3. The Flexible Nature of Improv Has It’s Downsides
One of the great things about the prospect of creating an improv show is that on the surface it seems a much more flexible and cost effective proposition to produce when comapred to other forms of theatre.
You don’t need to build sets, or hire costumes. Nor do you have to learn lines, or have set roles. This last point gives you huge amounts of flexibility in terms of organising rehearsals. If you were rehearsing Macbeth and the performer playing the big Mac didn’t show up it would cripple the rehearsal. Sure someone could read in, but realistically if you’re rehearsing a scripted play and a major character is missing, it will mean a lot of time is lost both in the rehearsal they’ve missed, and in the next rehearsal where you’re having to revisit the same scenes just to catch the performer up. Well good news – improv doesn’t have that problem!
The bad news is that without any performer having a specific role, and that no one has a “main role” there won’t be a point where anyone will necessarily feel greater responsibility to make sure they turn up to rehearsals. Many improv directors will know the feeling of it being the day of a rehearsal and hours or minutes before you begin you start to get messages that ‘actually I can’t make it today’. And of course life does sometimes get in the way, and that’s perfectly ok, but I have felt that it feels a bit easier for performers to make the improv rehearsal or show a lesser priority to stay committed to.
It’s completely understandable that if an actor gets an offer for a play, film or a commercial or an audition for any of these that they would see them as a bigger opportunity then most improv shows. Improv shows don’t give you named credited characters for your CV, casting directors don’t frequently check out improv shows to cast their next project and improv shows don’t often have a lot of money attached to them (more on this later), so its completely understandable that a performer would look at the improv show as the thing which is so flexible that can go ahead without them.
A couple of things to keep in mind is that rehearsal rooms and travel can cost, and I can speak form the experience of having organised a rehearsal which hit the unfortunate perfect storm where on one day everyone who was meant to attend contacted me on the day to say they couldn’t. This was disheartening, but I knew it was just unfortunate, and I reminded myself that if I had said that everyone had to guarantee that could make every rehearsal that for many of that particular cast they wouldn’t have been able to commit. So this was just an unfortunate case of the greater the flexibility the harder the fall.
I would never hold it against a performer if they needed to take another opportunity, or if life got in the way and they needed to miss a rehearsal. If it happened over and over with the same performer I may decide that I need to recruit another performer to cover my bases, and would rather have one too many performers lined up for a show then one too few.
But it can be tricky for the director, or other performers when this happens. Some people will be frustrated if people miss a show, and I guess the way to negotiate this best is to make it clear what is agreeable in your company in regards to flexability. The advice I’d always give is that if you say you’ll be there, do try to keep to your word, but also support others if a genuine reason comes up that they need to miss something.
