Several days ago, Cecilia Maumgartner, a longstanding improv teacher at Stanford, was fired. Accusations levied against her include: telling a student that they can’t act, but they have the right gracile legs and beautiful, sugary brown eyes to be a capoeira dancer, suggestively waggling her orchid ‘Alberto’ in several people’s faces, and generally improvising her classes by ripping 180x salvia in the parking lot before facing a fireball shooter and giving it the old college try.
Outrage and controversy surround the paradoxical firing. Many alumni have rushed for a quick, myopic, deleterious tweet, furiously typing with their pudgy fingers that the reason Cecilia was such a great improv teacher was because she, herself, improvised everything. Quickly, the conversation devolved into the philosophy of mimesis and other art terminologies, but the Flipside isn’t partial to any of those arguments.
Truly, we at the Flipside just wanted to see if Cecilia Maumgartner was alright. And she wasn’t. As she ate raw, non-sushi grade ahi tuna from an adidas sock, Cecilia and The Flipside’s own Editorial Board smoked a grape swisher before watching, So You Think You Can Dance?
Now that she’s been fired from teaching improv by improvising, Cecilia Maumgartner has decided to live a more solemn, planned life. For the first time, the whimsical winds of spontaneity will no longer dictate her days, she declared proudly, before breaking down in tears. However, for many hours, she continued to dupe The Flipside Editorial Board, stroking Alberto with gusto, and exclaiming that she was just improvising. We know understand Stanford’s radical decision–for she may be too talented at improvisation for her own good.
But The Flipside knew better than to leave her in such a state. We arranged ourselves in a group hug. It’s okay not to improvise anymore, William Golub said tenderly to Cecilia (wiping a tear from her eye like the tantric whisperer he is). Cecilia has since eloped to the arctic with Alberto, which goes to show that being good at improve doesn’t preclude you from having terrible judgment.
