What If The Show Is Bombing?
strategies for when the plane is plummeting
Last week I wrote about improvising when you’re feeling unconfident.
But when if you’re feeling fine… and the show is still not working?
Like what do you when you’re in a show and it’s not working? Maybe it’s a very small audience. Maybe the crew on stage is having a bad night. Maybe you’re doing a form you’re not comfortable with. Maybe people don’t trust each other or aren’t feeling confident.
But for whatever reason, the show is tanking. And you’re in the middle of it.
What do you do?
It’s too late for things like “build trust amongst the group” or “do more reps to get faster and better” or “warm up the crowd with some banter.” You’re already in the show. This is time for emergency surgery.
Be just a little sillier. Not too much, or it will be desperate. For me, this means opening my eyes, nodding my head and doing any kind of object work at all. You’re on the stage — do some stage acting, i.e. a bit bigger.
Say yes more. Drop the voice of reason, or criticizing things inside of the reality. We don’t need reasonable duds right now. Be a character who’s on board. Nod. Let your character get fooled, get hopeful. This will help your teammates get bolder.
Commit more emotion. Let your characters get happy, get sad, get frustrated and show it. Make it real, and let it change often.
Avoid talking heads scenes. Make the stage picture dynamic.Move upstage and downstage. Sit down and stand up. Angle out to the crowd.
Start scenes with the unusual thing. This isn’t a time for slow starts. Start a scene and endow yourself with an unusual wish, behavior belief. Propose an obviously bad idea. “This baseball game sucks. Let’s get in there and help.” “I don’t believe in planes. Like I don’t think they exist.”
Be an idiot right away. When I get insecure in a show, I try too hard to be smart. To counteract that, I’ll set myself up as a little bit of a dummy pretty early. “Hey, I know we’re just as this bus stop, but do you think my shoes are too good?”
Endow the other person with a simple gift. “You’re the maitre d’ here, right?” Nothing too complicated, just something so you’re involving them.
But maybe most importantly…
Shake it off the second it’s over. Rough shows happen. I’ve never been good enough myself to prevent them. Sometimes you’re just in a bad show. It’s a story you’ll tell your friends later.
Improv is a roll of the dice and sometimes it just comes up snake eyes.
There is no reason at all why I’m writing this essay today.
Plugs
The World’s Greatest Improv School: The improv school I run with Jim Woods and Sarah Claspell. We’ve got classes online, in LA and even a few in NYC!
How to Be The Greatest Improviser On Earth - My improv book, available at Amazon. Kindle or print (also on my web site for more if you don’t want to buy from Amazon). It’s a hodge-podge of advice I wrote in 2016 about doing improv. If you’re broke and want a free PDF version just email me and I’ll send it over.
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Ultimately, this is all fundamental scenework stuff, but if the ship starts to sink, for some reason, these are the first things we throw overboard.
I do often find that allowing each other to talk and explore a perspective more and get ourselves into trouble, also helps.
I’m not a huge fan of: “Don’t talk about the party: just go to the party”, just to make the scene seem like it’s ‘moving forward’, especially if we don’t really know the significance of the party to the characters. The old ‘say it so you can play it’ - it’s got to be discovered and said first.