Meltdowns

Last night The Night Shift hosted our third incubator night at The Playground. Ten teams made over the past three years did short sets, the point of which was to celebrate each other and the theater. The show is always fun, packed, and some groups experiment with different ideas or forms. One group however had a palpable meltdown on stage which was kind of horrifying to watch and I'm guessing horrifying to be a part of.

The set opened with one of the guys dressed as Jay Leno doing a relatively fun bit to take the suggestion. Another guy, lets call him Ralph, took offense by this, cut him off, and took the suggestion instead getting a female teammates name. Ralph started a scene with that woman, who had apparently just come from a date, and tried to get her to talk about her date which she clearly didn't want to do. The next scene Ralph was on the side throwing balloons at the ceiling pulling all the focus. After that scene another guy came out to get another suggestion and he very sarcastically said "Ralph is so funny! Can we get something about how great and funny Ralph is!?" They tried to do more scenes, during a couple of which Ralph asked the woman about her date seemingly hiding or projecting some kind of jealousy. After four minutes I pulled the lights because everyone was looking defeated. It was wild.

I understand having interpersonal issues with your teammates, I certainly have had them, and I get feeling the urge to take it to the stage as if it'll be easier to resolve there, but it never is. Bringing real life aggression or anger at someone else on your team to the stage is unpleasant to watch and toxic for your teammates. Bringing a wholly selfish, superior, chip-on-the-shoulder attitude to the stage is boring to watch and just makes you look like a real life asshole.

If you don't want to do improv, if you're not having fun doing it, if you don't care for members of a team you're on, it's simple.

Stop doing it.