Meet Cora. She teaches improv classes to middle schoolers. Cora sees past those braces, past the awkward hair that has yet to be tamed, past the budding acne to the THESPIAN within! She begins class with a tongue warm-up:”Peter Piper picked a pepper. Peter Piper picked a pepper.” The trick is to over-enunciate. Cora finds that she is the only person in the room performing this exercise correctly in each class. Next comes “animal games” where Cora insists that each student channel an animal of her choosing. Today it is a “precocious cat” - stalking and prancing about the room in a mischievous way. Grooming. Meowing. Cora doesn’t understand why the 12 year olds in her class cannot let themselves go during this exercise but she stands as a beacon of strength, leaping onto chairs, sidling up next horrified, anxious pubescent children trying desperately to escape her attention. Cora is particularly arresting because she wears her standard costume of black tights and a black leotard to each class. “A screen onto which one might project one’s imagination”, she says. Cora has an unmatched ability to be completely un-self aware. She rented out her neighborhood’s outdoor pool pavilion for the last class, despite the pool being filled with neighborhood families. She urged her students - faces aflame with humiliation - to act out the Lion King in full mime in front of gaping, confused kindergarteners in dripping bathing suits. Cora takes this very seriously - IT IS ART! The show must go on.
