Get Creative

San Francisco Chronicle: Sunday Datebook
August 21, 2005

By Bonnie Wach

NOTE: The following is an excerpt from a longer article about ways to unlease your creativity.

I remember the day I gave up my dream of becoming a famous singer. It was in sixth-grade glee club, and we were auditioning for parts in the holiday recital. I had to sing an a cappella soprano solo and I was so nervous that I could barely breathe, let alone sing (or bother to mention to the director that I was actually an alto). Needless to say, when the moment came to hit the high note, I squeaked out something that sounded like a bird that been hit with a BB gun. I was kindly but swiftly relegated to the back row, buried with a bunch of choral wannabes whose part consisted of 50 measures of rest, followed by the brief, but glorious shout-out of "Jingle Bells!"

Life is rife with dream-crushing experiences like this -- the drama teacher who patted you on the shoulder and mumbled that you "had other talents, " the art instructor who joked that maybe you should "keep your day job." A teasing sibling who asked if you knew how to sing "Far, Far Away." And before you knew it, you were toiling away in a windowless cubicle, a bubbling cauldron of repressed creative energy with nowhere to let it out except for the occasional drunken karaoke night with the office gang.

Go BATS

"Once you unleash the creative person inside, you can't put him back," says John Kovacevich, executive director of Bay Area Theatresports Improv (BATS), which has been helping folks overcome performance anxiety since 1986. A part-time actor who got the improv bug when he took a BATS class in 1999, Kovacevich gave up his day job in publishing in 2002 to become the group's executive director.

"A lot of people are kind of transformed by improv. They open up. It can be a little corny. Improv isn't religion, but it's one tool that people can use to get rid of the negativity that society has put on them."

BATS bases its philosophy on the work of Keith Johnstone, author of the seminal 1979 book "Impro," a sort of how-to manual for getting back in touch with your imagination.

Johnstone "talks about how as we move into adulthood, we start to shut down, stop taking risks, by being told we're not good at something, and along the way, our creativity and spontaneity gets beaten out of us," says Kovacevich. "He believes that we all have the ability to play, and BATS teaches adults how to play again."

The games begin with the six-week starter course, which introduces amateurs and pros alike to the concepts of improvisation and unscripted, audience-input theater through playacting and exercises such as how to "fail good naturedly," and why you should "dare to be dull."

If that's too much commitment, there are also shorter workshops offered throughout the year. Students who complete four levels of BATS classes may be invited to join the Sunday Players, a group of alums who perform weekly for a live audience, challenging each other in sports-style improv competitions.

This is not just Drama Geeks 101: Main stage players, most of whom act in professional companies and on TV, all got their start at BATS school, including members of True Fiction Magazine, the acclaimed improv troupe that performs regularly on "West Coast Live."