Moment Of Truth

When you do improv comedy, it seems to me that it's tough to get too emotionally invested in what you come up with. You come up with it on the spot, so why should you get attached? I know that I don't, and it seems reasonable to suppose that others have the same experience with it. You say to yourself, "I would have done this and this and this better had I time to prepare, had I opportunity to write the thing in advance. I didn't, and mistakes are part of the charm."

When you do someone else's prepared material, it's easy to detach yourself from it. Whatever the outcome, you can hang your hat on the assumption that any failure in it lies in the camp of the writer, not the performer. You say to yourself, "Had I written it, I would have been able to do it better in such and such a way, and the writer really screwed me up. I did my best, but the audience disliked it because the words were no good."

When you do your own prepared material, there is no one to blame but yourself. As It happens, I had something I wrote staged recently. It was a modest comedy sketch in a small show, but it meant the world to me that a theater housed it, that people spoke my words, that an audience of any size paid for it. I didn't act in my own work, but I directed it, so if the piece could be said to have gone awry, there is truly no one to blame but me. Talented people received my words and were told by me how to interpret them.

I happen to think it went all right. It might have gone better, but in every way that is true, I shoulder the responsibility myself. There is no other way to deal with that. Still, it seemed to go well. I would have liked more time to prepare. I would have liked also more ability to focus on it exclusively, but given that I was acting in another man's sketch as well, that was not to be. He may be thinking just what I am, come to think of it, but each of us ought to be content.