An Evening About Improv

So welcome back to I Digress Adventures in Educational Theater.

I'm Jennifer Dooley and I run the theater program at Edmonson County and Brent Norris

is our technical director which makes him technically technically a director.

We're going to try to talk more about specific actionable things you can do in your class or in

your space with your kids because the first two episodes were kind of more like big ideas and

jumping around and probably I'll wander off the path as I want to do. So this episode is

about somebody who's got to start doing theater right now. Before we get into that though I

want to talk about what we're doing in our class so drama our school started just a couple of days

ago and we the first thing we do is we get up and we get them into warm-ups and on the stage

as a group so they can start to be a little bit less scared but being scared isn't bad

and then we introduce them to Shakespearean monologues and they basically have let's see

we started on Thursday I gave the assignment on Friday now it's Monday so by Wednesday

of this week they should be able to present a Shakespeare a memorized Shakespearean monologue

to the class and we get that from the English speaking union Shakespeare competition

they have a packet of monologues from every Shakespeare play they're all very short and

some have cuts in them so and we'll attach the link to that in the show notes because

we want the kids to know as soon as possible what what they're going to be asked to do and

if they would rather stab out their own eyes than be on stage then we don't want them to be

in this class and because of that we've had two or three kids change like tomorrow no today

was the last day they could drop ad so our schedule our our students will switch a little

bit tomorrow but that should be in but after that but for every kid that quit I think we

won that joint so we're like at 20 21 or something I think right now which is a great

number so we'll start presenting those monologues and which also the thing that we did today

which is actually one of the the more fun things is everything we do is fun sure

is the groups presented their segment of the syllabus as as skits so that they you know so

it was much more memorable what the rules were in class and what you're supposed to do in class

and stuff like that than just everybody sitting there and reading it and there was some good stuff

today uh there was a nice tornado yeah some of the kids decided to use props some of the kids

uh learned how to like move about the space in ways that were interesting yeah we have a

really big stage we have a really nice space for the size of our school system most small

schools don't have theaters as nice as ours and so we're very lucky for that

and some of these kids have never been on a stage some of these kids though

have participated in the k-12 musicals that we do so they're not completely you know in

the weeds but some of them not and it's just a safe way because they're getting on stage

with other kids they've had five minutes to make up a silly skit about how to contact

Ms. Dooley if you have questions or whatever and there's no pressure and everybody gets

100 right you don't we don't grade kids based on their ability because they all come in with

different abilities as long as they get up and they give it a shot and they're doing the best

they can you get 100 and you get 100 and you get 100 so she's the Oprah of perfect grades

I'm the Oprah of Ebbs County Java the only way you fail this course is if you literally

will not get on stage and that's why we have this dropout period so you could say oh yeah

I don't like that and then you can leave because not everybody is suited for that so I don't know

and also I think it's interesting because it's the first year the energy is very different this

year because we have new student leaders who were you know they've been waiting all this

time to have their chance to be group leaders and I think the energy is very different than it

was last year not in a bad way but just different do you think that's true I don't think

there is like a head witch there really isn't but no I don't I don't think there is and

that's okay not there isn't always so I'm excited to see what these and there's kids that I don't

know at all who have just shown up and I don't know what they can do and so I'm very excited

about that and that's true every year you get a whole so you're like you miss all the kids

that left but you're like look at these new children what can they do what will they be like

in four years so it's very it's very exciting and then we'll say oh the first day I was in

trauma I was so scared you talked so fast and I was I just wanted to cry but I didn't I'm

that's cool you're still here okay so let's say that you have to so let's digress back to the

topic of this the episode so the the main thing I'm going to focus on right now if I just

got handed this job is improv because you don't need a lot of materials and it's really hard

screw it up so I have a document that we will put in the show notes that I just named the improv

