benzado

Does practice make perfect?

benjaminapple:

If you take your shows seriously, they can function as practices, right? I don’t mean having a nerve-wracking, “gotta do it right” mindset. But if everyone is bringing their own personal stakes to the show, regardless of whether the venue is free and we’re in front of mostly our friends, they’re going to push themselves to perform at the top of their games.

If you perform once a week, and get notes after every show, then I’d buy the argument that you don’t need an additional practice if you are in maintenance mode. If you’d just doing the same show week to week and not learning anything new, that is a reasonable way to operate.

If you want your group to try something new, you must practice. If you have any respect for your audience, you won’t charge them money to watch you try to figure out how to do an Eventé for the first time. Even if everybody in your group knows the form, until you’ve performed it together at least once, you don’t know how to perform it together at all.

Also though, we need to do a better job of reaching outside of the improv community to grow our audiences for these independent shows. Performing for other improvisers is fun, but it starts to feel like we’re a bunch of kids putting on plays in our parents’ living room. Makes it both harder and more important to feel those personal stakes.

Agreed. I printed 500 cards to promote Fat Penguin’s USM show. I’m honestly not 100% sure what I should be doing with them.