Big Dog Energy!

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An Interview With Steven “J.” Burnett

I first encountered Steven “J.” Burnett at Leela Improv one weekend morning a few months back. Spring was just beginning to chirp freshly in the air, and I was as a baby bird, gurgling for some fresh worm pie, a.k.a. improv.

I was involved in a troupe called WASIO, a luscious band of provsters organized by a fine Provman by name of Jowy-Jhan Curameng,a fella I’d had the ripe pleasure of playing with at the Wednesday night Jams at AOC and who I’d also met around Endgames Improv, where I toil as a Stage Managiere. Jowy set up a session in which we’d be coached by none other than Steven “J,” in Leela’s cavernous space in the SF Chronicle Building.

Steven is the Associate Artistic Director of Leela Improv, and he teaches, coaches and directs there, too. He has been that craft for some 11 years now. Suffice to say, he knows a thing or two about serving up some steamin’ worm pie.

For months, I fondly carried about my sweet memories of WASIO’s fine session with SJB, privately, tacitly, patiently. But like a dam made of mere toothpick, I couldn’t contain my enthusiasm any longer. I asked Steven to sit down with me for an interview, and the following transpired.

ANNA KRITIKOS: Rolling speed. Speeding sound.

Steven Burnett. What’s the deal with your – is that your family name, Burnett? Steven Burnett, that’s your given name?

STEVEN “J.” BURNETT: (a pregnant silence)…Yeah.

AK: HAHA.

SJB: Getting to the hard hitting questions, already!

AK: That’s how I play ball.

SJB: I’m named after— My dad’s name is Steven Burnett.

AK: Do you like being that–

SJB: Yeah, I like my Dad.

AK: Whazz up!?

SJB: Huh?

AK: I said whazz up, as in “that’s nice.”

SJB: Yeah.

AK: So, Steven Burnett: Real Name.

SJB: Real Name. I mean I added a ‘J’ as sort of a stage name thing.

AK: Oh, really. You did, you added a J? I love that.

SJB: It’s my middle name. It kinda comes from my grandmother, because she used to call me Stevie J all the time. My dad has a different middle name, so I’m not like a junior.

AK: That’s great! Praytell, maybe we could go into your theater – what does your road to improv look like?

SJB: I don’t know, I was always, when I was young, I was interested in– I was usually in the school plays and stuff, and I sang in choirs. In high school, I got really interested in creative writing. So it’s been an interesting journey because when I went to college, I would oscillate between creative writing and musical theater. Even going back deeper than that, musical theater kinda came from– I had a best friend who was a little Broadway baby. Her dad was the costume designer for a lot of Andrew Lloyd Webber things. He did Starlight Express and maybe Cats– and she was one of my first best friends and she was super into musicals and I was already singing and I’d done a couple of plays, so she kinda drew me into that passion, to a degree. So when I went to college, I ostensibly started out with music theater aspirations, but I only did a year as a music theater major, because I found the culture of it a little toxic. It was really super, uber competitive and they way that the environment built up made it so that people were really inauthentic with each other. And I didn’t enjoy that. So then I concentrated on writing, then I dropped out of college to pursue my passion for drinking.

AK: For how long?

SJB: For like 20 years. I dropped out of college, and then I met a guy and we moved to San Antonio. We were both alcoholics and train wrecks together. So fast track to San Francisco. I got to San Francisco in 2001. Sobered up in 2007. And when I sobered up, I realized, I’m a creative person! I’d forgotten about that element of me, that part of me. So I started doing more creative things, starting with creative writing. That’s been the interesting thing for me, there’s this dualism for me of am I a writer? Or a performer? That just went on and on and on for a long time. So I started with creative writing, and did a group. We met every week, a group of writers. We’d workshop each other’s work. This is going to be a bit meandering. I started writing a graphic novel that I was super into, I was gonna workshop it, I was gonna bring it to like comic book companies.

AK: Why do you laugh at that?

SJB:It’s cute. I love it. It got to a point where I had enough of it written that I thought I could bring it to people. Then, my computer crashed. And it took me a month or two to have the money to buy a new computer. Bought a new computer, put the backup drive in there, and then the backup wasn’t updated, so it backed up from like a year prior, so I lost like this huge chunk that had gotten to a space of being ready to shop it. And so I had a little mini-death and mourning with that. Oh my god, it was like a baby who had died. I mean that’s a little dramatic. But, my baby, that I lost my child, I had put so much work into it. And it was gone. I remember going to the Apple Genius Bar, and bringing the back up and the new computer. I had it on Time Machine, so it theoretically should have been backing up every 24 hours. What’s going on? And he’s like, “I can’t find it. I’m gonna tell you the thing that I hate telling everybody. Yes, I can see that Time Machine was activated and that it should have backed up. I can also see that it did not back up, and I cannot explain to you why that happened.” So I was like O-o-ok… I was depressed for a good 6 months after that. But tech things always fuck up around me– that’s a whole other thing. So then I ended up kinda pausing my writing for a little bit, because I was just really devastated by that. And then I went to Austin.

