Bashing them out: just how many shows is too many?

Thinking about that title, I’m still not sure if it’s something rude. This is about the pros and cons of doing lots of shows.

In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell popularised the ‘10,000 Hour Rule’: that a prerequisite for mastery in any field is 10,000+ hours of purposeful practice. It makes sense. More practice = more skills. Gladwell, a smart fellow, has since dialled back a little on his ‘a-ha! You didn’t think of it this way, but I explain it so simply it must be true’ schtick.

Nonetheless, the cult of relentless hours lives on in ‘High Performance’ bullshit - CEOs waking at 4.30am after 30 mins sleep, to clear their inboxes while on a treadmill chugging Huel and so on. This is completely healthy and doesn’t at all glamorise a toxic side-hustle mentality where it’s not enough to simply have a hobby, you must also monetise it to achieve self-actualisation…. All shade intended to Jake Humphrey, Steven Bartlett and the YouTube life coaches selling financial independence and Better Help (sadly not proud sponsors of this post). 

Anyway, to improv. I once set out to perform a LOT more shows. Specifically, 100 a year. I managed it between 2016 and 2019, until someone smooched a pangolin and the world collapsed. I swallowed the Kool-Aid (Vimto for British readers), mainly from American teachers with multiple theatres in their home cities,  that this was the only way to get better at long-form improv. I’d already been improvising nearly a decade, possibly 7-8,000 hours already, but it wasn’t enough to be like the real improvisers in the USA. I HAD TO DO MORE and BE THE BEST. CHOMP CHOMP, GIVE ME THAT DELICIOUS STAGETIME.

I did get better, and some of that was fun. But it was also pretty relentless and anxiety-inducing. I performed on a House team at a major London theatre (3 shows a month), did their additional headline shows (twice a month when I’d curried enough favour with the in-group), had my own two-prov team The Homunculus (monthly), and beloved DNAYS (peaking at 3-4 shows a month), plus the odd other guest spot on ‘indie’ gigs¹. 

Helpfully in the UK, taking a show to Edinburgh Fringe is 30 gigs in the bag for your 100 show year. If not, you lose August in your schedule and combined with a Christmas break, you’d need roughly 10 shows a month (over 2 a week, every week). 

Writing this down, I now see how absolutely mental that is, added to rehearsal, teaching and coaching improv too. And oh yeah, *checks notes* A FULL-TIME JOB and LIFE. 

I definitely got better at the very specific skills of Harolds, Armandos, and two-person improv shows that mostly don’t collapse under their own self-indulgence (please come to our next show). But with hindsight, after a literal Excessive-Improv-Enabled Breakdown (™), it’s simply too much yucca-yucca goofing to live healthily. You are almost certainly neglecting other parts of your life, even if your loved ones are too kind to tell you might be TOO into this thing. 

Is it worth it? The jury’s out. I can remember about 5 of those shows.

Improvisers, especially within theatre institutions, tend to fetishise industrial-quantity reps, both to hone performance chops and prove your commitment to programming decision-makers. Of course, those reps must be at that same theatre, otherwise they don’t count (classes start at £300, multiplied by all 5 levels. HURRY!). 

I believed this too, both as an individual performer, and when casting and directing shows myself. I’ve sat in audition rooms where other panelists were blown away by a performer they’ve never seen before, as if they’ve witnessed some impossibly magical generational talent. Nope, that’s just someone who has a life outside the improv bubble, and therefore something interesting to draw on.

If you spend 4-5 nights a week on an improv stage or classroom, there’s not much time for anything else. Perhaps you’re an aspiring actor or writer too, so there’s the rest of your non-improv time gone. It’s great being all-in, but it does limit your craft if you don’t cultivate other interests. An alarming proportion of improv scenes in London in my 15+ years doing and watching are set in audition rooms, cafes, or stock settings from TV shows and movies. This is a product of homogenous casts of performers with ‘creative’ lives.

So how can you balance reps to get good, without burning out or becoming increasingly boring because you’ve initiated another scene with ‘please say your name and agent for the camera’? I honestly don’t know. But I do know cutting back shows has given me way more time for other things, interests and people, without wondering where I fit in the hierarchy and whether they’ll ask me to the prom². I might be slightly worse at improv, I might be slightly better. Either way, it matters less. 

If you’re working through classes or an early improv ‘career’, try for balance. Improv is really fun, you’ll make fast friends and show adrenaline is very addictive. But you don’t have to do it constantly to be good. You can have fun being slightly less good. Other stuff in your life is just as important, mostly more important. Improv won’t give you that time back you spent in that workshop repeatedly putting on a spacework coat³. Improv will still be there when you want it. Less is more.

ENDNOTES

55 seconds of precocious jazz child Jacob Collier wisely explaining that you can only do less when you know what more is

1.  I know improvisers love the term ‘indie night’ for anything outside a theatre, but it still reads like a Fratellis and Guillemots midweek double-bill at Sheffield Leadmill to me.

2. House Harold teams have roughly the same amount of glamour as a high-school prom. Also, its nice to be asked to one, but the thought of actually dancing in front of everyone is terrifying. On the other hand, you shouldn’t wear plaid to a prom. Or an improv show at this point to be fair.

3. I have literally taught that class and maintain its a valuable skill