Amanda Austin
Nov 7 · 3 min read

Why We Should Take More Failure Bows

Make it fast, make it grand, then make stuff happen.

When we first started teaching improv classes many moons ago, we asked students to come to the fourth wall (that’s theater lingo for the front of the stage) and take a failure bow. They were instructed to take a big, grand bow and loudly say “I failed” as they executed said bow. It was fun for them, fun for us to watch, and typically set the tone for expectations for the class. We always like to give people the WHY for the exercises we perform, so it sounded a little something like this: “In improvisational comedy, you truly have to fail…

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Amanda Austin

Founder/CEO of Dallas Comedy House and DCH Pro

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