Tip & Exercise: Tell me about your day

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: Keep it simple & effective

Coming up with new exercises is a challenge for so many improv teachers. (Well, unless you always teach the same. But that is not me.) This is why I started this section on my blog.

However, over the years I learned: keep it simple.

Your warmup game does not need 17 different rules. You can just play tag.

Your scene work does not need complex setups. Start with an inspiring suggestion (I never get bored of ‘a location’) and just play.

Especially when you teach something new, it actually helps your students much more if you keep the exercise simple, just practicing the new thing. This new thing can be anything.

If you teach improvisers about voice, it can be a technique to sound softer or harder.

If you teach employees about communication, it can be the DISC model.

If you teach teenagers about presenting, it can be about eye contact.

Here is a straightforward, but very effective exercise you can use to practice any of these.

Exercise: ‘Tell me about your day’

First, explain the new information. A visual, like a picture of the model or writing on a whiteboard, can be very helpful.

Second, instruct the group that you will invite them to tell about their day. (Or anything else that they know well, and feel comfortable telling. A detailed description of their breakfast also works.)

Ask for a volunteer. Discuss with them briefly which style -or skill- they would like to practice. (I discuss rather than tell to make the participant feel some ownership of the new thing they will try. Keep it brief though.) Check if they need 1 or 2 tips beforehand and invite them to just give it a try.

Then the participant tells about their day in a new way. An example from the DISC training: an outgoing, task-oriented person tries a more reserved, relationship-oriented style of telling by using fewer hand gestures and smiling more.

After approx. a minute you can close by saying thank you. Let the participant share how it was to do and collect some compliments from the audience and yourself.

Go on to the next participant, or let them practice in small groups.