I Hate Improv Class

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(Author's note: I wrote this essay around February 2009.)

Since moving to San Diego, my once weekly fix of improv with my long form group has yet to fully satiate my improv hunger. I decided to sign up for classes at the local improv house. It's a short-form in the style of Comedy Sports kind of place, and even though I don't particularly want to do that kind of 'prov again, I was so hungry to do some improv, any improv, I was willing to go back to “class one” again. Additionally, I'm hoping that I can get a place performing at the theater regularly when it's all over with, and get some stage time and start building a group of improv friends to hang out with. (What can I say? I'm lonely.)

I signed up for classes no problem (though, to my surprise, almost the same price as a session of classes at the iO in Chicago, and only six weeks instead of eight), and as I was driving to the theater, I noted a distinct knot in my stomach. I was nervous. I was dreading going to class - I was honestly afraid of getting up on stage and making a damn fool out of myself. Now, I have never been afraid on stage. I have proudly stepped on to many stages and have been animals, people getting sexually molested, doing the sexual molestation, and inanimate objects (that are being used for sexual molestation). But this class, and as a matter of fact, every single class or workshop I have ever taken, I feel nervous right before the first one. I am constantly afraid that this class is the one where I will completely screw up, and no one will ever want to improvise with me ever again. And, I would argue that this nervous feeling has gotten worse the longer I've been doing improv.

While most people would say that after they've been doing it longer, they've gotten more comfortable because they're more experienced. For me though, I feel that the longer I've been doing improv, the less of an excuse for screwing up I have. When I took my first class at the iO in Chicago, I was bold as hell (probably too much, my teacher Andy had me rope it in a little bit) because at that point I could have screwed up, and just said: "Oh well, I've only done improv at college". Now though, if I screw up, people can only say: "I thought this guy did improv in Chicago!"

A failure on stage is almost always the result of no support, etc. But I can't fault new players for messing up. A flub now will definitely support the theory that I have no business doing this. As a result, I find myself working ten times as hard for everything, just to keep my head above water (it also doesn’t help that I’m a bit of a perfectionist, and I’ve only liked maybe 5% of all the improv I’ve ever done). I feel the need, the absolute life-ending need, to prove myself every time I’m around a new group, and especially a new teacher/coach. I hate improv class for the exact opposite reason that people take classes: wanting to prove that I’m good enough. I’m a student! Shouldn’t I feel comfortable enough to make mistakes in class?

Unfortunately, I now wear my Chicago improv tutelage like a weight around my neck.

The Worst Show

(Author's note: I originally wrote this article in August 2008.)

I recently had a very bad show. Bad and then some. And excuse the hyperbole, but it was quite possibly the worst show I have ever been a part of, which is saying something. What went wrong in this show, you ask? Well, what can go wrong in any show? People not listening to each other, ambiguous people, relationships, and locations, focus issues, low energy, direct and indirect denials, and an all around lack of playfulness. That this show was an iO graduation show, and that it is supposed to showcase everything we have learned in the last year (improv-wise) is itself perhaps telling.

Of course, the only thing worse than a truly horrendous show, is the backlash immediately after it. Because while a horrid (I will, in fact, use every synonym for bad I can think of) show lasts only twenty five minutes (despite the fact that it feels longer), the ripples of it can last much, much longer. This was one of those shows that everyone just sort of hangs their heads afterwards, and one that everyone knows was just bad. Even that one guy in every group who can find something positive about nearly every show (it's usually me). A show so atrocious that everyone immediately starts trying to come up with ways to fix it.
Let's run through the usual list: switch coaches, find a new practice time, required "hang-out/non-improv" time to achieve group trust/synergy, radical form changes, and a list of basics/guidelines/fundamentals/rules/commandments for what will make good shows.

It's interesting to point out that improv groups are much like bureaucracies: they are always fighting the battle they just lost.

This brings me to my point, and one that is especially resonant given that just seven days earlier, we had what was probably one of the best shows I had ever been in. Improvisation is a risky business. Perhaps the riskiest. Nothing is guaranteed, and every time you step on stage, you could easily be stepping on to your worst show, ever. Improvisers constantly tout that their artform is the purest, and the most interesting, because anything can happen. This is true, but to paraphrase a great scientist, the door swings both ways. This is the lure of the unknown, and the reason why improv is so interesting. Shows can be transcendental, entertaining, and intriguing.

They can also be boring, mind numbing, and unwatchable.

To paraphrase someone else, we deal in the unknown, friend. This is our business, and it is challenging, unique, and unpredictable by its very nature. We love it for the same reason we hate it.

So how do we deal with shows then? Can we do all the things mentioned above, and achieve success? Sure.

Can we not do any of the things mentioned above, and achieve success? Why not?

Sometimes we just have bad nights, things don't click, a smidgen of anxiety or apprehension slow a show down, and things just go awry. Not anyone's fault; just the name of the game.  When these shows come along (and they will) the only thing you can do is just keep on truckin'. Learn from your mistakes, keep working hard, and don't get too down.

Relax; after all, it can't get worse than rock bottom, right?

To Err is Improv Part 2

So how do mistakes ruin a scene? I like to think of it this way: imagine your scene is a ship at sea, thousands of miles from home, no land in sight, driving into the great blue unknown. Now, any mistake made on this ship could potentially doom it: steering, navigation, morale, food, disease and any number of other things that could potentially go wrong. Now with your scene, you have an opportunity after each mistake to treat it as a gift instead; to make it an offer instead of an error. Small mistakes are easier to correct than others – calling a character “Tom” instead of “Tim” or “Bob” are relatively minor errors, in the same magnitude as maybe a minor miscalculation in navigation. An error that small can sometimes be ignored altogether; it doesn't really matter what the character's name is, and a small miscalculation might still get you pretty close to your destination, or at least not that far off course. The larger the error gets however, the harder it is to ignore and still keep the ship together, and the more the error needs to be justified and incorporated. Making multiple mistakes back-to-back without opportunities to justify them drive the ship to the briny deep much quicker (rotten food + off course + dangerous storm + disease = Davy Jones' Locker; rotten food – rationing + off course – course correction + dangerous storm – more beer + disease – medicine = OK).

“You learn more losing races than winning them.” - Frankie Avalon, Fireball 500

It's a little too easy to get bogged down in the details of failure – this is exemplified by what is called hindsight bias. Essentially, when you know the outcome of something, the events that lead up to that conclusion seem inevitable, and significantly changes how we perceive and remember those events. In retellings, irrelevant or inconsistent data is discarded for those data points which bolster the ultimate finding. But before we get to that final destination, the finality is obfuscated and buried in conflicting information – this makes sense, since after all, a good improv scene does not have a predetermined, fixed point prior to the scene, but afterwards all of the information presented make where we got to become the only available option. Which is a sign of a good scene – no conflicting information, or other possibilities, just a singularity of conclusion. The issue becomes that the more familiar we are with something, the less we tend to notice – we assume things as we think they should be, not how they are. The brain doesn't tend to notice a difference between an improv scene and real life, so when we step on stage, we don't tend to notice some things because on a subconcious level, we think we're observing real life, and we have a list of things that we do normally in real life. Except, these are imaginary situations we are presented with, and we need to pay a little more heed to pick up some of the abnormal minutiae. The noticing is what is important, usually as part of an active experience, not a passive one.