Talking Improv

Do It For You

If you’ve done longform for any amount of time, you’ve had the experience of working with coaches. A typical practice is complex enough when it is just the improvisers, but the added ingredient of a critic mixes many different personalities and philosophies.

Before I go any further (and before you chastise me), I firmly believe that coaches are necessary for a team to progress and challenge itself. A team can only improve when there is someone who can honestly and accurately tell them what can be improved upon.

However, a team is only as good as their coach. What I mean by that is, a team should have a coach that compliments them, assuming you have a choice. If not, that’s a delicate compromising dance.

When you have a coach that at first works well with the team, but then adds wrinkles that can stifle your creativity, it can rub some the wrong way. If that’s the case, then you get in your head and can’t focus. Then you have a bad run of practices, which leads to criticism (which you may or may not be able to handle). You’ve got a bad cycle of improv going now.

Then you want to do a good job, but for your coach, not for you. Not for your team. You focus so much on wanting to do a good job, that you forget the basics and stay completely in your head. Not a good spot to be in.

The point I’m getting at is that you should do it for you. Your want to have a good show should be for the sake of just wanting to do a good show, and not for someone who will ultimately find some criticism in it anyway.

Your coach is not your master. You don’t get an allowance from them and you don’t have to ask them to go to the bathroom. Be successful for your own precious ego, not someone else’s.

Happy improving!

—Chuck