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Improviser Molly Graham talks with Puss and Kooch about tapping into your wise mind, the benefits of improv and storytelling, and saying funny things.
Molly Graham on Heavy Flo with Puss and Kooch
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. To hear everything Molly has to say, listen to her podcast episode.
Starting out with The Quitters
Thank God for The Quitters. I wouldn’t have stuck to improv without them. I took a break from improv after doing one class because I thought we were going to move. So I didn’t sign up for a class because I thought we were going to leave before that eight weeks was up.
That turned into two cycles where I thought we were going to move. But then we didn’t move, so I signed up for another improv class. That was where I met Kristin O’Brien and Tonya Jordan. I think that’s when we started going to Zach Mason’s practice group together. Helper Pony came out of that, and The Quitters were sort of a spin-off from that practice group.
Had I not had the experience of re-finding Kristin and meeting Tonya when I landed back in improv, it would not have stuck the way it did. Now with teaching, I see students on indie teams get a thousand percent better between Levels 2 and 3. It’s not class.
They’re doing improv with a group of people on another day of the week and getting the reps. But they’re also doing improv in a way that’s self-directed, with a group of people they chose. They like each other, they’re jamming on the same stuff. Those students get way, way, way better.
I don’t think I would’ve stuck to improv if I hadn’t had The Quitters to make me better faster. I’m not good at doing things I’m not good at. I will stop very quickly if I’m not good at it. So I think having the reps to get better at improv faster made it stick for me when it might not have otherwise if I’d just been doing classes.
Working with Story District
I came to DC with a job that turned into a software project management thing. I followed that through various job changes and promotions until I was working at a job that I won’t name because I’m going to say bad things about it.
Word to the wise: If someone offers you a huge raise, ask why. I took a job for a huge raise, and it turned out to be a mess. I could not save it. Superman could not have saved it, and I certainly couldn’t.
It was terrible, and I was crying in my car every day and wanting to go in and hand my laptop to the CFO and say I was never coming back. It was very sad. I was getting yelled at, which should never happen in a professional context for any reason. Everyone there was very unhappy. So I was miserable and realized I had to make a change. I didn’t even want to do software project management anymore.
My beloved therapist said, “Your wise mind will know when it’s time to go.” The wise mind is the intersection of the emotional mind and the intellectual mind. When both your emotional and intellectual minds, for their own reasons, go, “Oh God, yeah, that feels good,” that’s the wise mind.
I like that terminology because you can’t think well when you’re feeling overwhelmed. Your wise mind is a calm thing. It’s not a heated passionate moment. It’s going to feel like everything is aligned. That’s good because I feel big feelings, and sometimes that’s not a good time to make decisions.
My therapist happened to be on the email blast from Story District. When they had job openings, they emailed them out to their list. She remembered I wanted to work in arts and forwarded it to me.
I knew what Story District was because I had seen a collaboration they’d done with WIT. I had no other experience with it, but it was perfect. It was the next-best thing to WIT having a job opening.
I showed up for the interview, and the database they needed me to be able to use was built on Salesforce, which is the software I hold certifications in and have had several jobs in. It turned out their whole backbone was built on Salesforce, so I could do things for them they couldn’t even afford. And that’s really fun. I’m actually very glad to know how to do this stuff because I can do things for tiny nonprofits that they cannot afford. It’s pretty cool.
For people who don’t know what Story District is, can you give us a little spiel?
The idea is that storytelling creates connection between human beings, and the world is better when people feel connected. Since we’re an arts organization, we teach people how to tell good stories.
Storytelling can be a lot of things. There’s a storytelling culture out there, a storytelling circuit, a festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee. There’s myth, stories about other people, stories for children, fictional stories. It’s just that narrative arc that’s a story.
Story District does personal, autobiographical stories, like The Moth. We teach storytelling for performance so people can tell compelling stories that actually create that connection, for themselves and for the audience. We do shows, and we teach people how to do that. We also do corporate consulting stuff. We’ll go to offices and work with people to be better communicators.
Do you do storytelling?
I’ve been on stage twice for Story District. The first time was for Outspoken, which is our annual Pride show. I told the story of my mom coming out when I was in fifth grade, which was in 1995.
Then I just told a story at the DC Improv. It was really fun to be there, having seen comedians I adore on that stage. I told a story for our Worst Decisions show about making up a boyfriend in the eighth grade.
One of our big things is getting first-timers on stage. No part of me ever wanted to get on a stage. So many introverts and so many people who are more writers than performers show up to do it.
Most students walk in thinking they don’t have any stories or anything to talk about. It’s never true. You have a million things to talk about. The tiniest little anecdotes you think are dumb can actually be turned into something with an arc and a beginning and an end with stakes.
Do you have a lot of cocky stand-ups coming in?
They don’t stick. We certainly have some stand-ups that love it. There are stand-ups who are more storytellers and stand-ups who rely more on one-liners. But cocky just doesn’t work out well.