A couple of friends of mine were contemplating moving to Austin. We were on the train– we’d been in San Francisco for a long time, and we were like everything is so fuckin’ expensive here all the time, this fuckin’ sucks. Maybe we can go to Austin. And I’d lived in San Antonio for a while, and at that point in time, I was a fan of South Texas. San Antonio and Austin. So we took a vacation trip around my birthday, which is in January. We were there for like a day, and within the first day, we’re just like, we’re not moving here. It’s liberal, but still surrounded by all that Texas. This is like when they first started shutting down Plannned Parenthood. It was just like– Oh, right, this is terrible. You can’t live in San Francisco for a long time and think that you’re gonna land anywhere else and feel the same kind of mindset liberation: freedom. Austin is liberal or progressive, but it’s also not the same as Bay Area progressive. Even though we pretty much immediately decided, ok we’re not living here, the people I was with were really good friends of mine, and we can have fun at a tax seminar together. So we had fun. And I had friends who lived in Austin, we visited them. But the big thing was for my birthday. My birthday was during that stretch. And I’m not a person that cares about my birthday, but the people that I was traveling with really care about their birthdays. “It’s my birthday month!” every day of the week for them. So they wanted to know what I wanted to do on my birthday. Which was the most stressful thing for me, because normally on my birthday, I either work and don’t acknowledge it, or I’ll take the day off, but also leave me alone. It just makes me uncomfortable. Like, yes, I was born… I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to do. And then I saw a flyer in a coffee shop.

AK: HAHA.

SJB: I saw a flyer in a coffee shop for an improvised Buffy the Vampire Slayer show. And that seemed live Divine Provenance. Provenance? Prominence? [Providence.]

Because I’m like a super Buffy fanatic. And I like comedy! So… I’d seen –I hadn’t seen improv live, but I’d seen TV, Whose Line Is It Anyways? Even though we didn’t decide to move there, [to Austin,]] The whole trip was chaotic, but we had a blast while we were there. And that night was the best night. It was so fun. While I was watching it, I was like maybe I could do that? And it was at The Hideout Theater, which I think is an incredible theater in Austin. And I had just done a musical where I did a role where I got to sing, and I felt really good about it, and I was really missing that theater feeling. There’s something really lovely about backstage, and sort of this thing that we’re all doing together, it’s very communal. There’s kind of a warm feeling in my belly that it gives me. So I saw the show and was like maybe I would be good at that. So I was like I’m gonna take some improv classes when I get back to San Francisco. As a capricorn, it took me another 6 months to look for a theater and I found Leela online, it had reviews. I did have a little bit of a hesitation in that I had sort of PTSD from the duplicitousness, the inauthenticity and the sort of backstabby nature of competitive theater.

AK: Competitive theater, yeah yeah yeah.

SJB: So I wanted a warm, welcoming feel coming back into it. I also instinctively knew that comedy could be maybe not the nicest place sometimes. So Leela had all these reviews that were like, it’s for everybody! And everyone is so lovely here! It was like 5 stars on Yelp when Yelp kinda mattered a little. So I did a drop-in class and was immediately hooked. Did the drop in class, Jill [Eickmann]was there, she runs this theater. Doug was teaching, and what was also marvelous about it was that Doug said something that was analogous to what my meditation teacher was teaching me at the time. At the time, I had a meditation practice that was newer to me. And I was like oh my god, improv is a mediation?! FUUUCK, this is where I’m supposed to be. So I signed up for a Level 1 class. Immediately, literally that night, I blacked out at the computer, and came to and had signed up for the class. In the course of Level 1– this was probably in 2012, I think– in the course of Level 1, by the end of it, they were doing P.I.E. (Performing Improv Ensembles) auditions here and back then…now you have to take 4 levels before you can audition for P.I.E.. So I went to the audition just for the experience of it. I didn’t expect to be cast for anything. There were a whole bunch of people there- 50 or 60 people. And there were only two troupes that had spots open. And one of them was a non-cis male audition. I looked around and thought well they’re not going to cast me, I’m still super newbie newbie newbie. And a couple of days later, they called me and were like, “We want you in the P.I.E.!” and I was like “whuuuut”.

