The shadow of Be Supportive. Bulldozing is moving through a scene with no attention to your partner's offers, pushing only your own ideas, making yourself the center at the expense of the ensemble.
Where blocking denies offers and steering redirects them, bulldozing pre-empts them — dominating the channel so thoroughly that your partner's offers never get made. The scene doesn't fracture because there is no competing reality; there is only yours. Your partner becomes a prop rather than a co-creator.
Forms of bulldozing:
Scene-stealing. Entering a scene your partner is building just to add your energy. Grabbing focus when the scene doesn't need it. A common danger for younger improvisers: getting caught up in the adrenaline and cannibalizing the wave your scene partner is riding because you want to be the surfer too.
Laugh-stealing. Truth in Comedy is explicit: "A truly funny scene is not the result of someone trying to steal laughs at the expense of his partner." Going for the joke that undercuts your partner's emotional reality because the laugh feels more valuable than the scene.
Talking over. Filling every silence. Not letting your partner finish. Jumping in with your idea before theirs has landed. This isn't just rude — it's a bandwidth attack. Your partner can't contribute because you've consumed all the shared channel capacity.
Self-casting. Always playing the high-status character, the one with the big emotional arc, the one the audience watches. Consistently taking the "interesting" role and leaving your partner the straight man — not as a generous choice but as a default self-serving position.
Why it happens: Not always insecurity — though that is one root (the need to prove your value, the fear that if you're not the funniest person on stage, you're not earning your place). Bulldozing also comes from unmodulated enthusiasm — some performers are simply big, and they need to learn to yield, not because they are selfish but because their default setting overwhelms. And it comes from trained reward patterns — if you got laughs being dominant, you keep being dominant. Johnstone would add a third root: status habit. Some people bulldoze because they are genuinely high-status players who have never been asked to cede. It's not fear; it's comfort with dominance.
Ironically, the most valued ensemble players are the ones who make everyone else shine.
The systemic cost: A team of bulldozers can be good but never great. Each player locally maximizes their own output while degrading the ensemble's total. Trust erodes because nobody feels safe — your partner might override your next offer. Risk decreases because vulnerability gets punished. The ensemble becomes a collection of soloists, not a team.
The correction: Active listening — shifting attention from "what do I want to do" to "what is my partner doing that I can serve." The bulldozer's recovery path is learning to contain: hold space, play grounded, ask the simple question that lets your partner's offer develop. The energy doesn't have to disappear. It has to be aimed outward.