Last night, one of my students asked a question: “how do I avoid going out too often?”
I’ve heard variations on this question before. And I get it. People are afraid of spending too much time on stage for fear of looking like a stage hog. Nobody wants to play with or be the guy who keeps popping off the back line and dominating the stage to the detriment of the show, taking away opportunities from others to play.
The stock response goes something like, “Share the stage. If you’re one of six people in a show, you should take up about one sixth of the stage time”. Theoretically? Sure.
But practically? Teaching people to think like this creates timid players. We’ve all heard someone say “I was going to do X, but…” and then they’ll mention that they were in the previous scene, they had done tags in three scenes in a row, whatever. This has created a generation of improvisers that are, frankly, just a bit too polite. Consequently, we end up with a lot of dead air in shows where people avoid starting scenes, initiatng scenes, or editing. No one wants to step on toes. Everyone’s waiting for permission to shine.
Find your appetite
My new response when people ask me this question is this: be hungry. When you started doing improv, what was your mental picture of what it would be like? Did you imagine yourself on stage, playing fun characters in hyper-imaginative scenarios, or did you imagine yourself standing on the sidelines, weak-kneed, trying to figure out what to do next?
Fight for stage time. Encourage others to do the same. Pop off the line and “attack the stage”. If you’re in a show and you notice that one person is initiating all the scenes, make it your job to get out before them. Is someone else editing all of the scenes? You edit next time. Take ownership of your show and fight for every bit of stage time you can.
“But Josh,” you cry from the back wall, scared to step out for fear of hurting someone’s feelings, “isn’t that selfish?”
Yes. Yes it is. And why shouldn’t you be selfish? If you’re lucky, you might get 20-25 minutes a week to make an impression on audiences. Why not fight for as much of that stage time as you can? One great thing about improv is that it’s fluid. If someone edits your scene too early, or tags out a character you really liked playing? Hey, there’s nothing stopping you from coming back to that character or scene later. No one’s ever really gone.
To be clear, there’s a difference between this philosophy and steamrolling. I’m not encouraging bad scene work or for you to act like a jerk. Obviously, you should still be listening like a hawk, connecting with your scene partner, honoring the hyperreality of the imagined space–all the good stuff. But frankly, I would rather the same person step off the line and initiate a strong scene every time, if the alternative is to have even a beat’s worth of dead air on stage where everyone is staring at the ground praying for an idea.
A hungry improviser will always find a way to eat.
On a team where everybody is trying to hog the stage, you won’t have to worry about whether you’ve evenly divvied up the stage time. You’ll each have fought for the space you deserve, and audiences will thank you for not wasting their time.
