Improv Advent #22

22 - No Sorry

Attention new improvisers, please stop saying you're sorry. With your mouth or with your body.

Stop saying it, stop doing it. They are poisonous.

I resolve in 2014 to yell at you for this if I'm in a position to.

You have to, have to, accept your actions as they are. Take your notes as avenues to improvements not as you being chastised. It's not personal. It's making what you do better, it's not about making you better.

If you continue to let yourself say you're sorry, you'll do it on stage. And that's breaking, and that's not commitment, and that's not support.

You did what you did, it's over, no take-backs and the intention doesn't ever matter. You have to own everything you do, you have no choice.  There's no such thing as a take two here.  You will make mistakes, that's fine. We don't care about you last scene, even when it's great, even when it's terrible , even when it's just ok. We care about the next. We always are looking for the next.

Don't say you're sorry. Listen, care, and work hard.