I’m exhausted, cranky, sore, tense, and almost broke. I started out class today with a couple of strong scenes and let them go to my head and spent the rest of the day noticing too late that I wasn’t on the same page as everyone else. For the most part I’m comfortable enough with the rest of my class that even when I screw up I’m not embarrassed, but today I embarrassed myself.

So tomorrow is our last day, and no matter how it goes I want to play well and serve the larger purpose. I correctly predicted that running any kind of form with 12 people is a clusterfuck, so really in a lot of cases I feel like the best thing to do is stay offstage. Today Pat kept telling us to incorporate two-person scenes and we kept winding up with four or five people onstage when a scene started. Part of this is the nature of our transitions, which typically come from an organic group game in which there’s a mob of people doing the same thing. There’s only one person (besides me) I’d categorize as a stage hog, but for some reason it’s easier for us to respect a two-person scene coming off the back wall than one that starts as the result of an organic opening.

Part of my frustration is that this week represents an attempt to cram two levels’ worth of instruction into four days. Level 5 is an exploration of other forms; Level 5B is dedicated to creating your own. In the normal curriculum, each takes place over the course of eight weekly two-hour classes. We’re trying to accomplish both things in four days. I will eventually benefit from this when I start trying to experiment with these forms back in Austin, but as far as I’m concerned it would have made just as much sense to work on Harolds for the last two weeks and have everyone do that instead trying to come up with something that’s never been done and then do it well. To make matters worse, some of the other classes apparently beat us to the punch on claiming some of the forms, so The Living Room, for example, is effectively off limits. Or, rather, Pat doesn’t want to do anything too close to it.

Another part of my frustration is that I sense I’ve improved as an improviser since getting up here and I’d like to be testing that instead of trying to master a new form. I am frankly nervous about the Girls show on Saturday, not because I think anything terrible will happen but because I’ve been onstage a lot less this week than I was last week. Normally I don’t like rehearsing (anything) right before playing, but on Saturday this may turn out to be a good thing. Buckman reminded me to let go, and he’s right. And I will. Once I’m there.

And I know that another element of my frustration is that when I’m down all my worst habits arise, and they are of course the habits that infuriate me the most in other people. Most of my tongue-biting moments this month have occurred when someone isn’t paying attention to what other people are doing and seems to be more intent on doing his thing . . . which is exactly what I was doing today.

I tell myself that I don’t have any resistance to laying back and listening and supporting and saying yes, but what I really mean is that I have a lot less resistance than I would have earlier in my life. Which is great, but that doesn’t mean that my worst tendencies — arrogance, pettiness, viciousness, being judgmental — have gone away. They’re always there, waiting for me to get tired or frustrated enough that they seem comforting and familiar. Just like my alcoholism, now that I think about it. So while I’m happy at the progress I’ve made, telling myself that I’ve somehow transcended my worst aspects is practically an open invitation for them to prove me wrong.

The good news is that I know how to deal with this, and that I caught it before the last day. Tomorrow and Friday, I will listen and say yes until it hurts and then I’ll do it some more, and it’ll work. And then on Saturday I’ll let go and forget the rules and that’ll work too.

If you’re not having fun onstage, you’re the asshole.