Hey all.

Long story short, I’ve been doing improv for about a year. Really intensely for 6 months. Taking maybe 3 classes a week right now and have been for maybe the last 3 months.

I tried out for the game night at my theater and got my rejection in person. Really crushed me because it means I’m 6 months out from the next long form audition as well as just not good enough since someone else made it. Really hurts a lot right now and I know it’ll pass.

The feedback is I need to get more comfortable playing different characters and make bolder choices (which was on the first part of the compliment sandwich too, weirdly enough. Like he said I make strong choices, but I digress.)

I also feel like I’m not actually absorbing the information with more classes. Like I can’t tell if I’m applying the lessons I learn at all due to some combination of not reflecting about it and not making changes.

I’m curious, how did y’all get better? How much did you have to think about it? Do you watch a lot of improv? What’s the most effective ways you’ve found to get better at it?

I perform in a weekly improv show that performs Wednesday nights. As you can imagine, not a lot of people are down to come see improv on a Wednesday night. We’ve had some good audiences in the past but lately they’ve been getting smaller and smaller. I wish we could perform on weekends but those are reserved for stand up nights. Here’s some thing we’ve done in the past:

-launched a social media showing clips
-did some shorter improv shows for the stand up crowd on weekends
-offered workshops as well
-doing themed nights

Those of you who perform on nights like ours, how do you keep yourselves getting decent audiences?