Bible and for decades I have just been whenever I found a game that sounded cool I would either

take notes about it after I was I did it at somebody else's rehearsal space whatever or if I

read about it so there's lots of organizations that could be credited on there but I didn't

because I didn't think this document was going to be for other people but it might be useful

you I gave it we have a person in one of our other schools who's this has happened to him he's

suddenly teaching musical theater and so I've given it for him to use I'll also post a

version of our syllabus if you want to steal that we have certain requirements for our school

system about what has to be in the syllabus but you're welcome to just make a copy and

do whatever you want to there's no point in reinventing the wheel and then just and just

start playing but a few things you want to remember first of all and I will make sure

that the improv encyclopedia structured this way because I've taught classes like this before

you want to you want to make it the safest space possible when you first start because

if you say to a kid okay get up on stage and you know pretend you're a monkey or something

all by yourself where everybody else is looking at them you're going to have a few

they're going to be like yes my whole goal in life is to be perceived but then you're

going to have a lot of other kids who want to be in there and want to try but are like

oh no this is just too far a jump out of my comfort zone to be up there by myself so

you pick games where everybody is on stage at the same time like zip zap zop or alien

tiger cow the machine the machine yeah the machine's a really fast easy one so if you

are just have never done improv the machine is a great one to start with so basically

you pick that kid who raises their hand all of the time and wants to go first you have

stage and you have them start they have to come up with some kind of random noise and motion

like something that is small and easy and repetitive like they don't want to scream

at the top of their lungs because they'll have to do the noise several times and they start

making that noise and motion over and over and over again and then you probably have some

other kids that are a little bit more adventurous and you just like just go join them then

have to go one at a time and their job is to add on to the machine so they have to make

noise in a movement that somehow complements the kid that is on stage and they have to and they

can be anywhere they want to in space as far as their bodies go they can be standing

up or sitting or kneeling or on the floor or whatever and then you keep adding kids

and adding kids and adding kids until everyone's on stage and they're all making a noise and

doing a gesture and it's just insane one year we were doing this and we had a brand new

assistant principal who i did not know she was new to the district so she didn't know

my level of weird and her office was across a hallway across two hallways in the administrative

section of the building and she heard us doing the machine and came in because she thought

someone was getting hurt and i was like no this is just what we do so and you can and

there's no way to screw that up if the kid gets on stage and you might have a kid get

up there and just kind of like lean just a few inches to the right and go boop and that's

fine because they're up there with the group and so you can't that's the right thing about

improv is if you get up on stage and you try something you cannot do it wrong the only

way you can do it wrong is if you just like no i will not get onto the stage so you want

to try big games like that so that they all get used to getting up there and making

noise and being silly and no one's saying oh well you look like a weirdo because we're

all looking like weirdos together and they're so focused on making their noise and doing

that they're not really worried about what other kids are doing and that's that's that's why you

do improv you i think it's good whether you want to do theater or not i taught a class like this

for non-theater students one year they needed an elective and they could use this as their

theater credit and i had a lot of kids in there who would never ever be in a play with

me and some of them i knew because they were roughly my daughter's age so she'd go to

school with them for a long time and at the end of the class at the end of the year

none of them were like oh yes now i want to be a theater major but they said they were much more

confident and they were much more self-assured and they didn't worry so much about what other

people thought about them and they felt much more comfortable speaking out in other situations

taking leadership roles and that's the thing you can get from doing the theater whole

theater like a theater class like we do where we put on productions but you can also

get it from improv because we these kids start out when they're little they want to play

and they want to you know pretend they want to try things and try out personalities and voices

and mannerisms and then as they get older and into upper elementary middle school we're like

stop that stop that stop acting silly stop acting weird stay in your lane do what everybody

else is doing conform and that's a societal thing it's not intentional really so when

they get to us in the theater classes we're like no it's okay to play in this space this

safe space to try different things out so because when like if you were to go on and do

a play and you had this improv background then if something went wrong if a prop didn't show up

on stage or somebody missed a line or an entrance then you would have the background

where you were like oh i will just go on i'll try something else there's not there's not

just one way to get this right you would try something else and a lot of times the

audience won't know and that's your other parts of your life as well not everything's

going to go the way you want it to go so when you get a curve ball handed to you if you've

got this improv background that might make it easier for you to be able to you know

