The best improv tenant I learned was failure isn’t bad.  It’s actually good.  It’s what propels us to learn and grow.  Failure is a concept I was never really comfortable with.  Being a vocalist my entire life perfection was strive worthy.  But that attempt at perfection is what kept me from moving forward.  Every time on stage was the possibility of failure. Because this thought raged in my head I failed almost every time.  I would forget the lyrics or I’d be off key.  And it’s not because I wasn’t good.  I was.  It’s because if you continually believe that you have to be perfect, that one moment of being “off” is unacceptable, then failure is inevitable.  Improv teaches us that there is no failure but an opportunity for something new, to be propelled into a different scene, moment, song… It’s an idea that I’m still struggling with today and will always struggle with.  But it’s improv that has allowed me to move forward by treating failure as an opportunity.

So, yes, I spend my time pretending to be someone else.  I spend my time trying to find the game in every scene.  I spend my time thrusting myself out on stage even when I have nothing.  But I also spend my time more free, more happy then I’d ever been in the past.  Improv works.

“I got arrested,” the broad shouldered young man says to an older woman he met fifteen minutes ago. Then he smiles, spreads his arms up in to the air and proclaims, “I failed!”

The older woman in the cardigan applauds him, takes a beat and says “Me too!” These strangers, with seemingly little in common except this confession, laugh together. They are twenty minutes in to their first Free Intro to Improv Class at Merlin Works.

I’ve done this activity with thousands of people from all walks of life. It sounds downright awful: go up to a stranger, admit a personal or professional failure, smile, bow, and let them applaud you. Then return the favor. But it’s surprisingly delightful. It changes the energy in the room and bonds people who initially feel defensive and self conscious when the class begins.

Although I’ve been doing this exercise for years, it wasn’t until I read To Sell Is Humanby Daniel Pink, this year’s bestselling (and also really good) business book, that I got some new insight in to why this exercise is so powerful. Pink outlines the three qualities that make a person great at sales in today’s market. He calls them “the new ABC’s of moving others”: Attunement, Buoyancy, and Clarity. Each of these qualities is something I’ve been teaching in my improv classes, whether I knew it or not. And Pink actually dedicates and entire chapter of his book to improv training, so the guy’s got to be on to something, right?

Buoyancy is the ability to bounce back. It’s the positivity. The future looking. The resiliency. And it’s something that’s been all over my improv curriculum in different ways, but I didn’t have a cohesive name for it until now. I realized that was what this very first failure bow activity was all about: admitting mistakes, celebrating them, and moving on. That’s how we improvisers start practicing buoyancy. It’s why one of the first group games we play in class are intended to make us mess up, acknowledge it, and get back in the game. It’s what makes long-time salesmen able to get out of bed in the morning and keep plugging away, knowing they will have many unsuccessful sales calls that day and every day. They have a specific way they talk to themselves about these routine failures.

• Personal: This is my fault.
• Permanent: I always do this.
• Pervasive: Everything’s ruined.

Sound familiar? This is such an accurate description of where many of our heads spin when we make a mistake. And it paralyzes us. We can’t move forward. We can’t let it go. We are stuck in a very sucky place.

People who are resilient have a different way of self talk. Buoyant people see mistakes as:

• Impersonal: There’s some external reasons for why this happened.
• Temporary: I’ve had successes before and I will again.
• Limited: This is an isolated incident.

This helps people shake it off and get back in the game. It gets to the heart of the spirit of play I try to teach– take the game seriously and yourself not, take a failure bow and get back in to play, that mistakes are gifts to be honored. In improv class and applied improv corporate training, we get to practice this stuff in a low pressure setting, hoping to re-wire some of our routine responses.

I’m excited to incorporate this idea of buoyancy more explicitly in to the classes because the benefits are clearly huge. In Seligman’s Research, Buoyancy was the number one predictor of sales success. It allowed people to get back in there and try again with a positive attitude, giving them the numbers they need to achieve the success they desire.

RSVP Now
Hi! It’s time for our monthly Merlin Works Improv Mixer and you’re invited to play, mix and mingle!

For those of you who don’t know or need a refresher, the Merlin Works Improv Mixer is a low-pressure jam where you can meet, mingle, practice and play with talented improvisers from all over town. The Mixer is a great place for beginners to rehearse and perform and for experienced improvisers to promote their coaching skills. With our new home at the AT&T Education Room at The Long Center, it’s also a great chance to share the joy of improv with the Greater Austin community. And, as always, it’s FREE!

And even more, we have themed mixers to tie-in with the exciting programming at The Long Center! In conjunction with Whose Live Anyway? playing May 17th at the Long Center this month’s theme is: Short Form Games!

So get ready to make up entirely new scenes and play fun short form games!

RSVP now and come along to The Long Center on May 4th to experience the get to play with other Austin improvisers and fine tune the craft you’ve got going on. Anyone can come to play or just come to watch– so come on!

NEW LOCATION: The Long Center for the Performing Arts AT&T Education Room

701 West Riverside Drive (at the corner of S. 1st Street) Parking info

So now that you know all of those what-not-to-dos, today we are going to talk about the things you should do in improv. Feel free to carry these into your day-to-day as well. Your friends, family, co-workers, and universe in general will thank you for it.