I Failed So Publicly That It Cured Me of Fear
by Siobhan Finniss
Gather around and hear a tale about the night I failed so big and so publicly that it entirely cured me of fear. And weirdly, on the other side of horrific failure, is total freedom.
Imagine this - a HUGE stage with hundreds of random people watching, nay, EXPECTING comedy.
I don't have to imagine, because that was me - standing on the Turbine Platform stage at the iconic Brisbane Powerhouse. I remember visiting the Brisbane Powerhouse when I was 14. My family had come to see the comedy trio, Tripod. I was wearing a pink fluffy jumper and felt like this place was impossibly cool (I was from Beenleigh, so perhaps I was easy to impress ). I imagined myself performing at the Powerhouse one day, but it seemed like a pipedream.
Cut to 2016. I'm 27 and have been improvising for one whole year - so I'm obviously ready for the hardest stage in Brisbane. The thing about the Turbine Platform … is that it used to be a turbine platform. Unlike a normal theatre, the room is huge and open. A joke goes out and titters of laughter disperse out the doors. The audience has to roar with laughter for the performers to hear anything. This I fear, dear reader, was a recipe for disaster when experienced by a nervous perfectionist with a people pleasing streak. Oh hey! That's me.
Sadly there was not much people pleasing happening that night. As the unsuccessful scenes ticked on, I realised that I was neither skilled nor confident enough to be on the stage. Yet it was a four person cast and I felt obliged to keep throwing myself in. To make matters worse, we were trialing microphone headsets that the sound guy instructed us not to turn off between scenes, so I had no way to ask for help without being heard by the whole audience.
My panic and frustration was unleashed onto my fellow performers.
I turned into the angel of death - ala the Michael Scott school of improv. Every scene from that moment on became a devastating blood bath. In the final scene a more experienced performer turned himself into a killer robot (a kind attempt to 'yes and'), and the murder spree was complete. I would love to say the curtains came down, but the Turbine Platform offers no such refuge for embarrassed performers to disappear behind. So the show ended and I skulked into the audience.
I stood awkwardly near the box office, trying to busy myself by getting deeply involved in the features of a new camera the show's MC had recently purchased. It had cutting edge 2016 technology, such as a slow motion setting 😮. As I whipped my hair around for a slow motion close up, an older gentlemen with a shit eating grin made a beeline for me. "You were one of the comedians tonight weren't you?" he chortled at me. "You're not funny."
Maybe he was expecting this very up close heckle to lead to some sassy comedian repartee. Instead what he got from me was a shocked, "Okay..." as my little face crumpled. He now looked shocked too. Sensing he had bitten off more than he could emotionally chew, he slipped back into the sea of humanity exiting the theatre.
So, that's it. My worst fears realised.
And the beauty of going through all of that - now I've got nothing to be afraid of. Physical pain doesn't scare me anymore, because I survived childbirth. Likewise, if I'm nervous about a show, I just say to myself, it can't be worse than that Turbine Platform fiasco.
A compliment I get a lot about my performance style is that I'm fearless. A big part of that has nothing to do with personal resilience. I owe a great deal to the culture of impro. In a lot of Arts scenes a huge and public failure like that would render me a creative leper. It would be hard to be included in new projects, as though a failed work is both personally defining and contagious.
In improv we know better. Even the best performers have bad nights. Being unkind about that is more likely to get you excluded, than pretend murdering an entire cast.
I can now afford to be fearless, because I know I will be supported. I can try different art forms and be less fearful, because I knowing I have a creative home to return to.