Best Practice In The Improv Classroom

You’re about to start teaching your improv workshop. You walk in the room to be greeted by both eager and nervous participants. You feel a jolt of excitement and a jolt of nervousness. Will this work? Will imposter syndrome kick in? What if it’s too advanced? What if it’s too simple? What if I run out of content?

Teaching improv is very different to performing improv. While being an experienced performer is obviously helpful, its a different skillset you are using in the workshop.

Up to now, all my recent articles have focused on Improv teachers setting themselves up for success with their preparation and planning, as well as festivals and events curating their teaching faculty. In this article, I will look at how we can be better teachers in a workshop. As with my previous pieces, this is not a definitive guide, instead it draws on my own experience. It’s just my thoughts on the subject.

Set Out As You Mean To Go On – Your Opening

Hopefully, you have done your prep for your workshop. You have a lesson plan and you have reflected on your pedagogy. What next?

It’s important no matter what experience level your workshop is pitched at is that you remember you are there to serve your students achieve the learning objectives they have signed up for. Teaching improv isn’t like giving a lecture. People will have different learning needs and styles, and you will have to tailor the experience accordingly. This is particularly true for workshops are pitched at a higher level.

The opening of the workshop is an opportunity to set the scene. This means an overview of how the workshop will go and setting expectations is important. Some people will also want to know if and when there will be a break. As part of the opening, it’s very important to create a space with psychological safety. Some teachers approach this differently. Generally speaking, rules around physical contact and content boundaries can be shared or discussed here. Depending on the level, this may be be dictated by the teacher (something that we do in our Improv Playground drop-in workshops given the nature and size of our workshops) or it may be a discussion with the participants. With beginners and intro courses, it’s best dictated by the teacher.

Ground rules in their own right aren’t enough. What do you do as a teacher if someone oversteps the mark?  Taking a leaf from what Improv Utopia taught me, I communicate an “Oops/Ouch” system. People, with the best intentions, will make mistakes at times. Participants are told they can flag if something is an issue or flag if something they said or wasn’t intentional. Depending on the matter, we can acknowledge it and move on. This is particularly important with inexperienced or beginner workshops that people have some mechanism for flagging or acknowledging.

In the event there are repeat or more serious breaches of the ground rules, a conversation must be had and depending on the circumstances, it may be used as a teaching moment in the workshop too. (Without humiliating or embarrassing anyone). Where it is necessary to speak with a student, it’s important it happens sooner than later. It may be a difficult conversation for you, but if you put it off or wait for another issue you are setting a precedent that its acceptable behaviour. Remember, when having the conversation it’s not personal. Focus on the behaviour, NOT the person. View it as course correction.

Who are you?

Next up are the intros. Again, this may or may not be relevant depending on whether it’s a workshop or course, applied improv or performance improv. With courses, especially beginner courses, I always have people do an intro. It helps humanise participants and gives them a chance to find that nervousness is shared and not unique to just one individual. An important question to ask any group of participants is this; “What do you want to achieve in this workshop?”. It gets participants to focus on outcomes, which is what we are all there for.

For more experienced level workshops and courses, watch out for lengthy intros. No one really cares how much experience you have, save that for the pub afterward. Keep it brief and relevant.

As for your intro, this will vary depending on what you’re teaching and the group. Your intro should always be tailored to your audience. What from your experience is relevant to today?

A great example of how to do this is how you would introduce yourself in an applied improv workshop. You would obviously focus on your relevant business/corporate/non-improv experience relevant to the group/organisation just as much as your improv experience. Ultimately, applied improv workshop participants don’t need to know anything about your improv experience other than the fact you are an improviser.

Here We Go

There tends to be two types of approaches to teaching improv. Participants come in a suit of armour, or participants come wrapped in bubble wrap. Your teaching pedagogy and style is critical here. Teaching needs to be a safe, supportive environment. The days of hard or cruel teaching should be long behind us. We don’t train dogs by way of punishment anymore, so we shouldn’t do the same with people. The only thing I have ever learned from a workshop where a teacher was tough, cruel, shouting or rude was to never to take a workshop with that person again.

Positive reinforcement is essential.

Once things go under way, there 3 steps to each exercise. I use the acronym BED. Brief – Execute – Debrief.

Brief and frame the exercise – What is the focus and purpose? What will we be learning? Approach and pitfalls? Is it a group exercise etc.

Execute – Students participate. Given enough time for people to embellish and really feel out the exercise but dont let it run longer than necessary. Watch out for how participants are engaging and trends. Is their engagement changing as the workshop goes on? Is their energy changing? In particular, watch out for participants who are becoming withdrawn or less vocal during the workshop. They may need some additional encouragement and support.

Debrief – How did it go for people? I always like the question Brian James O’Connell asks after an exercise. What your thoughts, feelings and observations?

Debrief What Exactly?

