It’s rare I go see a show and take tangible, 100% true lessons from what I see. This is the story of one of the times it did happen.

Eliza Skinner is a fantastic improviser. If you’ve never seen her, go check out Diamond Lion and let her blow your mind. Diamond Lion does musical improv, that’s important for this story.

I watched a Diamond Lion show not too long ago, and the show was flawless. But, there was a moment I noticed in one of the songs, in the middle of a bar, Eliza stumbled a over a word or two. They just came out as non-words. And why wouldn’t that happen? Making up a song on the spot is tough.

No more than four lines later, Eliza INTENTIONALLY stumbled over words and turned it into this kind of scat sounding thing in the middle of her line. She paid off her “mistake.” And, she didn’t do it again. She made her mistake seem like a choice, and then she moved on.

I think both parts are key when missteps come up.

First, we all know there are no mistakes in improv. But, it’s important to undertand why. Because we need to make them work. This can be done by yourself, or your teammate, but let’s make it look like our mistakes were choices.

And, second and possibly more important, she moved on. She didn’t keep slipping up line after line and turn her mistake into an active choice. After all, who would want to hear a song that mas a bunch of gibberish? Just because we did two weird moves that doesn’t have to dominate our show. Eliza made the correction, and moved on.

What I learned from Eliza Skinner; Pay off mistakes, move on.