The Vast Plateau of Competency
I’m going to start this post with a truth that no improviser wants to hear but every improviser who’s been at it for more than a few years already knows. Namely, that, more likely than not, you are going to, if you haven’t already, hit a stretch in your improv career where, no matter what you try, no matter how you practice, no matter how much you beat yourself up or, on the other hand, how much praise you get for how great you are, you will be, at best, merely competent at your craft. And you will feel it. And it will seem impossible to get out of. And it can last a long, long time.
The first several months of learning improv—especially if you have a natural ability to think on your feet and don’t get nervous on stage—is a thrill. You’re connecting, you’re making moves, you’re getting laughs. You knew you’d be good at this! SNL here you come!
And then, reasonably, this feeling tapers. You move up through the levels and the people who stay are as poised and quick-witted as you. You get cast on your first team and after a few shows of beginner’s luck fueled by adrenaline and all the friends and family you brought to watch your “comedy debut”, the thrill starts to fade and you’re left with just the work ahead. Your “go to”s start to get boring, predictable, even to you. Some days you kill, others you bomb, and you can’t seem to get a handle on the difference. You try to reach deeper for new material, new points-of-view, a fresh perspective, and sometimes they come, but often you feel tapped. Maybe you’re no good at this after all, you think.
This, my friend, is the Vast Plateau of Competency. You’re not doing badly. And a lot of the time you’re actually pretty good, which is what makes The Plateau all the more frustrating. You can see the people below the plateau not being able to make the moves you can to set up a scene for basic success, to feel a general sense of comfort on the stage, to know how to “find the game,” to “heighten,” to “hit the button.” But ahead of you is a precipitous rock face, and at the top of it stand the people you admire, waving and smiling and doing what looks like effortlessly brilliant work, and you can’t seem to see how you get there from where you are. Will you just be “pretty good” forever?
Keep moving forward, is the easy answer to this dilemma. Even plateaus have their occasional dips and bumps, and you’re in for lots of small bits of growth and regression along the plateau. In fact, the closer you get to that cliff upon which your heroes stand the more you’ll see that the path there is much bumpier than it first appeared, and that there’s no magical, easy route up it.
That’s all lovely as extended metaphors go, but here are some practical suggestions to help you not get stuck and continue to grow while living life on The Plateau:
Embrace slow, unsteady growth. When you first hit The Plateau and realize you’re not as good as your Level 4 teacher maybe led you to believe you were (Don’t blame her; it’s her job to build you up!), you might feel the desire to surround yourself with peers or even people a little worse than you to get that initial rush of success again. Don’t do it. Now is the time when you are ripe for growth. Get in a practice group with people who make you feel humble. Be a student. Be a listener. Live in the ups and downs of your jagged growth and don’t be embarrassed by it. This might mean people “at your level” but who do things you can’t or don’t. Or it might mean a group of people a generation up from you who see your potential and don’t mind you struggling a bit to keep up. Whatever it is, put yourself in a learning stance. Your ego will feel fragile and needy on The Plateau, which is all the more reason you need to reframe its desire for quick affirmations with a craving for subtle, meaningful growth if you want to make real progress.
Take the focus off the laughs. It’s time to give that muscle a bit of a rest. It’s what powered you through classes and your first Harold team. You were so funny. You could always save a scene with a well-timed gag. But you were leaning on that, and it can’t hold you forever. Not only that, but it’s probably become a tool of panic in lots of ways—Can’t quite make choices that seem “good”? Fart joke your way to sweet relief. So let go of funny and give yourself more nuanced, harder-won goals. Acting goals. Connecting goals. Living in the moment goals. Find new footholds. The way is up, not leaning back on what’s worked for you in the past.
Quality over quantity. The Vast Plateau of Competency is the place where you most likely to find yourself doing too many projects, cast on too many teams and shows, spending all your time at the theater or in that dank basement practice room. It’s good to get reps, but here’s the problem with this strategy: you’re often just interacting with everyone else on the same plateau. Because they all have the same idea you do—to work and work until they have a sudden breakthrough. So sure it’s five different practice groups and three duos, but it’s just a round robin of the same people you came up with and keep working with (in fact maybe some of you are actually just directing each other, which like, why?) And because they’re not generally people who are new to you, you have the potential to reinforce each other’s bad habits or pigeonhole each other into the roles you played in class that aren’t serving anyone’s growth. Instead, look for slightly less but more diverse experiences. One practice group with your friends that makes you feel comfortable and gives you confidence, a master class with an instructor you respect, an indie team with players you admire. And it’s okay if you’re only doing one thing for a few months—better that than filling your time with a group you resent that just reinforces your bad habits just to say you’re “doing something”.