roll with the punches and do something different so okay so my digression is yes i want to

talk about my improv game that i invented last year okay so we had two podiums on stage

just randomly like they had brought we keep a podium in the auditorium normally and then one

got brought back from somewhere else and they were both on stage so i invented there's two versions

of the game one is called debate and in that version you put a person behind each podium

if you have them and then you give them a nonsensical debate so the debate could be

chocolate milk versus the color purple yes so there's obviously no answer to that or whatever

but you give each side a chance to debate their side of it you can assign it randomly

the hardest part is keeping it under control because we had the audience just absolutely

want to be involved in the discussion about which one was the right answer and things like

that so the hardest part was keeping the audience from just overwhelming the debate

and of course obviously they have no time to practice for it and they have no real actual

debate in between something like that so you know it it gives them a chance to just basically

form kind of and then the other version of it i call pontificate and that's when you only have

one podium and then you give someone a nonsensical topic such as like please give

which is better boats or a ham sandwich like and then they get to you know again it's

nonsensical so they can pick however they want to pick like what you'll find is that

they oftentimes come up with very odd reasons why one would be better than the other

and defeating the other one so like ah boats are way better than ham sandwiches because you can

float in a boat and the last time i've tried to float in a ham sandwich you know it didn't

work or whatever and then you have just random like almost story arcs that will develop

sometimes from that that are kind of humorous especially if you put three or four of them

together and like people just try and build off of the thing that they the insanity that

was before but that is a game that i would play much later in the year that would not be

able to start with because that's putting a kid on the spot and they'll a lot of times they will not

respond well to that so you start out with these whole group games and then you make it smaller

like maybe you split the class into teams and there's a game we play and some of these games

that like there's one game we play called bear of poyers and i don't know why it's

called that i've just always heard it called that and it's kind of it's kind of like

freeze tag but i don't know why it's called the bear thing that's a good whole group one

that's on the list but then you take like you split the class in half and you say okay

everybody make a car and they have to become a car with their bodies and so you do a few games

like that where there's half the group and so you can see what the kids are doing but you're

still focusing your own thing and then we have several games that you would play with a smaller

group like body hide they like that one a lot and this one by the time you get to body

hide that they all know each other pretty well where you have a group of maybe four or

five kids and they have to hide one of the other children with their persons that they have

kids persons and they and then you pull a kid away until you only have like two kids and you

just hope one of them is really big and one is really small to be able to hide

and then you would go on i would say not until probably christmas with individual games

and it seems because when i taught the improv class the first time it was a whole year course

and i thought well actually the first time i took i taught it it was at a summer camp

for first gen college students at western kentucky university and so i only had to do it

a couple days a week for a few weeks and then i thought i don't know that i can translate this

into a whole year but i did because sometimes a game might take the entire class period

right and then if you want to maybe before you get to the individual games or after that point

then you go save the kids okay now you go teach a game because there's just a million

games out there and like brent said he invented once the kids can invent their own games

and they can teach things to the other kids and that's fun too because then you get to play

and they've got that sense of ownership and they've taught everybody in the classes thing

and sometimes their games were so i thought they were so good that i added them onto my

improv encyclopedia because you can't screw it up because sometimes you'll play a game that

worked incredibly well the last period or last year or whatever and you play with a different

group and it just goes completely it just falls apart and that's fine because you're

okay they didn't work you go on and and another thing kids can learn from improv is really

important is failure is okay if you try this game and the kids don't understand the

instructions or it doesn't ever get where you want it to go like zip zap zop is probably one

that everybody their mom who's ever done the community theater can play i cannot get that

game to work i invite you to try it it's not hard but i cannot get the momentum to stay up

in that game i never have in the 20 years i've been doing this i've seen other people do it

but i can't facilitate that game i don't know why so i don't do that anymore but but there's a

lot of things i think well this didn't work last year but mine this year and we'll try and

worst case now you say oh well that was kind of lousy let's move on so you have games you

know you have a backup plan if you're teaching you have to have a backup plan or three otherwise

