Mingle the Sexpot

I went to my last Improv class on Tuesday and we did an activity where our classmates had to choose the characters they wanted to see other people perform. A piece of paper was passed around with my name on it and my classmates had to write down what character they wanted to see me portray on stage. I do not know why they chose the characters that they did, nor did I particularly care for any of them:

An aggravated yetti
A sexpot
A druggie
A waitress at a Reno casino
An overeater

After we all got our list of characters, then our teacher would pull together a scene: “I want to see the nervous cop, the other cop, the jabbering crackhead…and…who would make a good girlfriend? Ah..the sexpot.”

There were a few problems with this scene:

First of all, I’m not honestly sure what defines a ‘sexpot’, except I assumed it was someone who thought she was good looking and was trying to get some. All the time.

Secondly, I have never been a very flirtatious person anyway, and have trouble even acting this way on stage. Nevermind the fact that innocent flirting was the least of my worries in this scene.

Thirdly, I was playing the girlfriend of the “Jabbering Crackhead” who was being played by a guy named Joe, who is equally as square as I am. You should have seen us trying to light up imaginary crackpipes…I’m sorry, what? Let me put this to you in a different light – the best scene I acted in over the past 10 weeks was when I was partnered with this same guy Joe, and we both played 90 year-old women. We were comfortable with those roles. We were not comfortable with these new ones.

The first time we performed this scene, I basically tried to throw myself at everyone (tried being the keyword) – the crackhead, the nervous cop, and the brave cop (who happened to be bald) as they went about trying to arrest the crackhead. The bald head worked to my benefit since I was able to rub it sexily. Ummm…more info then you wanted eh?

When we were done, the teacher wanted to see the Jabbering Crackhead jabber more with a stream of consciousness so asked us to go back up onstage and do it again. He was to jabber more, I was to be more of a sexpot. This time he just jabbered and basically everything I caught him saying, I turned into some steamy sexual innuendo, and then finally dragged him back to my ‘bedroom’. I’ve never said the things to my husband that I said on stage in front of my whole class. It was a big, BIG stretch for my acting skills, and one which I found quite embarrassing.

The only other character I had to play that night from my list above was the “Aggravated Yetti”, however, I initially confused ‘yetti’ with ‘shirpa’. No, no. One is human, one is not. So, in that scene I just grunted my way across stage as a step-sister to Chewbacca, while a guy playing a drag queen tried to pick up on me. What a class. Or should I say, I've got some class.