loving; and it was great to see them apply those concepts and the soundtrack concepts at the same time. I’m sure it broke their brains a little bit.

Later that day I received a series of phone calls telling me that my mom was on the way out, and it was time to say our goodbyes. I stepped out in the middle of a show and bought a plane ticket for the next morning. That plane ticket wiped out any money I’d be making from these classes. I talked to Kelly behind the bar; the way I saw it, we had three options for this soundtrack class. We could cancel the class and issue partial refunds. We could postpone part two until I returned to Tampa. I could have someone else run drills for part two since I had already taught them the concepts. Kelly sent out a poll and the unanimous answer was a resounding “we’ll wait!” Whatever happened next, I knew the Commodore and its patrons had my back.

When I got to the hospital, things were not as bad as they sounded over the phone. My mom was awake, talking, coherent, and eating semi-solid foods. She could walk from the bed to the chair and back. My sister was there and we watched Dirty Dancing, Grease, and the beginning of Look Who’s Talking. I think at one point the Gilmore Girls came on? That wasn’t the main focus of that weekend. I told my mom that everything would be okay and that I’d see her when she got out of the hospital. I think that’s the last thing I said to her that she could hear and respond to.

My family was very nice and opened up their homes, cars, and wallets to me. We made do while visiting mom and soon it was time to head back to Tampa to teach some more adult make believe. I got to tell everyone, over and over, that things were not as bad as the phone call made it seem, but significantly worse than the morning when I landed, and significantly worse than April 8th. Everyone had their own heart surgery / coma / cancer / traumatic head injury / botched liposuction story to tell me. Things were going to be fine! Things were going to be terrible! Both things could be true! I performed in more shows and got up to speed on theater drama. Kelly and Justin had more festival submissions they needed to watch, and I was only too happy to help them knock those out as quickly as possible. I got up to speed on festival drama. I led another drop-in, essentially the first two hours of a level 1 class, and ran attendees through a rough soundtrack-style jam. I watched my students apply concepts! Exciting!

Day two and part two of the Soundtrack Intensive came around and I simply asked my students to show me what they had been practicing in my absence. I openly cried in the middle of class. They all gave me a huge group hug. I was overcome by the generosity they had shown me, as they could very well have taken the partial refund and I could have returned to Portland empty handed. They were moved by the fact that I would want to come back and continue teaching them. I could tell they really took it seriously on that second day. We did many 15 minute sets in those four hours and many notes were dispersed. We ended on a Vanessa Carlton dance party.

Unfortunately we had to cancel the advanced class, and my profuse apologies to the one woman who didn’t get the memo and showed up at the theater that day. I will make it up to you somehow!

We finished out the weekend of shows and started the fundraising period for the Countdown Improv Festival. I’m very excited for the lineup they have this year, and happy about my contributions. I’m going to be performing in three different shows across three different nights on three different stages! Because I don’t know what’s real and what’s a bit, I may be performing in a musical trio called Scissordick, against my will, with a finale resulting in my death. A fourth show!

I silently cried to myself on the flight back to Portland. I read Jake Jabbour’s very similar Substack post and while it was nice to see someone else going through similar straits, it did make me reconsider writing this one. On the one hand it feels like I did a whole lot of nothing and made no money. And now I’m just going through the motions and everything has the volume turned down, as cliché as it may seem. On the other hand, I had a great time making the best of a bad situation; I really felt like part of the community down in Tampa, even when I wasn’t there. Some of those students are still sending me updates through Discord and Instagram. That helped me feel normal while I was privately spiraling alone in my guest house. It was nice to have a distraction, and it was nice to pass on my wisdom to a new generation of performers. It was nice to be reassured that I am an effective teacher. Also that there is an audience for my tutelage; I polled my classes and found that none of them had heard of me prior to this teaching residency! But they showed up anyway, and trusted me to teach them something worthwhile, and that means the world to me.

Now we’re all waiting for the other shoe to drop, whether good or bad, and what that means for the future. And I know it all comes out in the wash, and everyone goes through this in some form or another, but man do I wish I had more time to process all of these things independently from each other.