It is an oft-quoted statistic from
Malcolm Gladwell's book “Outliers” that becoming an expert in any
given field requires a devotion of at least 10,000 hours to that
task. This September marks nine years of doing improvisation for me,
so I thought it would be a fun experiment to see how well I was doing
on reaching this goal. (I have purposely only included times when I
was actively engaged in doing improv – watching doesn't count, but
teaching does.)
So the first couple of years are the
easy part, as I was only doing improv with the Stage Monkeys
Hattiesburg chapter – I estimated from a sample school calendar at
USM that there would be 15 weeks of practices, once every Thursday,
for two hours each go, and I was in the group for four semesters
(Fall '03 – Spring '05), and we did four total shows in my first
year and six total shows in my second year (at two hours per show),
so my first two years are thus:
[(15 x 2) x 4] + (4 x 2) + (6 x 2) =
140 (So far, so good.)
I also played with the Humorrhoids on
the MS Gulf Coast, maybe 3 practices/shows, at 2 hrs per, so I'll add
6 to my total, bringing me to 146. From May '05 – December '05, no
improv. It sucks, but it's less math at least. I moved back to
Hattiesburg in Jan. '06, and played under the normal school schedule
until May '07, so:
[(15 x 2) x 3] = 90 (bringing me to
236; and all of a sudden I realize how slowly this number is rising).
There were no extra shows during that
period, so that's my total. June 2007, moved to Chicago, started
doing iO once a week, 8 weeks per session, six sessions, 3 hours per,
so:
6 x (8 x 3) = 144 (And I'm up to 380.)
I did a cage match for what I think was
6 weeks, which I'll say we actually improvised an hour per match,
bringing me to 386. And we got together to do extracurricular
practice maybe 10 times, two hours per, bringing me to 406, combined
with a few iO electives (5 x 2 hours) gives me 416.
Now comes the fun parts; I started
teaching the SD Monkeys the first week of June 2009, which was 3
years and three months ago, for a total of 168 weeks (2.5 hours per
week), which I'll say I've probably missed 10% of which due to work,
being out of town, holidays, giving me:
[168 – (168 x 0.1)] x 2.5 = 377.5
(and a total of 793.5 hours)
I did four levels of NCT classes, 6
weeks per level, 2 hours per week, so:
4 x 6 x 2 = 48
And 2 years, 9 months of NCT SunCo, (to
which I'll apply the 10% miss rule) and 2 hours per practice:
[(2 x 52) + (9 x 4) – ((2 x 52) + (9
x 4) x 0.1) ] x 2 = 252
And 9 months of ROAR, (10% Rule), two
hours per practice:
[(9 x 4) – ((9 x 4) x 0.1)] x 2 = 64
(And bringing the total to 1157.5 (four digit numbers, yay!))
I'll say that I was in, conservatively,
an average of 1.5 shows per month of SunCo's run and maybe 6 shows of
ROAR, an hour per:
(28 x 1.5) + 6) = 48
I've done 55 As Ink episodes, for a
total of 27.5 hours of improv, five Barrel of Monkeys, which were
likely around 12 hours of improv per, bringing me to 1293 hours.
Throwing in a few random teaching gigs,
improv camp, LA improv fest workshops, I'd bring that section to a
total of 150 hours (this is the part of my record keeping that is
unfortunately guessing) and my total comes to 1393 hours. Including
Partial Credit, Mike & Chris, and Fourth Date practices and
performances, I'd throw another 75 hours, giving me a total of 1518
hours. I've taught a four week workshop run, and two a month for the
period of January to June 2012, and one a week since then (two hours
each), giving me:
(4 x 2) + [(6 x 2) x 2)] + [(3 x 4) x
2] = 56 (Up to 1574)
I've done Dinner Detective for 15
months now, averaging around 2 shows per month, of which I'll be
conservative and say I've maybe improvised for 1 hour a night (given
the scripted beats, and that I've done seated roles here and there),
and I'll be generous and give myself an extra 10 hours to account for
any shorter gigs I may have forgotten. Combined with four Simply
Symbiotic gigs, with two hours apiece, it brings my grand total, for
9 years of improv to:
1622 hours.
That's it. Nine years, and I'm not
even 1/5 of the way to being a virtuoso/expert/adept. Now, by my
estimates, it would take five years of someone working 40 hours/week
to reach this mark, and over the last 9 years, I have worked on my
craft an average of ~3.5 hours per week (which actually sounds about
right). Oh, well, time to keep improvising.