So that turned into a group called Sketchy Alley that became—a long lasting P.I.E. – 4 or 5 years we were together. We did some festivals, and during the course of that, not long after that, a year or two later, I was teaching. I was teaching within a year of my first improv class. I had told Jill, I think, a couple of months into level 2 or 3 at the time, and I remember being at a bar with her afterwards and saying, some day I’d like to teach. I’m not ready now, but I think I could be a good teacher. And she’s like yayy, I think you could be a good teacher too. And we had a discussion about it later. We talked about my theater experience, and how I’ve been a mentor in different capacities in the past, and I think I’d be good. But not now, I’m not ready now. And then literally, it was a few months later, and she was like, do you want to do a teacher audition?

I auditioned and then I was teaching drop-ins shortly after that. Then Level 1, then very shortly after that I was directing a P.I.E. that turned out to be Luxury Cruise Singles Mixer, which is Kalia’s group. They were incredible. I kind of resonated with them, I think we’re just like a good match. I’m fairly absurdist and they wanted to know about Game, and Leela doesn’t have a Game emphasis, necessarily, so I kinda needed to research, “what is Game.” I’d talk to people and different people would say different things, as far as the definition of Game. Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that it just meant funny. It was like, Oh ok, what is funny? And I get real weird and hyper-focused on researching shit, so there was maybe some scientific analysis around that. And then the idea of Organic Game, and I found a website called Improv

As Improv Does Best from a teacher based out of North Carolina I want to say, or Virigina. And started using some of his theories to teach Organic Game, and that seemed to work really well with Luxury Cruise. I think I became kinda popular as a teacher. So there’s a long version of how I got into improv, I guess.

AK: Improv as meditation. How do you get to I guess that place of non-thinking, if you will?

Get that more kinda— flow?

SJB: First of all I don’t think mediation necessarily means non-thinking. That is something, when I started studying it, that was interesting to me. Because I think you can, particularly with transcendentalism and stuff– the idea is that you’re in flow. Like stimulating Alpha waves, and there’s kind of a way into that. But the minute you try to shut thinking out, it doesn’t work, right? Thinking just sort of just happens. My teacher at the time was very much about, thoughts come in, and they go out. They come in and they go out. And we can have a habit of like grabbing a thought, and squeezing it. And turning that into a whole fucking thing. Whereas the natural state is thought comes in, thought comes out. So, he taught sort of this thing that he called the “Irritation Meditation.” The little space, the little room, that we meditated in was right on the N-line in the Outer Sunset, in the 30s, the Avenues. And the N-Judah would go by there, periodically. Rather than be frustrated by the…rattlesome tracks…rather than be frustrated by it– breathe into it. Go all the way into that sound. And in that, you’re just kind of integrating what is. And there is something euphoric about when a frustration happens, the idea of breathing into it, not trying to shut it out. Just going into it and through it. And for me there is something similar that happens when we’re improvising, when we go into flow state. Not necessarily that the stimulus has to be frustrating. But no matter what is happening, we’re choosing to go all the way into it with our scene partner. We’re not seeking to– like our ego could have a big idea for a story, and our partner may do something that is not a part of that idea. So I could choose to be like, noooo that’s not my idea. Because it’s all solo, ego, self-obsessed stuff. I could do that, and then I’m immediately locked out, and I’m in ego. Similarly I could get distracted by an audience member, maybe, or by a quiet audience. The moment that I’m doing that, I’ve lost the game. I’ve lost the flow, so what is more interesting to me, generally, is – can I connect with my partner, be in the liminal space of that, be in the fun of that, be open, so that everything that my partner does is just perfect. I’m just like super fuckin excited to play with my partner. The answer for me has to be just YES. I can’t have any judgment of myself, of the situation, of the partner. If I can get to a space of FUCK YEAH– which is you know, that’s improv, right? FUCK YEAH.if I can be in that space, then I can find myself in flow, then I’m having fun. I’m not even noticing, except the audience is giving the vibration of the laughter at me, which just energizes me to be more in it. There’s this synergistic flow of energy that’s happening from me to the partner, to the audience, and back and forth. That is magical. How do I get into that state? Yeah, that was the original question. I have to release fucking everything before I can get into that state. I have to release everything. I have to not be me. I have to be in it. It’s sort of a philosophical question, right? But I think it starts with getting out of the headspace of needing to be good, or right, or smart or good-looking, or brilliant– all the egoistic things that I feel like I need to have in order to be enough. I have to let go of all of that, or I could choose to let go of all of that. And then I’m in another space.

