Tip of the Week

Steven "Wiley" Werber

Eric "Chung" Ellis

Each week Steve & Eric bring you the forbidden knowledge from beyond the frindge of the improvational tide.   Previous            Next

You have been sitting in that seat of yours for 15 minutes. You try to get inside early, so you get a good one. The last five minutes you spent laughing you ass off over a story from the mouth of Ben Mayer about a day in the life of a lawyer. It's time for the rules, and you know them by heart. Rule number one: Failure is okay. You clap and cheer. But do you listen?
There's a really good reason why this rule starts off every show. First, we want to make everyone in the audience feel as comfortable as possible, so they can get on stage. We won't judge you, the rule says. You can do no wrong in our eyes by trying.

But there's a second level of interpretation to the rule as well. When you do get the balls to try one of these improv games, you absolutely can not fear failure. If you fear failure, then you have started sown the path of failure, because you're thinking about how others will react and accept you, and not about what you are doing. This simple mistake leads to bad choices.
There are games where you are asked to be yourself on stage. You talk to Ben about your day, or you play a mock game show, etc. Most of the time, however, you are a character. You are someone else, someone fantastic, odd, or peculiar in some way, shape, or form. You are not just the man on the street; you stand out from the crowd. Things happen to your character, bold exciting things that would scare the pants off of us in real life.

On stage, you have to be 100% willing to fail. You have to be willing to act like a complete dweeb, do whatever it takes to make your character a character. I have seen tons of people get on stage, and act as if they were too cool to be there. They say bad words, like "no" and "you do it instead", and act as if they are in high school with all of their peers watching and Dad is on stage with them, embarrassing them to death. This is FNI, not junior prom.

If your partner wants you to do something really silly, commit to it. Do whatever it is with no reservations about personal image, and never ask yourself if you would be this silly in real life. No one wants to see real life. Only the highlights! So, be that dancing monkey as much as you can be. Crawl on your belly like a reptile. Speak in an outlandish accent. Sing your guts out, and loudly! Open your mouth and start talking, even though you don't know what to say. React as if you were part of the scene, not someone from the audience who wishes they were still sitting down!

If you fail, then fail with gusto. Learn from it. Sit your but down afterwards, and ask yourself, "what did I do wrong?" You don't have to be an expert on improv to figure it out. Everyone you see who you think has the slightest clue at FNI has failed more often than Oprah goes on a diet. Failure teaches us. What have you ever done exactly right the first time? Anyone learn how to play a musical instrument the very first time they picked it up? Or how to play a sport like a pro the first time out the box? The road to success at FNI is long and hard, and failure is how you pay your toll.
So when Ben tells you that failure is okay this week, tell yourself its okay to believe him.