Improv
For my complete guide to teaching improvisation and a whole lot more about drama teaching check out the special website launching deal for my ebook “Organised Chaos: A Very Practical Guide to Drama Teaching”.
Sample games and exercises from the “The Impro Teachers Kit” can be found under Improvisation in the sidebar.
Improvisation – The Foundation of Drama Work
If improvisation does not already form a large part of what you do in the classroom, then it’s time to change your approach. It is the single most important skill you can ever teach students.
It taps into the part of most student’s brains that seldom gets fully activated or utilised and is the most powerful tool available to build confidence in student performers and students in general. I don’t merely teach improvisation to develop great performance skills; performance skills are the ‘icing on the cake’.
I have done many, many different things in my life and can testify absolutely that the mental skills, self-control, team skills and basic communication skills, I learned from many years of improvisation, have been used in the most ‘un-dramatic’ of circumstances.
If you can improvise in the drama classroom, you can improvise in life. If you can problem solve in the drama classroom you can problem solve in life. If you can weigh up situations quickly and make quick calculated decisions in the drama classroom, you can do the same in any aspect of life, if you can think and act creatively in the drama classroom, you can be creative in all aspects of life. If you can act boldly and with confidence, or at least pretend to, in the drama classroom, then you can be far more effective in any area of life. Have I laboured the point enough to convince you?
Improvisation is also an essential aspect of performance work. I do not have people prompting actors with lines with any of my productions. Some people don’t understand this and think I’m cruel to do so but I have found over the years that when students learn to gain confidence in the new improvisation capabilities they did not realise they had, fear no longer limits their capacity for successful performance.
I have watched a brilliant performance of “The Crucible”, by young student performers, absolutely ruined because one lazy student was totally dependent on being prompted on just about every line of dialogue throughout his performance.
This among many experiences led me to dispense with prompting altogether. What happens instead in my productions is that students discover this wonderful power to overcome potentially disastrous situations through improvisation.
One recent incident stands out in my mind as an example of this. I organised a production of the musical “Grease” in the school I taught at in China. China is a wonderful place to do school productions in some ways because everything is so cheap.
This is particularly true with costumes. The Korean girl who played the role of ‘Sandy’ had a great fake leather outfit tailor made for her. The downside of dealing with the cheap Chinese tailors, however, is that sometimes they get the measurements wrong and costumes need to be remade. It was of course essential to have a perfect fit with the leather body suit because it had to be tight fitting to look right.
I don’t know how many refits were needed but we ended up running the full-dress rehearsal without the costume as the tailors were still working on getting it right. With all the usual pressures surrounding a production, rehearsing the costume change was overlooked.
On opening night everything was going very smoothly right up to the dramatic entry of the ‘new look Sandy’, from demure, ordinary school girl to sexy, rebel woman. The entry point came and no Sandy appeared. Seconds passed and it was obvious to everyone on stage that she was not there, so what do the cast do?
I have seen many school and amateur productions where this sort of incident brings everything to a very obvious and embarrassing halt. Not so on this occasion. The entire group of characters on stage improvised. The improvisation from my perspective was the most exciting part of the whole performance. It was totally in keeping with the characters involved and the plot line; it was witty and funny and full of energy; it flowed seamlessly from the fixed dialogue and provided much needed time for the costume change. It was immediately adopted into subsequent performances.
Student performers totally dependent on a person prompting would never have had the confidence to do that. There would have been two minutes of embarrassing silence and the energy level of the performance would have plummeted; along with the confidence and morale of the cast.
After the on stage improvisation the young cast were full of excitement, dancing, laughing. They felt the power of what had been achieved and were absolutely elated.
It is necessary of course to teach students improvisation skills and to use improvisation during the rehearsal process to get them used to it, before it becomes necessary.
The Impro Resources page under Improvisation in the sidebar has some things to help you with teaching improvisation. There are also items in the Resources page on the menu bar that may be useful too.
For my complete guide to teaching improvisation and a whole lot more about drama teaching check out the special website launching deal for my ebook “Organised Chaos: A Very Practical Guide to Drama Teaching”.
Sample games and exercises from the “The Impro Teachers Kit” can be found under improvisation in the sidebar.
Harry Tawse | 
July 19, 2009 8:02 am
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