Story District is very collaborative. No one gets on our stage without having been coached. So you will have worked through your story with a coach and talked about the minutiae. It’s not a great space for people who are super cocky and don’t feel like they need any input from anybody. It’s much more in conversation with a coach to find what the irreducible version of the story is.
Storytelling and improv as therapeutic tools
Improv is definitely where I have more fire. There’s something so wonderful to me about just showing up with whatever you have, and that’s all that’s required of you to do improv. Improv has lower stakes.
Storytelling is hard work. It’s writing, which is so much scarier to me than improv. If I said a dumb thing in improv, I was improvising. But if I wrote something down and practiced it and then said it out loud and then it was terrible, I thought it was good. I had many opportunities to change that and didn’t. Also, you have to memorize things. Just memorizing words is a thing that’s stressful.
So I think I do have more fire, personally, around to improv. But I have a future vision for my life of doing some of this work from a mental health standpoint. For that, I think storytelling is kind of the jam. Improv is definitely a very important tool for whatever this vision is, but I think storytelling is where you get into the therapy.
I’ve always looked for actual academic study on what the brain is doing when you’re doing improv. I would assume storytelling uses different parts of your brain.
I think storytelling for performance changes the way you write a story. The first time I did a story, I wrote it . Then I got up to read it, and it was horrendous. It sounded like I was reading an essay. So you say different stuff when it’s for performance.
And doing it in front of people, specifically, is different. You could do all sorts of research on what storytelling and hearing stories and reading stories and telling stories does to the brain. But specifically telling a story about yourself to live human beings, whether it’s on a stage or in a group therapy situation, is, I think, pretty similar to improv.
Storytelling and mental health seems like a space you’ve been dipping your toe in.
I think there are two versions of it in my head. Art therapy is a real thing. You can get certifications in it, and there’s a society and conferences and things like that. But there’s not a ton of academic research—or so much less than you would hope—into what’s really going on.
There’s the arts programming that exists. You can come to Story District and learn about storytelling or come to WIT and learn about improv. These organizations aren’t doing this on purpose, but therapy is happening in those rooms. It’s just not what Story District or WIT is there to provide. It’s happening to you, and that may be why you’re there, but they’re providing an arts experience.
My therapist loves that those organizations exist for therapeutic reasons. She sends people there, not to do therapy, but to do art and then come back and do therapy having done art. That is a completely legitimate therapeutic use of this stuff, is to just do the art. It doesn’t have to be anything more than that. The doing is really valuable.
But I also think it would be really cool to think about what group therapy would be like if you did it with improv or with some storytelling elements. I wonder what it would be like if you took the art into mental health spaces and did it with more of a deliberate focus on the mental health aspects of it. I think that would be really interesting. But I also think it would be interesting to do the art with a grounding in the theory of what is happening in your brain and how we work through shit.
Making the dream team: iMusical
As a little baby student, I remember watching iMusical and just going, “Oh my god, I didn’t even know this existed. I didn’t know this was a thing you could do.” My inner child was leaping out of my throat just wanting to get on stage.
I auditioned for them three or four years ago and got a callback. I was there with Cassie Barnum and Jordana Mishory, and we were all so happy to be there. It was supportive and wonderful, and playing with Travis Ploeger is so much fun.
I went through the whole thing, at no point expecting to get a callback or get on. But it was an amazing, cool experience. Then they had auditions again a year later, and I was out of town. I would have gone just to get to play with Travis for a little while.
Then they had this most recent set of auditions, and I got the callback. It was all women, and I have to say, all-women improv auditions are the best thing in the entire world. Everyone’s playing at the top at the top of their game. Everyone’s playing hard and going for it because it’s an audition. But it’s all women, so it’s so fucking supportive. No one’s taking the legs out from anybody else. We’re just building, building, building. It was so much fun.
That audition felt different than the first one. I had five years of improv under my belt, so I wasn’t a totally green improviser anymore. And I have a strong musical theater background, so I’m vocally fine. I felt like I might get it. And then I got it. It was amazing and terrifying.
I feel like every time you get something in improv or reach a new level, you go back to level one. You feel like a student walking into your first showcase.
Advice for the DC comedy community and humanity
The advice I would give everyone everywhere—DC comedy community or not—is that you were put here to be you. So trying to please people is antithetical to the reason you’re here. I mean that comedically and in life.
I’ve recently started taking it very seriously to say the funny shit that occurs to me. If something funny occurs to me, it needs to come out of my mouth unless it’s horrendously inappropriate for the situation. Because if I don’t say it, it will never get said.
It doesn’t matter if it’s not the funniest thing. That’s what you’re here for, is to author that thought into the world. So you have to represent yourself.
Thanks for getting wet with Puss and Kooch
Tune in next week for an interview with DC stand-up Camille Roberts!
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