Inspired by Dessa's How To Stage Dive
No one has a script. This is true for the stage and in life.
Accept that you will never bat a thousand. That’s sort of the point.
Make the most out of every show, even the ones with no one in the audience because your skill set is shaped by the historic totality of your effort.
All that matters is the present moment on that stage. When it's working, it will fill you with so much joy and laughter that you'll think you've achieved nirvana. When it's not working, shrug it off. You are more than what you pretend to be.
You do not have to have the best idea. Just the next idea.
If you have the next idea and your teammate is crushing, let them crush for an extra second. No one will know you did this, but you will have given your teammate the gift of succeeding while being supported. If everyone did this, teams would have enough confidence to pulverize audiences into cosmic dust.
Step out with the kid that no one wants to step out with. It will make you better, but more than that, it reads as kind and selfless. Because it is.
“Yes, and” doesn’t mean saying “no” to yourself. Your first “yes and” should always be to what you need. “Yes I am tired, and I will stay home and rest” is still a “yes, and.” There will always be another opportunity to build something from nothing.
If you can, be there for the whole show. If you can't, be there for the set before you and the set after you. You can debrief at practice and the host always sees who comes and goes. Good teammates support from the bench.
If the only shows that you're interested in are the big shows, then those will be the only ones you do and there are not that many big shows to go around.
Small shows on the other hand, and practices, and drinks after your friends' shows, those are vast and plentiful and that is where the laughs hit the hardest, and the memories burrow the deepest.
It's very easy to see the value in someone who has been anointed by the system. It's also very easy to see the value in someone who hasn't. Improv is about a person's experience informing a split-second decision. And we all have experience. Humanness is value.
Improv is not an outlet for belittling, demeaning, harassing, or otherness. Life has enough of that. That's what makes improv beautiful. It's life with intention and consideration and consideration for others.
If you are not having fun not being on a theater's house team, you will not have fun on a theater's house team.
Theaters forget about you during economic downturns, pandemics, and change of ownerships. Your classmates, teammates, and friends don’t. Remember who remembers you.
There is no end to the gatekeeping. External validation is mall parking. It’s good for two hours and then you have to pay up again. Climb all the socials, chase all the clouts, and swoon all the gatekeepers and you will find yourself back at the beginning. Validation is not in front of you. It is in you.
When you step off stage take it easy on yourself. Take it easy on others. There’s a messy authenticity to everything we do. As Rick Rubin says “failure is the information you need to get where you are going.”
Time can only be spent and attention can only be paid. A good Return on Investment is to give freely.
You can always be a better listener.
Go to the park. Read a book. Call a friend. Improv needs water and light to grow. Just like you.
Read the Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Galwey. If you don't have time, sample this:
We are seeds of trees, not buildings that need another floor. Your entire potential is already within you. Don’t compare yourself to other trees or be upset at your growth not being what you want. Simply use the rain and sunshine that comes your way and cooperate with the seed’s impulse to develop and manifest what it already uniquely is.
Art is subjective. Therefore there is no right or wrong. It's not fair. It doesn't make sense. Don't use an imperfect art form to evaluate your ability. You will always find ways to take points off.
If playing at the top of your intelligence feels intimidating, try playing at the top of your imagination. It tends to inspire more anyways.
Skip a show or practice and read Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way Of Being. Or pocket this for those low moments.
All art is a work in progress. It's helpful to see the piece we’re working on as an experiment. One in which we can't predict the outcome. Whatever the result, we will receive useful information that will benefit the next experiment.
If you start from the position that there is no right or wrong, no good or bad, and creativity is just free play with no rules, it's easier to submerge yourself joyfully in the process of making things.
We're not playing to win, we're playing to play. And ultimately, playing is fun. Perfectionism gets in the way of fun. A more skillful goal might be to find comfort in the process. To make and put out successive works with ease.
Oscar Wilde said that some things are too important to taken seriously. Art is one of those things. Setting the bar low, especially to get started, frees you to play, explore, and without attachment to results.
This is not just a path to more supportive thoughts. Active play and experimentation until we're happily surprised is how the best work reveals itself.
Improv is the mountain top of luxuries. It takes time and energy and in some cases costs more than $500 to sit in a room and create nothing tangible. It is a return to youthful imagination. You could enroll in a community college program and for the same amount of money and time, build a coffee table or sew a dress. If you are on stage living in a reality built from scratch, take a moment to look around. Few people are afforded such views.
Don't kick someone off your team because you don't like the way they play. Simply part ways. Every team has a shelf life that is much shorter than the shelf life of rejection. Plus people are always looking to make new teams.
If you feel rejection, accept yourself and turn around and make something. Rejection is a biological response designed to feel bad so that we persist to stay with the pack. It has no place in improv.
If you don't make a team, you may feel like dying, but you won't. Make something just for you. It will make you feel better. It's an act of self-acceptance. Self-love is all powerful and requires no approval, or membership or fancy package. It and the sun are the only things in our solar system that create more energy than they use. That's why so many companies and corporations spend billions trying to hobble self-worth through branding, social media and competition. Self-acceptance requires nothing and is the source of everything. Love yourself and love your scene partner. Both of you have committed to giving it your all for nothing.
Lastly, remember, you are making this up as you go. Just like everyone else. Don’t let someone else’s improvisation convince you that there is a plan. There is not. This goes for auditions, interviews, casting, producing, hangs, parties and play. Some choices will work. Others won’t. But it’s all information. Learning comes not just from the choices we make that work, but also, magically, from the choices we make that don’t. Choices lead to discovery. It is impossible to make a choice and not come away with an experience that will shape what you do next. And that will matter. Later. Right now, the only thing that matters is right now. What you choose to say or do, regardless of it work, is still the most valuable contribution you can make because no one on earth can do what you can do. There is no such thing as good or bad, right or wrong, planned or improvised, when it comes to art. It’s all just fabricated from everything you are. It’s humanness. Being present is succeeding.
I hope this helps. And if this doesn’t resonate with you, that’s OK too. I made most of it up.