Teaching and Directing Improv Comedy

Pan Theater Awkward Show - 2013

I did not want to teach improv. The director of my theater, however, is persistent and coaxed me into the classroom like a spooked deer.

First I observed and took notes which seemed easy and, I thought, a sneaky way to distract the director from giving me students. Then somehow I was student teaching and months later I was teaching improv classes on my own. I love it.

The first day of improv ever is oddly predictable. There’s the “funny guy” (sometimes “funny lady”) who cracks jokes without listening and completely destroys their partner. There’s the “shy person” who makes sure I like all of their lines. Then there’s the “innate performer” who has uncanny instincts and makes their scene partner look fabulous (this is the person everyone leaps to do scenes with).

When it comes to scenarios, I know I’ll have to watch an unpleasant break-up scene that never ends and a scene that takes place in a submarine. With a periscope. Always a periscope. The stage has an atmosphere of sweaty desperation – of doing things right.

Humans, when frightened or trying to be awesome, react just the same. For example, when I worked in retail, I would sullenly predict what the customers would say (in April: “is this chocolate a tax write-off? Hahahaha!”).

People make the same stupid jokes and come up with the same concepts over and over again convinced what they are doing is fresh and hilarious. It’s after improvisers let go of the seduction of control (which springs from landmines of need and sheer panic) that the scene gets good. Improvisers can only surprise the audience when they surprise themselves.

One of my teachers told me (four years after starting improv when I was twenty-two and thought I knew just about everything) that I was a fine actor, but he saw me going outside of the moment to observe what I was doing on stage. I inhibited myself trying to make the most perfect choice.

It’s a constant battle for any improviser and the irritating truth is that there is never a most perfect (or most funny or most witty) choice.

You just think there is. It is amazing to watch students finally ignore the part of their brain that wants to undermine their improv. And then? Then I don’t see another “something war-like is approaching!” scene in a submarine. The improvisers won’t play the same losing-my-contact bit I’ve endured eighty times already.

Instead, there’s magic.