i don't even know how you teach without backup plans we've played concentration a bunch

oh they do love concentration this is the game of concentration no repeats no hesitations

they like that quite a bit and some of these they know from other places or they call them

different names little sally walker's really popular because we play these games to get

and it builds community we play them when we do the um the k through 12 shows as well so that

the little kids can get used to the bigger kids and vice versa so they like little sally

walker a lot there's a lot there's probably 100 games that list and i will send it out to

you i don't know you don't need props for this you don't need materials you just can go

and then if you want to go deeper into it if you want to get into theater history or terminology

or do like small skits and that kind of thing then then go for it but right now if you're

getting thrown into this at the moment then improv can take you the whole year if you

want it to or you can kind of at least feel out the kids for a few weeks and kind of decide

what they're capable of and what they want to do because you can leave that into doing

skits you can have them write their own skits fairy tales are very easy to get kids to kind

of do their own versions of or storybooks actually last year and this will work for

a class like that once you were in second semester probably we were asked by the youth

service center at our school to present fairy tales to elementary school kids this was my

regular production theater class and so the kids got in they're already in groups all year

and each group picked a fairy tale and then they they basically improved the story until

they were happy with it and then they collected costumes and prop pieces from what we have and

also use service center had a budget and they let them buy things like you know wolf head and

duck bills and things like that and then they went to we have two elementary schools in our

county and they rotated to different classrooms so each first through third maybe i don't think

everybody they saw most the kids and they were in the classrooms and what i noticed is when they

would come out of the classrooms another group would go in the group would be talking about

how they could make it better the next time so every time they did it was a little bit of

improv because they were making the story better and better so like when they first went in

they were just in the front of the classroom but as the the day went on because they did it

i mean they must have done at least a dozen times at both of the schools like the

the kid playing the big bad wolf they would come in the classroom and they would hide in

the back behind the little kids and the kids would get all giggly because the wolf was back

there and they'd be like oh don't tell them i'm here or whatever and they used the space

and they started like using um audience interaction but that was just all improv because you can

if you build it up enough you do the same story over and over again then it can become

a fully fledged sort of scene and that's what our kids did when that was that's a lot of

fun they really and they get good feedback on that well and that's that's a good thing too

because if you can find something like that where they can do it multiple times because even

like our regular production shows start to finish runs they get maybe three before we actually

do the regular show like dresser or full dresser and then they really get like maybe two three

max of a show of a straight play and you know by the third time they're like oh man we

added this and we did that or whatever you know it got better what um when we did midsummer

i mean we ended up doing it did we do it three times we did do it three times the middle school

did come to that show because because ian had to they got all wilded and he said you have

you guys have to stop and listen to me i'm gonna tell you the story now so by the by the

third go of it i mean there were whole sections or whole things that got added

because they had thought about it over and over and over again and like and they added

them and so if you can find little plays or little skits for them to do and give them a lot of

opportunities to do it you're gonna what you're gonna do is you're gonna flex their acting

muscles and their creativity because when they do it you know if you have kids that are

interested in it when they do it once and they see a reaction they're like oh like that

got a reaction well what if i what if i turn this up a little bit more or what if i do

this instead or what if i did that oh man that got an even bigger reaction like okay

because like that's what happened with midsummer and that's what was happening with

you know those things is they were getting reactions from those kids so they kept turning

it up a little bit and seeing how yeah anything that you can pick like that where they you know

there's a reason for them to do it but it's it's not just and i don't mean like to say

like you need to run it a whole bunch in rehearsals because there's no feedback from

the audience in those situations like if you can run little skits hey we have five groups and

everybody does the skit and this worked and these didn't work and then you put them in

front of an audience and then maybe you give them another chance to do it you know or whatever

talking about monologue madness is a great one like we have people that do their monologues

and they do their monologues in front of the same kids three four or five times and

then if they make it to the finals they do their monologues in front of every single

class period in the high school at different points and so you can see some kind of growth

and change over that when they get different reactions from different kids and they learn

to pause or they learn to turn this up a little bit more or punch this line or whatever

