Last week I attended How To Teach Improv Inclusively, a four-day intensive led by Stephen Davidson and Monica Gaga, with thoughtful standalone sessions by Tai Campbell and Katy Schutte. I enjoyed the workshop week and had a lovely time; as Stephen invited me to delve a little deeper, I found myself thinking on the “why” of it. In no particular order, it was great because of….:
- The workshop structure. This was a follow-up to the Inclusion in Improv course they had developed before. That meant they chose not to re-tread previously covered themes and assumed a level of knowledge/interest in the subject from participants. (Of course, we did sometimes find info or lingo gaps in the room and these were speedily gone over). It was also teacher-specific: we covered various scenarios and games, different skills and their development, we got to try things such as giving feedback and handling tricky conversations. Overall, it was a practical answer to the theoretical grounding of the previous course. (incidentally, the materials for Inclusion in Improv are available, so if you missed it, you can still catch up).
- The people. The participants are often the loveliest part of any improv workshop and this one was no exception. The self-selection bias meant that we were all genuinely interested and motivated to discuss the class topics; the amount of goodwill, consideration and genuine warmth in the room was nothing short of inspiring. The workshop lasted from 10 am to 5 pm (with an hour-long lunch break) and we were all pretty happy to spend time with each other throughout, which is a testament to the group cohesion. Which leads me to…
- The facilitation. We covered a lot of heavy topics in the workshop – and some weren’t so much heavy as intellectually dense. The facilitators’ skill and awareness meant that we were invited to move as we needed and take care ourselves. We were also provided with games changing the energy of the group, breaks and topic shifts which made the chunky knowledge more palatable.
- The facilitation, vol. 2. On a personal note, I also have good reason to praise the facilitation: I got triggered in a context of a game and had a first-of-its-kind situation in which my distress was noticed before I ended up having to advocate for it. If I am triggered by something, I typically have to handle my own self-care, as well as talk the teacher through what happened. It was refreshing, not having to do that; nobody took on anything they weren’t qualified to handle (i.e. attempting to be my therapist), but I wasn’t left to muddle through alone, which I appreciated. (I’ve written about trauma in improv context before; I am something of an unfortunate connoisseur of these things).
- The bonding aspect. We got to share our values, our favourite resources, our tricky classroom scenarios and our fears. Of course, we had four named facilitators, but with a group of folks who all teach, we also all ended up learning from each other. We became a group of peers and I hope that we will be able to continue checking in with each other, as we evolve as facilitators.
Overall, the workshop left me rather thoughtful. “How to teach improv inclusively?” is an open question, with different ideas for solutions. Will improv evolve towards self-endowment, as suggested by Tai Campbell? (another essay entirely, but self-endowment refers to the actor naming themselves as a character in the scene, rather than being named). Will we update our practices or hold onto them in the name of tradition? I do not know: I do, however, know that we had some folks in the workshop who had less experience of the improv world, exposing myself and my mostly London-based improv friends to our own inadvertent cliquishness. Obligatory jokes about the cultishness of improv aside, it really made me realise how much improv relies on its own lingo; unless one studies it in levels via a particular school, using certain phrases in workshops (such as game of the scene, blocking, endowing etc.) has potential to alienate the students present. After all, not every city and town has an improv school, and there are many barriers to access (such as money or caring responsibilities, to name but a few). It was an ironic, yet useful, example of an in-group, in a group of people quite interested in preventing such in-groups! The meta jokes write themselves, but it was cool to have it play out during the intensive and see how much comfort we derive from that shared language, and how useful it was to break it down for ease of access. We borrowed and created our own set of phrases – for example, as suggested by a participant, “mango” was too juicy a subject, to be put in the fruit bowl for another day – and it really made our communication come alive.
Useful as it was for us to practise scenarios and discuss real-life examples, there is no way to be ready for every single situation. Rather, the workshop asks a question: are you willing to try and teach this art form inclusively and investigate what it might mean? I can’t draw a single conclusion, but I am left with is a set of guidelines – listen hard, be secure in your values, trust yourself to respond, don’t beat yourself up for reacting imperfectly in the moment, continue to be thoughtful, make time for broadening your practice, apologise if you mess up, keep going.
In the end, a large part of the challenge is becoming a person who pushes back, who doesn’t accept things as they are, who tries to create conditions for change – imperfectly and perhaps with some difficulty. Only we can decide how we’re going to try and do this work, amidst the myriad pressures of capitalism, improv conformity, the lack of accessibility of various venues and many other issues in our way. We showed up for the workshop and created a tentative cohort of facilitators, but it is up to us to decide what we do next. It may be as simple as focusing on providing the best experience for the folks who show up, or as complex as wondering how to attract a more diverse crowd. (“simple” and “complex” sit on a very personal spectrum here…). The only thing that seems certain is that we have to keep engaging with new ideas. I can only hope that I’m capable of the flexibility required – to both stand by my values and continue to learn and be fallible.