Tip & Exercise: You don’t have to know it all

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: You don’t have to know it all

A common misperception amongst improv teachers is that when it comes to the topic of the class we have to be all-knowing. While actually, I don’t believe that.

Can we then come unprepared?* No, but the focus of your class should be on your students learning. And you can definitely do that without being an expert on the topic.

Let’s say you want to teach a class on fairytale characters. But you are not sure that you are the expert of all experts on every single fairytale characters. I want you to focus on the learning of your students: in what ways can they feel free and inspired to try out characters from fairytales? Think of exercises that get them into this state, and where they can pull from their own memory of fairy tales.

Here is one exercise you can use to help them learn, without you having to be The All-Knowing Entity.

Exercise: Personal coaches

Pair up your students in the physical space, or in break out rooms. Have 1 student be the personal coach of the other student.

The coachee can tell their ‘personal coach’ which character they want to be coached on. If the class has a theme, as a teacher you can limit their choices by saying ‘characters from fairytales’ or ‘happy, low status characters’.

After they agreed on the character (e.g. ‘troll’ or ‘hospital nurse’) the coach and the coachee get some time to explore this one character. The coachee tries out the character, while the personal coach supports, encourages, gives tips and -when it goes well- gives little setups like “You are making a hut in the forest” or “Let’s have you say goodbye to a patient”. The goal is to have the outside eye help the improviser embody this character.

After 5-10 minutes, switch roles. The new coachee decides on a different character and the personal coach helps them find and refine it.

Afterwards share with the group which characters you explored and what 1 or 2 insights about playing this character are interesting for the group to know.