so that's a good way to to get it's sort of a feedback that teaches kids yeah you know and

that's what theater is about that's why you do it there's a lot of people who will say to

the first time they were on stage and they got a reaction they got a laugh from the audience they

were like oh this is like crack this is the feeling they're chasing this feeling all of the

time but even those kids that aren't gonna be you know theater kids or whatever that's still

it's a positive the great thing about theater and why i'm not like we shot a couple of

movies basically online during covid and i hated it i hated it they turned out really well

i thought they were great but first of all i kept saying that because you did an excellent job and

the kids were great and the kids were in charge of most their own shooting but one problem i had

was that i kept thinking we can do this one more time make it better and finally brent was

like no this is the deadline everything has to be filmed you can't keep doing it and in

theater this is it this is the shot you can't think well i'll do it better later no you will

do it better now or there may not be another shot even when you think there's going to be

we've had two instances one involving covid where we did the day show and they came in the

administration came in after the morning show and said oh yeah you can't do the night show

because we're showing the entire school system down because of covid and everybody thought

they were going to have another shot and that was the last show for a bunch of kids and that

was really hard so every show is your last show you have one chance to get it right

and the other problem i have with shooting the videos and the movies is that you don't get

immediate feedback you don't know if it's going to work now ours did we did a show called internet

kitten and it was awesome and then we also shot a bunch of video for a show called the election

and not a single one of those those tech cues for those videos went poorly and the videos

were great and the reaction we got from those was just we could probably just have shown

the commercials and it would have been i mean that show was really good but those commercials

were ridiculous so yeah see we've gone off the trail so live theater is great and improv

is great and also it's okay to fail it's like they come in if they know anything about improv

they know about whose line is it anyway and that show's really funny but those people on

there have been doing improv longer than these children have been alive and also they have

shot hours and hours of tape to get the 30 minute thing that you watch right so most improv

is not funny and when it is funny it's only funny for that like 30 seconds very seldom is

unless you're workshopping a piece that you're doing over and over again the funniest thing

that ever happened in the auditorium was when erin enix said ip jazz and i don't know why that

was so funny but i remember it being so funny that everyone was crying they were like literally

in the floor crying and out of context that doesn't make any sense so it's very immediate

just like other theater pieces are it's it's right then and you have to be right there

and you can't be thinking about what you're going to have for lunch or who you're going

to sit next to in third period you have to be right there and ready to jump in and do the thing

and if you are a teacher and you are not familiar with improv you have to do the same thing with

the kids i have been doing improv the first time i did improv was when i lied about being in

high school to get into a high school show so i could be in a play and they had us all go

and do improv as a team building activity and everybody was older than me i knew some of

them but they were all older than me they weren't friends of mine i was just terrified

i just wanted to melt into the floor but i did it and i was like oh i did not die

you know and even now it makes me nervous but that's not bad like i think if you're

doing theater and you stop being a little twitter-pated about it then you're not i

don't know you're not doing it right you should be a little because it doesn't always go well

if you are just being thrown into this probably that's probably the best takeaway

is that do not expect everything to go well like if you get if you get one out of five

things that go well and like i don't mean like are hilariously funny yeah what do you i just

mean like no one is injured and oh the majority of the people remember their line the

majority of the people remember the majority of their lines and if it's improv you have to

worry about that right and at the end of it people are like yeah i mean that was okay you've

won man because especially if you're not trained in theater and then you're teaching a theater

class or you're not trained in how to get people to activate you know like if you're a teacher

if you're an english teacher then if you're especially if you're a first-year english

teacher who got thrown into this because you don't have tenure or something like that

then it's entirely possible that you were planning on like teaching from a book

to kids as they sat and listened and then you're going to have quizzes about the parts of the

story that you read to them or whatever and this is very much not that like it is trying

to drag people out of their shells it is trying to get people to talk that don't want

to talk it is trying to get people to shut up that all they want to do is talk it it's

or it's it's kind of a different it's kind of a different beast and so if you if you

have a successful outcome like literally i mean i don't have any stats to back this up or anything

