How bombing made me a better improviser
We recently held a little contest to win a free spot in my upcoming workshop. We asked improvisers to tell us about a time that they had bombed, and what they learned from it.
Like every improviser, I've had more than my share of shows where I have bombed.
I have not only bombed on stage, but in all aspects of my life. In my improv, in auditions, in my teaching, in interviewing people for the podcast, in actual paying gigs. Bombing is never pleasant. But unfortunately, if we try to avoid it, it only makes things worse. No one wants to bomb, but to get good at anything you need to have "bombed" many times over. The arts suck that way. Some people will learn from it. Others will use it as an excuse to quit. It's up to you. The thing I've learned about bombing is that it never goes away. You just start to experience it differently. The longer you try at something, the higher the level of your bombing.
We got so many great submissions for this contest. The stories of bombing you shared with us were all too relatable! But Daniel Anderson's (ultimately positive) experience with bombing took the cake, and also won the contest.
"The Flower Shop Bangers were having their third show together. We really felt we had good chemistry and so we were filming this submission. The show had mixed reviews among our cast. I felt the show was awkward, another person really enjoyed it, and I don't remember the third guy's opinion. Well, we posted the video on YouTube and shared it on Facebook.
“I then woke up one morning to find our video was getting comments... lots of comments. I was trying to figure out how this happened, and I noticed that one of them said, ‘You always comment on /r/cringe videos.’ At that moment, I knew that our video had been posted to the cringe section on reddit.
“I shared it with my team. We agreed that it was pretty cowardly for someone to anonymously post this on the Internet, and it is not helpful when trying to foster a supportive community. We made a pact to take this as constructive criticism. Since this experience of ‘free coaching,’ we have been committing ourselves to making more relationship-based choices. Two of us are still in Chicago today and still perform as the Flower Shop Bangers on a regular basis."
Daniel turned a "bombed" performance into a real learning experience, and handled the criticism of strangers with grace. Thanks to Daniel for sharing your experience and congrats on winning the workshop contest. And thanks to everyone brave enough to submit their stories. I hope we all keep bombing our way up the ladder.