In a recent episode, 7 Scene Hacks to Help When You Make a Mistake, we talked about the idea that the path to getting good at improv to rack up ten thousand “failures” instead of trying to avoid these “mistakes”. I provided 7 hacks to help in these scenarios.
And this leads to a very practical question: how do you actually practice something like that? It is one thing to accept a mistake when it happens by accident or use something to “get out of it”, but it is another to intentionally put yourself in a position to fail. To practice it, repeatedly. Yikes.
But this place, making mistakes, is where the real growth happens. You learn about your brain, and you can start to trust your instincts, too. This is the concept of deliberate practice, where we create real challenges for ourselves in a safe environment so we can work on error correction. This is how we build a tolerance for chaos and the confidence that we can handle anything that happens on stage.
To help with this, I have put together a kind of workout plan with exercises designed to do just that. These six exercises simulate the most common and difficult situations we find ourselves in. For example, some exercises are about being thrown into a scene that is designed to be difficult from the very beginning. Others are about forcing you to act before you have time to think, making a bold move first and figuring out how to justify it later. This helps build the muscle for spontaneous decision making and trusting your gut. I also have exercises in there that tackle challenging scene partners (which means some of you get to practice being THAT!).
By identifying the situations that challenge us most and running directly at them in practice, we get our reps in. We learn to see these threats as gifts. The stakes in improv are almost always low, which makes it the perfect laboratory for building this kind of creative resilience.
You can also get these exercises in a new booklet I just wrote. This PDF includes additional modifications and a bunch of examples that are not in the video and podcast episode below. You can get it here, and your support will help me with the out-of-pocket expenses and labour to create these resources!
Available Now!
Exercises to Ruin You. This 13 page guide provides six exercises to help practice challenges in improv scenes. Get reps in worst case scenarios! Modifications for solo improv are included for most exercises, and you’ll receive variations and examples not included in the video..
Listen or Watch
The podcast and the youtube episode contains exercises that might help you intentionally forget to free up space in your brain for good improv. And come ask questions or share your own tips in the Improv Update discord general improv chat channel.
6 Improv Exercises You'll Hate (But They'll Make You a Better Performer) - Your Improv Brain