AK: So say in the middle of a scene, some distraction coaxes you into an ego block…what do you do to revert back into your Flow?

SJB: If a distraction happens- keep in mind also, I’m not the man on the mountain, I’m not the most amazing improviser that’s ever– by any stretch of the imagination. But I think the second that I choose to see that as a distraction, see that as a wrong thing that’s happened, then I’ve lost the Game. If a distraction happens, then ideally, to get back in, I’m bringing that distraction into the scene. It’s just like the “Irritation Meditation.” I’m breathing into the thing that frustrates me, not trying to shut it out. The distraction happens, and we’ve all had them. And I choose not to acknowledge it, and it’s bugging me, but I’m trying not to acknowledge it because I’m trying to be a professional actor- improviser, for me just doesn’t work. It might work for other people. But for me, it doesn’t work. It’ll fester in there and it will fuck me up. You see it happen all the time with improvisers. Somebody drops a beer bottle really loudly, good improvisers are bringing that into the scene. “Oh you brought your Uncle Jake again, he’s always dropping the beer bottles.” Then it’s there, right? It’s similar to like when maybe we have an awkward social interaction. It’s something that has come up before in empathy trainings I’ve done, where it’s like I’ll notice something is off with someone and generally it stems from them doing something they think is wrong. Oh, I forgot to introduce myself and that got me stuck in the head for a little bit of time.

AK:Aww.

SJB: This was a thing that a student at another place I had was talking about, when doing this Empathy Training/Grading thing. So she got in her head because I had to ask her name, she forgot to introduce herself. I wasn’t gonna grade her on that, but it was clear that she went oh no oh no I fucked up, and she was just like very freaked out by it. At the end, during the feedback session, I was like, I noticed, something happened midway through the session. And she was like, yeah. I realized when you asked me my name, that I had forgotten to introduce myself, and then I was just obsessing about it the whole time. And they’re asking for feedback and better practices when we’re doing this stuff. And she’s like what could I have done differently? And I was like, you could just say the thing out loud. “Now I’m going to try not to obsess for the next 5 minutes that I forgot to introduce myself.” The other students were amazed that you could just say the truth of an awkward thing that happened. It was so remarkable This was in a professional capacity though, so I get it. Higher echelons of different professions require that you be perfect, I guess? When in fact, it’s humanistic and connecting to allow someone to see the truth of your vulnerabilities. That actually would connect to people because it’s relatable and we all do it.

I’ll bet you would’ve been able to let it go at this point, because you’ve let it into the light. Which is ultimately what comedy is all about. Bringing the dark into the light. We bring the scary things out and we laugh at them, they shrink in light. If we keep it inside, it grows in there. We bring it out, we laugh at it, we reduce its power, to a degree. I think a lot could be said about just generally doing it everywhere. But it shows in performances, in that sort of context. The moment that I’m disconnecting…Someway of incorporating that usually could get me back into Flow State. And I had to learn that by doing a lot of bad sets. Bad sets meaning me being worries about a thing. Sort of the bad news about being made a teacher so young in my improv career is that I was a teacher, and that I was performing at a lot of shows with students, and my ego would go, Oh, you have to be good now. Which wasn’t where I started from! Which was like AHHH This is Fuckin’ Fun! And that’s what people love, when you’re in authentic play and really being you. And then you become a teacher, and expectations can get laden in that.

I think that, off and on, throughout the years, of being a newer teacher, I’ve kind of stalled in my creative process, and my performances were pretty lackluster, for a little bit of time.

That is just soul crushing and ego-destroying, which is great. Because then it falls apart and you get to put it back together with new learnings underneath it. I say great, but it’s painful at the time.

AK: But surely, there’s some — I feel like when I’ve collapsed, I’ve always forgotten that it’s not the end. Maybe I’m coming out of a Darkness, a lot of shame, and I feel like I’m trying to remind myself for the next time, to make rebuilding easier the next time it’s needed? But, maybe you have to be mired in your pain and forget about all hope before you can rebuild into a stronger iteration of yourself?