The debrief of an exercise is a critical part of the learning process. Given the experiential nature of improv, participants may not be aware of what they are doing and what is happening in an exercise because there are so many moving parts. Many participants will also hear the inner critic in the ear telling them negative things and then start comparing themselves to how wonderful everyone else is getting in. So we need to ensure we debrief constructively.

As a general rule, unless a workshop is advertised differently, our focus should be on what participants are doing well. Hone in on the positive behaviours and choices. I usually ask the audience a leading question as part of a debrief. “What did they the participants do well and what worked for them?” It focuses the mind on being constructive and building safety and confidence.

Remember improvising is not about right and wrong, it’s about choices. Choices that make the scene flow and therefore easier, and choices that hold us up and make things harder. In the event that a participant was making choices that aren’t helping them, focus on the behaviours behind it. Do NOT tell them what they should have done differently. Instead, identify things they did do well and give them the opportunity to examine what may have influenced the choices that made things harder. Ask them what they might do differently next time. It encourages a growth mindset in the participant in a way they can engage with. Sometimes a useful question to ask participants to aid this discovery is, “What advice would you give the next participants when it’s their turn to do the exercise?”. This approach helps develop an environment of positive reinforcement and again, a growth mindset with participants.

Ensemble team at Improv Fest Ireland. Photo: Dean Ben Ayre

Side Coaching

Different teachers use side-coaching in different ways. Participants may have different feelings on side-coaching. Upfront clarity around how and when side-coaching may be used will be important. This is particularly important for non-beginner workshops. Some students may not want side coaching and prefer feedback afterward instead.

And please, don’t use side-coaching to tell participants who to do or say. It’s coaching not instruction. Don’t embarrass the student you are side-coaching with vague notes that they don’t understand either.

Workshop Wrap Up

A workshop debrief is always a good idea at the end of any workshop. Simple questions to ask: What were your key learnings today? Did you achieve what you wanted from the workshop? What are you pleased with?

I also often remind inexperienced and beginners that improv is not like sport. Be wary of the Dunning Kruger effect. In an experienced mind,  it’s near impossible to measure your progress objectively. With sport you can measure progress by how fast you ran today vs last week or how many goals you scored. Improv is art, and art cannot be measured. I often remind the class of this by pointing out that if we were to ask the room who feels they were the weakest link in the class that most people would put their hand up. Therefore, I encourage participants to walk away focussing on what they had fun with. Positive reinforcement is a blessing.

Fancy a Pint?

What kind of personal boundaries should you set with your students? This is a complicated questions and culture plays a part. In the classroom, you need to maintain a professional and safe environment, even if you know the participants. Don’t have favourites.

In some cultures, such as Irish culture, a pint after the workshop or course is tradition and customary. In other cultures, teachers wont do this. Personally, I don’t have a problem with teachers socialising with students as long as it’s healthy, friendly and respectful. But again, watch out for developing favourites or giving a perception of cliques. Friendships can and do form, and thats ok, but your accessibility as a teacher needs to be open to everyone equally.

If you are teaching as part of a festival, theatre or event and they have policies or rules that differ from your own preferences, then their rules must be respected regardless of how experienced a teacher you are.

Diversity and Representation

It’s important to talk about this as topic as it is something where the ball is being dropped around the world. Ask any improv teacher and they will probably tell you that they believe in equality and they welcome everyone to their classes. However, a quick look at make up of their participants may tell a different story. It’s not good enough to just say you believe in equality, you must make conscious effort to create a space that encourages and invites people from all backgrounds. When I was studying equality and diversity as part of my Masters in Training & Education, the lecturers called us out on this with a simple question.

How do you know you are not a barrier to diversity and representation?

Some questions to ask yourself to determine if you are inclusive:

• Scholarships and diversity programmes are great, but are you proactively reaching out to communities or minorities to bridge divides?
• If you are a cis white male (like me), what are you doing to counter an image that you may be a barrier and address whether you are an ally?
• Are you asking people how they are interpreting your personal brand, marketing and offerings?

These are just a few questions to ask but the point is we must work hard, particularly in current global climate, to be allies and create inclusive spaces for everyone. Saying you are inclusive and believe in equality doesn’t cut it.

Job Well Done?

There is a quote in the movie The King And I: If you become a teacher, by your pupils you’ll be taught

Your job as a teacher doesn’t end when you lock the theatre up after the workshop. You should reflect back on the workshop on how it went. Did people engage? Did people feel safe? What worked and what can be improved? Did I treat all participants equally and fairly? You may be the teacher but you are not exempt from adapting a growth mindset to better yourself!

Have Fun and Take Time Off

As a final comment, is to remind you about you. Improv is vulnerable space. A good teacher commits a lot of energy, passion and their self to teaching. It should be a rewarding and safe space. Burnout is a real risk for teachers. When teaching becomes draining, or the fun levels are dropping or you are even feeling that an upcoming course or workshop will be a chore, then it’s time to take break. I take a couple of months of from teaching every year. It gives me a chance to recharge and reignite the passion. I feel it is necessary to ensure I am giving my best to students in every class all year round.