Okay, so here goes another try, again on the bus. If the battery dies on me or I forget to save or Word crashes again without Auto Recovery I’m officially giving up on writing this report.
Monday evening was my first ever instance teaching an improv class. Well, that’s a semi-lie: Back at AC-Cubed ’06 in Ottawa, I helped Mark (leader of The 404s) run a workshop. But since I only had an ancillary role I think this qualifies as my first foray into teaching an improv class myself. …Okay, so I didn’t do it completely by myself, as I recruited Michael C., fellow 404 improvver and good friend, to help me out with showing examples and playing some games.
I want to start with a big thanks to Mike for commuting down to Toronto and helping me out. I don’t think the session would have been nearly as effective without him helping me show examples of good improv vs. bad improv, and wouldn’t have been nearly as fun without some of his side quips to complement some of my serious points. On that note, it was kind of weird seeing Mike in the Rotman building. Noone from my outside-Rotman life had ever stepped in, so it felt a tiny bit jarring for a moment – like someone invading my bedroom back when I was a teenager – but of course, no big deal and I snapped out of that quick.
We had a bit of a low turnout: of the 9 people registered, only 4 showed up. This is understandable since MBA students tend to get busy with last-minute assignment submissions and other stuff coming up. Still, a bit disappointing, but it allowed those who did show up to get a lot of value out of the class by being able to participate a whole lot more.
I based the structure of my workshop on Mark’s AC-Cubed one, which as I understand was inspired by Wayne Brady’s own improv class (link to video below). For the first 20 minutes or so, I lectured about what improv is and the benefits of practicing improv to an MBA student (of which there are several!). Several attendees had no clue what improv was, for which I prepared a Youtube video link of the masters of short-form comedy improv: the case of Whose Line Is It Anyway.
Once we got over introductions and demonstrations of several improv concepts (offers, listening, yes-and, blocking, gagging, wimping, and steamrolling), I had the group pair up and practice “Yes-And”ing, which really got them going. After playing a warmup game of “Da-Da-Da” (which I now agree with Mike is a great warmup game), we got into the meat of things: playing a bunch of improv games.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that all 4 students picked up the concepts quickly. More importantly, there was plenty of laughter and smiles and positive feedback. My most pleasant surprise was that even the participants whose English wasn’t as strong as others’ were able to effectively participate and create good scenes (with the exception of “One-Word-at-a-Time”, which I realized all too late requires a strong knowledge and familiarity with grammatical sentence structure).
Some highlights from the workshop:
- In Moving People (which took place at The Grand Canyon), Robin kept moving Justing in ways that got him to flip-flop between contemplating suicide or running away from the tide.
- “That’s Integrative Thinking!” and “Can You Diversify This?” were two of the highlight Rotman-related phrases given to our improvvers for a game of Two-Line vocabulary. It’s amazing how incorporating them into a scene resulted in the innovation of brushing teeth with Coke.
- Every Other Line with business textbooks resulted in what Mike called “the funniest Every Other Line he’d ever played”. Kudos to Mike for being able, as the straight actor, to cope with the lines thrown at him.
- I only played one game, but it ended with our hiring of Mexicans to carry my gold, which I consider a proper, successful ending to any story.
- Lots of other moments I can’t recall: the hour and a half passed by far too quickly.
And that’s the report! Due to the positive feedback and interest from people to do it again, I will be holding the session again next Tuesday, this time during lunch. Hopefully more people show up this time, but I’d be happy with 4 again, so long as we can play more games.
I wish I had remembered to take pictures but I was too caught up with running the workshop. So instead I leave you with a link to the first part of Wayne Brady’s improv workshop, which covers a lot more than mine did. Follow the related links to watch the entire thing.
Week 4 of Everyday Better Guy – success!
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