My Theatre Appreciation
course for college and high school students relies heavily on improv
formats. While I stick to the academic
objectives of the curriculum every semester, each new group I work with
interprets the formats differently.
Rather than force the students to bend to my improv will, I uncover a
new approach to meet them halfway. By incorporating their input, they help me to
redesign the course for that particular semester, which inspires me to create
new formats and embrace a different avenue to my pedagogical style.
My current class, which is a
combination of high school and college students, views every format as if it’s
a guessing game. While that is appropriate for certain formats, such as Viola Spolin’s
“How Old Am I?” and “What Am I Listening To?” it can be intrusive as a class of
close to thirty-five students in the audience are screaming out guesses as two
to four students on stage are exploring a format.
The positive flip side to
this is that the students in the audience are in the moment, as they are
actively searching for something specific in the format that is being presented in
front of them. Guessing is a game and there is joy in the tone of their guesses and I started to
ponder how to harness that element of enthusiasm.
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| Knee deep in another Theatre Appreciation class. |
Ordinarily when I conduct a
format with two players, students in the audience tend to tune out if something
engaging doesn’t occur from the start. They start looking at their cell phones,
texting, or conversing with the student next to them. It’s the reality of the
nature of my course, which runs from 3:30 – 5:30pm. Students are tired, particularly the high school ones who have already put in a full school
day, and if something doesn’t involve them directly, they go to their happy
place. I don’t have this problem when leading group warm-ups at the start of
the class, because the exercises are physical and everyone is on their feet and focused. Until someone's cell phone rings. But, I digress.
I started experimenting with
adding a guessing element to every format. The main rule is that the students
cannot yell out guesses as the format is being explored. That occurs either after the format has been played,
or when I pause it periodically to elicit input from the audience. I’ll address the students with a series of
questions, which are actually established improv games.
Questions may focus on;
Environment: “Can you guess what the temperature is?”
Emotions: “Can you guess what the
player is feeling right now?”
Character: “Can you guess what the character is
thinking right now?”
Activity: “Can you guess how the players could be doing this
differently?”
I’m still toying around with
this approach, which so far has been successful in keeping everyone in the class
involved. This could be the way to go
this semester. A simple flip of terminology.
This is just a guess on my part.
Michael Golding is a writer, director and improv
teacher. He can be contacted for
workshops, festivals and private consultations at migaluch@yahoo.com. Michael participated in the evolution of the
Improv Olympics & Canadian Improv Games. Artistic director of the Comic
Strip Improv Group in N.Y. & created the Insight Theatre Company for
Planned Parenthood, Ottawa. He is a faculty member at El Camino College
in Los Angeles,
working with at-risk teens and traditional students. He wrote and co-produced
the documentary "David Shepherd: A Lifetime of Improvisational
Theatre" (available for free on YouTube).
His book, Listen Harder, a collection of essays, curriculum and
memorabilia on improvisation and educational theatre, is available on Amazon,
Barnes & Noble and CreateSpace. Michael holds a BFA degree in Drama from
New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts & an MA degree in
Educational Theatre from NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education &
Human Development.