but if you have a successful outcome one out of five times then you probably have had pretty

good luck because they're i mean even now even games that we've played a hundred times

with kids will be like okay get up on stage and do this and this like murder murder die

they will just go off into a dark road that has no light from it and you're just like oh

this is bad this is really bad and you can end it whenever you want to end it that's another nice

thing about it and i think going back to what you said about being successful or not even though

i have done this for a hundred years i think it's good for the kids to see sometimes when stuff

doesn't work when i try something it doesn't work and i say oh okay well that didn't work

let's try something else because if i am making mistakes it's okay for them to make mistakes

because so much of what we tell these kids in school is that you have to be perfect you

have to get it right you have to get the a otherwise you'll never get into a good college

and then you have to live in a van down by the river you have to beat that out of them basically

by giving them by letting them fail and letting them fail letting them fail in a place where it

is safe and the consequences are minimal so we do have some basic rules when you do improv

so first of all you your job my student's job my job is to be kind that's everyone's job as

far as i'm concerned is to be kind and to make the world better so if somebody has a

game that they don't they they get out of concentration the first round because they

can't think of a color or something like that you don't get to say oh well that person's dumb

or whatever no we say positive things and that because of the culture we have and because we do

have drama one through four in the same room the older kids are really good about policing

that culture and if somebody is saying negative things they will be like no no we don't do that

and i will call that out as well at the beginning also if they are doing when you get

your like small group and pairing individual work where they're making up their own scenes

nobody dies nobody makes babies nobody has a baby and nobody's on drugs because those to me

seem like boring and nobody's crazy those are kind of boring cop outs so you have things

something else to do but like if you get into a game you're like oh nope and our scene is

going completely where you don't want it to go or it might go to territory you don't think

is appropriate for your students you just say okay and scene and then you're done and you can do

something else and you can talk about why you chose to end that scene but you don't have to

be stuck in there with people being uncomfortable or whatever it's going to be great you're going

to have a good time and it's not this is and they're going to want to be in there because

it's not a class they have to sit in and sit in a chair and not talk like you have to

be the strongest presence in the room it's not a theater it's not a democracy but you

also have to give them some space to express themselves in positive ways and especially if

you're working with well i mean any level of kids i guess sometimes they're trying out stuff

personalities or ideas that don't work and are not kind and you just have to be like no

that's not what we're going to do here erica talked about culture building we talked about

some in the first episode but this is a way to do that because it's like oh i did this

thing with this game with you and we all had a good time we laughed and i wasn't thinking

oh i look dumb or other people think i'm dumb like that's not the case the improv thing

especially talking about building a culture the improv thing is where a lot of the cult-like

behaviors tend to come from like someone will do something in an improv game and like i said

one out of five times man it's hilarious right like celery tornado yeah you will have

people that just latch onto that and like a year later will yell celery tornado and you

the whole crew will bust up laughing yeah so other things you can teach while you're doing

improv in a safe space is volume if you i have taught in my classes in classrooms

but i've also taught them in the auditorium and you can say during the scene louder you have

to be loud with the practice that we have a light booth at the back of our auditorium that

has the name the auditorium on it and so we tell the kids to talk to that sign back

there where the name is and if they can talk to that sign then anybody else the auditorium

can hear them so you can you can you can prompt during improv games also cheating cheating is

when your body is facing the audience at like a three-quarter turn a lot of times while you're

also able to have a conversation with somebody else so you can prompt during these scenes you

need to cheat and the older kids will tell the young kids that they don't know what that

is in fact we talked about a little bit today in class so they'll turn because if they're new

their automatic response where they have a conversation with somebody is to face that

full on and not make sure the audience can see them so they're looking at their hind

end instead of their face so that cheating volume cheating and speed which is something

i clearly have a problem with when i get excited i talk too fast the first time

did when i was in governor scholars it's great it's it's nothing great called

it's where i'm at my husband so that worked out okay um he and i he had written a scene

for us to do we went to do it for the dress rehearsal of the like variety show that

