My good friend Ben Noble has a blog about improv, I’m Making All This Up. I was honored to be his first interview/improviser profile.
One of the questions he asked me; “What is the best improv advice or note you have ever received?” prompted me to include this nugget, “Don’t be polite.” He then misquoted this as “Never be polite on stage,” in a follow up post; Leveling Up.
This, in turn, (possibly) prompted one of the instructors at our Improv theatre/training center to post his thoughts in the St.Louis Improv Facebook group. His advice; “Do be polite.” This spurred a very well thought out debate among my fellow improvisers, which is awesome for our still young and growing scene.
I couldn’t weigh in on that debate at the time, but I wanted to clarify my thoughts right here.
I am a polite person. I will gladly hold the door open for anyone following me in or out of a building/room. On the road I will wait for people joining traffic, allow pedestrians to cross (isn’t that the law?) sometimes to the frustration of the other drivers behind me. If I was in a grocery store I would let someone with a smaller order go ahead of me. It’s my nature.
When I started doing Improv I was glad to know that this, already inherent, character trait would serve me well. Good improv is built on supporting your scene partner. Sometimes you have an idea for a scene and someone says something which goes against that. You know what? For a good scene, you drop your initial thought and go with theirs.
However, there was one area where this politeness was hampering my chance to get stage time (which is the best way to improve your skills.) In certain situations I would wait on the side of the stage with a killer idea, hesitant to step on any toes by coming out with my initiation.
The note to not be polite broke through this. Suddenly I felt empowered to make my moves.
Now, here’s the but; We’re not really talking about politeness. It made sense to me at the time, and still does in my own little brain world, but what we’re really saying is be bold. You should not use the idea of not being polite to always steamroll the less confident members of your team. If you always find yourself being the one to go out, bring out that hesitant player with you. Do that enough and you won’t have any under-confident players left. That’s when you’ll have to start fighting for your stage time, and that’s when the shows start getting great.