SB:I think we learn from it. From the micro– sets and scenes. If a scene isn’t working, I can pull it back together to a degree by sort of reminding myself that every moment, I am new. I can choose to get stuck down this dark path, or – here’s another choice that is there? I just forgot to have fun for a moment. Where’s my fun? There it is. Where’s my bliss? There it is.I just got stuck in the “Thou Shalts” of my learnings of improv. The more you learn about improv, the more you can use that to beat yourself down with. So I will perpetually refresh myself with different mantras that are helpful for me. They usually last for a couple of months. They’re kinda like little spells. Then I have to find a new spell. “Every moment I am new”-- that was one. “Nothing is real,” that was super helpful for me, but I know telling other people that sometimes really freaks them the fuck out. But for me, the “nothing is real” idea can be really liberating. Because it’s like, we have these perpetual narratives that we make real and so like, what if nothing is real? Except for what I’m actively choosing. That’s analogous to improv. Recently one of my students sent me this Joseph Campbell quote on this Hero’s Journey essay that he wrote, that I read like 20 something years ago, before I sobered up, before I did improv. It is so fucking crazy improv. This will make me sound smart, it’s so good [reading from Joseph Campbell’s essay, The Hero’s Journey (On Living in The World):]

“The warrior’s approach is to say yes to life: Yea to it all… Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy. When we talk about settling the world’s problems, we’re barking up the wrong tree… Your real duty is to go away from the community to find your bliss. The society is the enemy when it imposes its structures on the individual.

On the dragon there are many scales. Every one of them says “Thou Shalt.” Kill the dragon “Thou Shalt.” When one has killed that dragon, one has become The Child.”

HHAHAH!

“...Breaking out is following your bliss pattern, quitting the old place, starting your hero journey.” One of my students sent me that and like circled, this Thou Shalt, killing the dragon part, where the dragon represents society imposing you must, thou shalt, all the things, right? And she circled “yes to life, yes to it all” She’s like this is improv, improv is spirituality!And I’m like…yeah. It’s really fuckin’ powerful, you know? So that’s been kind of a thing I’ve been looking at recently. I can get wrapped up in the problems of the world, as well. It’s not that I seek to disconnect myself from the empathy of that situation. But I can make myself bigger than I actually am, in thinking that I’m going to solve all of that. That other people don’t have the dignity of their own experience. What can I do? I can bring joy in little snippets to audiences. Or help students actuate and grow and find their own new potential, rewrite their own narratives. Be in discovery. I can help with that. That feels good.

“Come Out Swingin’”

Conor Allen, improv savant and native Oaklander, was my Level 4 teacher at All Out Comedy Theater and is also the coach of an indie improv troupe I perform with, Oakland Dogwater District.

Every other Wednesday, Conor coaches us, usually in a living room or in a basement in a teammate’s house. Recently, we’ve been running JTS Browns, but we used to hit the monoscene with frequency. All the same, we had a spat of shows this past summer, and at the end of practice before our first show in the run, Conor advised us in an off-hand sort of way. His hands tucked into the pockets of his hoody, he offered up: “Come out swingin’,” his usual smile shining out of his bewhiskered face. His advice was met with a tizzy of excitement from the group, and it stuck with me.  

A couple thangs come to mind when I think about Conor’s colorful phrase. In my mind’s eye, I see a stocky baseball player looking at his fresh batting job, a dinger way off over the fences, legs  splayed in a batter’s lunge across home plate, with batter’s gloves and helmet on.

I also consider a muscular stray dog I once observed in the streets of Tijuana with an impressive set of low hanging testes the size of the ripest tomatoes, boppig down the boulevard. (At the time, I was an unworldly 10th grader, and my virginal eyes hardly had the language to fit the image, until a fellow student referenced the dog’s huge balones in the moments that followed the great hound’s journey past our van. Then I knew, and the memory would prove indelible ever after.)

What I love about this phrase “Come out swingin’” is the tautology implied. If we take the Dinger Factory image, a big swing suggests a tight grip on the bat, and of course a focus like a vise on the pitcher’s incoming ball. There’s a looseness in the swing, but a rigidity in the lead-up to it. 

Swingin’ in improv seems to connote the peace in or the trust of the unknown, under the name of what is natural. That dog’s tender bad boys were first and foremost following the motions of the dog’s every whim– that dog looked supremely confident that his balls would follow him to the very ends of the earth. I’m no expert–not then, nor now– but I like to think that I know what I know.

Come out swingin’, in short, refers to a confidence in the process, in the game of improv, that it will always work out and that there needs to be some tension in order to swing for the fences. 

Thusly, I conclude. I hope we can all “come out swingin’” on every improv stage we find ourselves.