The Payoff for Bad Habits
Bad habits creep up on you, and you only notice when it’s too late — when the problems blow up. Sometimes, though, you’re lucky enough to notice early, or a friend calls you out.
Healthy confidence vs undue arrogance
I regularly practice with two Improv teams, the Modern Schemers and the Latecomers. The Modern Schemers have a long history and strong pedigree, having some of the most experienced and first improvisers in the scene. Having travelled to many festivals and playing many, many, many shows, it makes sense that the team has a healthy confidence.
But that sometimes leads to an arrogance that we’re not aware of. Today, the topic came up because we were debating whether to perform a show format that was similar to a guest team from abroad. I thought the fear was that the guest team would perform the format better — some of the team were afraid that we would show up the guest team by being too good.
There’s a bit of arrogance both ways, and that could be dangerous. First off, there is no competition anyway; they are different shows and the general public does not know the difference. But iron sharpens iron, and we can learn from better teams what works and from worse teams what doesn’t work.
In a way, having been around for a long time adds to a certain level of confidence, in our abilities and experience. That’s healthy and positive, so long as it doesn’t lead to faulty thinking, like: ‘we will be so good that the other team will look bad and feel bad by comparison.’ Even if this were possible, it’s best if the comparison is not made by you.
Another string to the bow, or a crutch?
Other bad habits offer nasty payoffs too. Relying too strongly on a certain style of comedy, or needing the validation of loud, laughing audience can lead to being surprised and underwhelming when both are unavailable.
For my part, my love of playing a thousand different secondary characters led to them being slightly flat, lacking any real desires or dimension, and tending to think of myself as a narrative plot device rather than as real, fleshed-out characters. That sometimes advances the plot, but leaves me largely vestigial to the scene.
I don’t know if there is a perfect solution that will work for these problems. What I am going to do, now that I have Awareness of these problems, is to work on being Conscious and spotting if they arise again, and to try to develop different habits to counteract them.
