The Thing about Family

Hi mom and dad and Amy and Nancy and grandma and Pete and Jerry and Lisa and Bryan and Andrew. This is about family. But not you guys. Just wanted to say hi and thank you for being my blood family.

This is about my other families. My show families. My friend families. There is a saying that is sewn on pillows and printed on picture frames out there that goes "Friends are the family we choose for ourselves." While that's very true, more often than not the people who have become my extended families have been chosen for me. This year I've been more than blessed to have a few of them.

First and foremost, my Spirit family. James, Shawn, Katy, Tab and Peter. These guys were my world for 19 weeks all over North America. They had my back before every show and the other 23 hours of every day (cue Peter: guh-rossssss). Katy loved napping with Law & Order in the background. Tabetha loved eating beans for breakfast like a real Canadian, and she loved bringing them back to our cabin so as to avoid the Raffles crowd. Shawn loved chocolate ice cream and laying by the pool. James loved our regular breakfast table, girls, gossip and Bill Murray movies. Peter loved walking the line between benevolent and belligerent, pouring his angst into various artwork and White Russians. I loved every minute I spent with them, especially our family dinners every Sunday to reset and prepare for another cruise. Sound too adorable to be true? Yep. It was.

My Maine Mini-Fam. Farrell, Sam and Sarah (cameo by Andy). It was only 3 weeks, but you get a crash course in friendship when you climb a mountain with someone. I learned quickly that I hike much more slowly than others. I learned that Sam loathes seafood but loves mini-golf and symbolic spiritual healing. I learned that Sarah lives on her Blackberry and cares as deeply for her friends as she does about who's on the Perez Hilton's homepage (don't be fooled, it's a lot). I learned that Farrell is the most fun to play a scene with but the least fun to climb rough terrain with...because he's part mountain goat.

My current family, for (tear) another 10 days. I've met some really incredible people here in Novi. To call them "funny" or "nice" would be ridiculous. These people are just f-ing awesome. Marke and I share an obsession with our mobile devices and our endless frustration with boys. Kevin and I share an alma mater and an incurable addiction to bits. Jason and I share an excessive love of seasonal dessert items. Quintin and I share several stage kisses each night, thanks to Out of Gas. Rob and I share a lot of car rides and painfully tasteless jokes. Nancy and I share many girly moments and the fear that singing a song about dicks will alienate the conservative old couple in the front row ("Pearl, get your coat!"). Additionally I'm treated to the extended family here of the Detroit improv community. I'm so lucky to get to see other improvisors in their natural habitat, one that isn't Chicago. It's the same and different. Either way I'm so happy to have been a foster child here these past weeks. It will be great to go home, but difficult to leave.

My mother calls my castmates my coworkers. Sure, I work with them. But to an actor that means that you pour your guts out onstage with 4-6 other people nightly in hopes that a room full of dimly lit faces will approve of said guts. Plus you've likely seen those 4-6 people in their underwear. Family.