Don’t direct or teach; not yet. It’s like people in a stagnating marriage thinking a baby will be the solution to their problems. You’re antsy, you’re bored, and you’re starting to resent your own work, so this is the perfect time to teach it to others! Slow your roll and try changing up your learning and performing routine first. There will be time to teach, I promise. Maybe even further along on The Plateau (it’s vast, guys!), when you start to see the climb ahead of you more clearly and you have a better sense of what you’re aiming for. If teaching and directing is a goal of yours it’s reasonable to try to work with or be taught by or shadow teachers whose style you like and want to emulate so you can start to develop the voice you might use later to teach others. But don’t jump into teaching mode now just because you’re looking for something new. For now, keep the focus on your own growth—your future students will thank you for it.
Maintain your non-improv life and relationships. When you’re living on The Plateau it’s easy for that to be all you see. You have built-in friends, built-in activities any night you want them. But that also creates a feedback loop of shows, then drinks after shows where you talk about the shows (No one loves talking about their shows more than people on The Plateau), then later in the night, the drunken show pitches to each other followed by the drunken stumble home after closing the bar. It’s fun and new and self-reinforcing, but it becomes an echo chamber. All that doing and talking about improv can sap the well from which you need to draw scene inspirations, character points-of-view, authentic relationships. Incidentally, this is probably why meta-“we’re doing improv” or “we’re in a movie” scenes happen so much on The Plateau. Get out of the theater once in a while; breath some non-improv air. It’s good for you, onstage and off.
Now this is all good advice, and probably sounds pretty reasonable and doable, but here’s the hard part—The Plateau is exactly the place where you’re going to feel pressured to ignore it all. Everyone’s going to want to be in a group with you because all your friends are looking to fill their time too. People below you looking up will see you as an expert and ask you to direct their indie team, which will be flattering and seem fun. As you start to get noticed in your community, you’ll start getting more accolades and opportunities you’ve been waiting for, and you’ll want to say yes to them all, regardless of their relative merit or your readiness for them or how well they fit your style or aesthetic or artistic needs. Your theater or community will give you enough to do so that you never have to spend a weekend night (or a Thursday, or a Wednesday) wondering what to do or being alone with your miserable thoughts again. All of this feels great, and comes from a well-meaning place, and doesn’t need to be rejected out-of-hand, but it can lead to some unhealthy internal responses, such as a sense of entitlement that these opportunities are what you “deserve”, a belief that if this is what everyone’s doing then it must be the correct path and pace for optimal growth, or a fear that if you don’t do all these things it you’ll be left behind.
None of this is true, of course. If anything, a sense of “entitlement” inhibits a growth mindset. Nor is there one best path toward your comedy goals, nor will you be left in the dust simply because you said no to that one cagematch team that ended up having a five show run. Every person is unique, and so is their path to growth.
It’ll be hard to stay disciplined—you’ve been taught for the last year or two to say “Yes!” and now you need to find it in your heart to say “No, thank you” to make room for the opportunities that will best feed you. You’ll need to balance the pleasure of belonging and succeeding with the longer-term desire to achieve personal growth that lasts, and the desire for quick rewards with the knowledge that real growth is incremental, not flashy and sexy and immediate.
The Plateau is like a scene you play slow up top to reap the benefits from later. If you burn off all your good stuff in the first couple lines, it’s gonna be a long, frustrating slog through the rest of the scene. But if you live in it, if you listen to what it needs from you, it can be the most productive time in your improv career. Because the choices you make on The Plateau have the power to push you forward or get you stuck in a rut. Sometimes both. But the good news is, if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll feel and know the difference. And just like in a scene that’s going off the rails, you have the power to bring it back by being honest and real and making the choice that truly resonates in the moment. And you’ll know how to make that choice when it’s upon you—because that next peak is in sight, and you’re in it for the long haul.
