The Secret to Having Fewer Bad Shows
Recently, I’ve been thinking about my history of doing bad shows.
After doing improv for more than 30 years, I never stop having them. The good news is the level of my bad shows rises. My bad shows today aren’t nearly as bad as my bad shows from 10 years ago.
The other thing that has happened is the gap between my bad shows and my great shows has been shrinking.
Let me explain.
The first time I did The Harold was back in 1987. I killed it. I crushed it -- even though I had no idea what I was doing.
I remember I was playing a clown going to children's birthday party in a cab. My clown's name was Crib Death. Back then, that was considered edgy and funny. Today, I am not sure. But I was lucky that I was working with a great team of improvisers who did what great improvisers do, and they made me look brilliant.
After that show, I started taking classes at iO-Chicago. I sucked in classes. I sucked in shows. I bounced around from team to team and must have done 64 awful shows until I finally got lucky again when I was put on an established team and did a show with them that was as great as the first one.
Then the next show it was if I was starting all over again.
But here's the progress. Over time, instead of having 64 bad shows between each great show, after a few years it took only me 39 bad shows to get to a great one. The bad part is you have to do those 39 shows to find that out.
And the longer I did shows on a regular basis, that gap kept getting shorter. Today, sometimes I will even do two great shows in a row before the gap.
So if you're searching for the secret to doing fewer bad improv shows it's this: Just keep doing them.
I have accepted that doing bad shows is just part of the process. I don't always like it, but it’s still true that you can learn more from a bad show than a good show. Which keeps me humble, which is a good thing. Maybe not as great as having a great show, but I’ll take it.