By: Bethany Davey
This weekend, I will partake in one of my favorite improvisational workshops: a musical improv intensive. If this conjures visions of theatre-loving adults (sometimes beautifully, sometimes awkwardly) playing pretend and making up songs onstage while other theatre-loving adults watch and eagerly await their turn for the limelight…well, you’re not far off.
I have participated in this workshop twice before. After several days together, we conclude our experience with a small showcase during which families and friends applaud wildly for our undisputedly mediocre performance. Though our end-of-workshop show is never quite the Broadway-esque extravaganza of our improvising dreams, the experience itself offers a certain magic. The musical improv intensive is one in which adults gather together simply for the joy of the thing. While we certainly prefer to do this thing well, what does that even mean, when the thing we’re hoping to do well is ridiculously non-sensical?
Though it is non-sensical, the musical improv intensive is one of the most joyful experiences of my year, an experience in which I feel fully present, alive and connected to myself and to others. This silly, imaginative weekend nourishes me long after we’ve taken our final bow.
An experience like this may seem incongruent with the realities we face as local and global communities today, may seem frivolous in the face of ICE raids, rampant transphobia, starvation in Gaza. And yet, I believe that laughter, creativity and even absurdity are Divine gifts that can accompany despair. Joy and grief need not be mutually exclusive, but can instead inform one another, can work in tandem to spaciously make way for breath and sustenance in the midst of heartache. Can connect us to life when death surrounds and threatens to overwhelm.
Joy, like a spiderwebbed quilt of care, can—and does—uphold us, propelling us forth and through. And joy, even when sung off-key from a community theatre stage, enlivens our imagination, reminds us not only of what is but of what can be. Imaginative, improvised joy ushers in the kin-dom of God, so let us make room for laughter, creativity and absurdity and the holy alive-ness it nurtures.
