Square Peg

"To be successful, you have to do what everybody else likes" - yet another person whose name I forgot

From the very beginning, having any sort of improv success is an uphill battle. There is a general reticence from audiences toward a completely new art form. Some posit that it’s because the general public doesn’t have a good reference point for open-ended longform improv. To the layperson, their basic exposure to improv comes from Whose Line, Christopher Guest, Dropout.tv, and a handful of NBC sitcoms. They get the sense that improv is “““good””” in certain applications but maybe they don’t fully trust it.

And there is a lot of terrible, unvetted improv out there. I’ve been a part of that, I’m afraid. And I will continue to be a major proponent of, anything that is not actively offensive to an audience deserves a chance to develop onstage. But so many people, devoid of reference, will go to see their nephew’s level 1 student show, or a college troupe doing barprov, and see something that tops out at okay. And then they come away thinking, “well that must be what improv is,” and easily write off an entire art form in one night.

Imagine going to see some shitty pop punk band for $5 in the basement of a pizza place, screams reverberating through the night, smell of teen boy sweat and week-old cheese heavy in your nostrils, taking repeated kicks to the face, and deciding that all live music is bad actually. Of course that is not the case! There are so many other live shows you can compare that show to, with comfy seats even! This is the first hurdle we must cross over as improvisers.

Earlier I wrote that any one of us could be the Christopher Nolan of improv, advancing the art form in new unforeseen ways, but so many of us right now are more akin to that first caveman who smeared feces on the rock wall in the vague shape of a sabertooth tiger. Right now we don’t know what we’re capable of, and we also don’t know what audiences will respond to. We can only hope to tap into the zeitgeist every once in a blue moon as we experiment in front of adventurous audiences. It’s like we’re shooting at a moving target while also trying to invent a new type of gun.

And I’m finding that a lot of success is tied to doing what’s worked in the past! I don’t know if this is the case everywhere. I don’t know if they have this same problem at UCB or the Magnet or iO. But I feel like I could build every theater’s weekly schedule off the top of my head. And I completely understand because that’s how theaters are run. You have to put up shows that sell well, because the content of the show is not yet divorced from the amount of money the tickets will bring in. This is part of why I don’t run a theater right now: because I haven’t figured out how to divorce the two. (Of course there’s other minor issues like, I don’t know how, etc.)

Here comes my new catchphrase that you know and love: I don’t know where I’m going with all this. But I guess if there’s anything I want you to take away, it’s that you’re not unsuccessful because you’re not good at doing cool weird stuff. You’re unsuccessful because you’re doing cool weird stuff, period. You may also be bad at it, but that only requires focused practice over time. You have to stick with it until you’re undeniably good, and it is what audiences want to see, and now you’re the only game in town.

The imposter syndrome is strong and heavy and constant. I still maintain that I am the only solo soundtrack show currently touring, two separate things with very successful track records, and I’ve done between ten and a hundred festivals by now, and many theaters everywhere are still like “we don’t want this.” I have a handful of workshops I’d like to run, and many theaters everywhere are like “we don’t think anyone would take this.” I’m writing an improv blog right now, and many people whose opinions I respect are like “I don’t want to read this.” And maybe they’re right but maybe I’m just ahead of the curve.

And maybe you’re ahead of the curve too.