Why you owe it to yourself (and your cast) to be kind of a hard-ass

I have been getting caught in leadership positions for the majority of my adult life. I've learned a lot of things about myself through the groups I've been put in charge of. While I believe in kindness as a general basis for all human interactions, I've learned that leaders sometimes have to say and do the difficult and often hurtful things.

In improv it is really very difficult for me to give a note to a teammate. However I am finding myself in a leadership position far more often in improv scenarios lately and I need to grow up and move forward from my position of "I'm improv dumb and I don't know anything that isn't obvious." 

I was looked to as the most experienced performer and therefore the director of a recent improv show and I was too afraid to give notes because I didn't want to mar the positive and fun  atmosphere of the rehearsals. I had several very specific things that I noticed that I never brought up because I hoped we could work them out without communicating about them. I thought that maybe the other folks in the group could figure out the things that weren't working for themselves. I was super wrong and our show didn't magically fix itself.

They needed my help and I was co-signing all the bad habits I was witnessing by not calling them out. Every time someone started a scene with negativity and I didn't make them re-start, I messed up. Every time the words "I have a plan" showed up and I didn't yell "No you don't! You have a feeling!" I goofed. Every walk-on that was unnecessary that I didn't immediately send into exile was a gaffe by yours truly.

Improv should be fun and happy, but rehearsals are also a thing we do to help ourselves improve. Notes are something that help us have fun quicker and more effectively. Your notes shouldn't be mean or personal, but they do need to be direct and as immediate as possible. If something doesn't work, tell that performer and offer an idea of how to make it work. Be honest about the different skill levels in your group, even if that hurts someone's feelings. Help the people who aren't quite there yet if they're hard workers, and cut them loose if they aren't. Don't let being nice drag your shows down and take away from the fun that you could be having.

Top Five Things for Giving Notes

Having to give notes in improv is a necessary evil. We've got to look at our performances with a critical eye if we want to improve at we're doing and make it easier for us to have fun while we're playing and for an audience to have fun watching us. Here are some things that I've found to alleviate some of the awkwardness that comes with giving notes in improv:

1. Ask the performers how they felt about the scene. Did they enjoy anything specifically? Did they feel themselves slip up or succeed? If they noticed a success you can tell them what was great about it and try to encourage any good tactics they've come up with. If they struggled with something, point out what made it difficult and how to steer out of that skid.
2. If you are a performer as well, give yourself the harshest notes. Be the first to admit when you make a mistake, diagnose how you can fix it. Before you give anybody else a negative note, really search your work to see if you can apply it to yourself first.
3. Acknowledge that there isn't one specific way to do things. Rules in improv only represent the simplest path to success, not the only path to success. I know improvisers who break every single rule and create wonderful, hilarious scenes without alienating their partners. If someone breaks a fundamental principle of improv but it still works somehow, discuss what made it work.
4. Give mostly positive notes. Nothing hurts people's creativity more than you telling them that they're bad at playing make-believe. If you see a scene that has 20 bad ideas and 1 good one, rave about that good idea and forget all the bad ones. Yes! You were a genius to come up with that singular moment, let's do more of that awesome stuff! A positive atmosphere begets joyful work.
5. Pay attention and react enthusiastically. Watch everything that happens, watch all the little things, get invested in the scenes and the characters. If something's funny, laugh. If something's sweet give'em an "awwwww." If they make a horrible pun, boo loudly. Don't spend too much time writing down your notes, if the note is that important you will be able to remember it after the scene. If you care about their work, the improvisers will care about their work too.

Those are the TOP FIVE THINGS (pew pew pew) to get you started giving notes. I stray from these occasionally, but I don't think straying has ever made my notes more insightful or better received. If anybody has any suggestions that could help with giving notes, I'd love to read them.

Time Management

For the handful of readers who may not know, this weekend I am in Vegas with my dad, stepmom, and my sister. I'm telling you this so it is more acceptable for me to admit to drunken phone-blogging at noon PST.

I am not the most organized person in the world, but I really strive to be better than I am. I struggle with sending reminder e-mails and writing out lesson plans, but timing is something I pride myself on. 

If it's a show or a class or even a mildly important meeting that I'm running, I can figure it out down to the minute. I can figure whether people are going to run late, what things to cut to account for the late-comers, and how to drop the hammer and end whatever I'm doing at precisely the moment we're aiming for. I don't know for sure where this skill came from aside from valuing my own time. I wear a watch and check it nigh constantly. As a server, I am quick to clock out before my hourly tips drop below $10/hr. As an improviser or student or actor, I get angry when rehearsal or class runs over the time alotted.

I think the biggest mistake people make when estimating how long something will take is that they are far too optimistic about the timing of things. I have generally noticed that when inexperienced directors run a short form improv show, it runs short. Hell, anybody who is inexperienced will typically run short in any kind of presentation. If they're well studied and have a lot of information to get across, then they have a chance of running too long, but that is a much easier thing to plan contingencies for.

My tips on timing boil down to being honest with yourself about how long an activity takes and never sharing that with your audience. They don't need to know that you expect a game to last four minutes, they are just there to see you and be mystified by your bizarre ability to bend the seconds to your will. Yes, they want to be entertained, but entertainment is primarily an enjoyable way to kill time between obligations. They want to feel like their 90 minutes watching you is only 30 minutes and they want to feel like they got a great return on the investment of their time. As an audience member I want to make my memories count and nothing makes that tougher than a poorly timed and organized show. 

No short form game should last more than four minutes and no long form should run longer than thirty. No lesson in an improv or theatre class needs to consist of over five minutes of you speaking in a row. If any of the above run hot and everybody wants more, give them more and cut from the back end of your show or class. Always plan to have two or three things run short so you can finish big and make people want to come back next time. Cut things mercilessly if you see them die with no chance of resurrection. Never over run a show by more than five minutes and never over run a rehearsal or a class without permission from the performers or students. If you think you may go over time or under it, you are right. Trust your experience and instincts to guide your sweeps and be as bold and brash as you need to be.

And last but not least, I personally prefer a bad show that ends exactly on time as opposed to a good show that ends 30 minutes early or 30 minutes late. I can people watch for a random amount of time and imagine a good show for free, if you're charging me to watch the least you can do is time your show properly.