Tip & Exercise: Balancing stage time

I believe that we can have more different types of people as improv teachers. To encourage you to start, or to improve your teaching, every month I will share with you a tip and an exercise.

Tip: Balancing stage time.

I am sure you recognise this: some players jump on stage all the time, while others are more the waiting type. Though you could say ‘people are just different’, I think we can help our students become better improvisers by balancing out stage time. It will give the stage hogs an opportunity to be patient and let their partner shine, and it will give the wallflowers a chance to take that space and show what they got.

It will make either type of improviser a better partner to play with and it is way more engaging for an audience too. Because they notice, believe me. And you don’t want them to be distracted by this one guy taking all the main roles and/or this one gal standing in the shadow of the wings.

In a teaching environment we can help improvisers practice something else than their usual patterns. By doing that, they can experience how much it can bring them: more fun, less stress, louder applause, better scenes, anything.

Here is a fun game where I will give a suggestion how to practice the balancing of stage time.

Exercise: Toaster

Four people are seated next to each other on chairs. When the teacher rings the bell, each player individually decides for themselves to either stand up or sit down. Staying where you are is also a great option.

Try this technique a few times, to make sure everyone understands and is in the habit of making quick and confident decisions.

Now we play scenes with this technique. Every time you stand up when the bell rings, you are in a scene with either 1, 2, 3 or 4 players. If you are seated you do not play this scene. Every scene is a new situation with new characters, however… When the same combination of people stand up, they are the same characters again.

Here is the twist to use it for balancing out stage time: give some players a (secret) assignment. Tell the Initiating Champ to always sit at least 2 scenes in a row. Tell the Humble Supporter to always stand at least 2 scenes in a row. Obviously, you can change the numbers and do 3. Or two-on-one.

Let the players reflect afterwards how that experience was.

Toaster is a great game for bold decision making, playing many characters and remembering scenes you were in before (but probably gloriously failing at it).