every week and i was so fast when we performed it the first time he didn't know when to say his

lines because i was talking so fast not leaving him space and i thought well i can never do this

and i'm a failure at everything but the teacher was like no come back tomorrow you'll be great

and so i thought a lot about when i move my mouth like my tongue and my teeth and my lips

like physically where they are in space and that helps me slow down but still sometimes

i get excited i talk really fast so we were briefly talking about solar tornado julie so

tell us the story of solar tornado i don't really even know we were playing an improv game

that's how it started and somebody had to pick a time and a place and like all the stuff or

whatever right and so we picked the olivia had to be at a therapist office but nobody could

really figure out like what she was there for until finally i think it was josey just

jumped up on stage and was like she's here because she's afraid of celery or something

just how improv works yeah the entire thing like devolved into like multiple different

scenes there were like multiple different plots in this in this improv game whatever and i just

got up on stage and was like well the best way to do this is exposure and josey was twirling

around as a tornado of some sort and so i'm just shoving olivia out into the tornado

and i was like it's a celery tornado yeah you were trying to do immersion it's a good band name

immersion therapy yeah so that is a problem sometimes you run into when you get into

more sophisticated theater games is you kind of have to go with places and people and reasons

because every character on stage has to have something they want so what like what are they

doing and i haven't playing change was it change because that was why people kept jumping

yeah yeah like it got to the point where people weren't replacing other people they were just

jumping they were just jumping on stage and that you have to decide in your group is that

something you can handle or do you want to limit the number of people that are on the stage

i know i have an app for picking improv stuff but i don't know what it's called

well and that's oh suggestifier that's the other aspect of success right like you have to

you have to adjust your goal posts on what is success in that particular improv game

like it was going kind of okay and then someone got an idea and then two other people got an

idea off of that and then nine other people jumped up on stage and started like performing

a scene that involved tangentially connected to that right and you as the ringleader can decide

yeah you as the ringleader can decide whether this has gone far enough at any point you

can stop it way easier than like an english test or something right but that that is the

run a little bit rampant like and they're going to get loud so if you're in a classroom make sure

that the people either side of you are aware so that no one calls admin and thinks there's

something terrible happening in your room what is your favorite and probably so we've been

joined by julie who is a recent graduate of our program most recently what did you do most

recently you did tech for uh then what did we just do singing in the rain you take on that

yeah and she appeared in midsummer night's dream i did all of the fight choreography

she does do a lot of she does a lot of fight choreography for us i guess your brother can do

that now are we passing the mantle onto him i guess so i don't know so bless it so what are

some of the games you enjoyed playing when you were in our classes ninja but um you know

let's explain ninja i forgot about the love of ninja so ninja is a game that you don't want

to play and that you do want to play but only when you feel like you have a group that works

well together and they understand the appropriate level of physicality they can have with one

another so we've also been joined by julie's brother kyle who is also quite the fan of

ninja as is my son that graduated with julie so ninja is basically this game where everybody

stands in a circle and you can have as many people as you want um the more the merrier

the crazier actually basically everyone gets a turn they go around the circle trying to attack

people explain how they attack people because that sounds violent and we can't be violent

so basically you get one quote unquote attack and the idea is that you you have two arms right

that you can attack people with and you just and you're trying to hit someone from the

down on their arm and with your with like the side of your hand yeah gently not in a way that

like involves bruises and stuff or no one's ever gotten broken in this game and so if you hit

that person's arm that arm is out and when both arms are out they are out and then just

touch the arm you don't have to like hit it just touch it so basically but the whole point

is that when you attack someone your arm whatever like position your arm ended in to

has to stay there so you freeze you get one movement and then you freeze and so and then

of course when somebody attacks you you can obviously dodge but until then you can't move

so it usually ends up with various different people in many different bizarre body especially

when you have several people who just want to look ridiculous and just decide to just

like throw themselves on the ground which is totally fine yeah for the purposes of improv

yeah so ninja is a good game what is the game that you've particularly enjoyed kyle i think

one of the more favorite or like my favorite ones that we've done in drama is it's the one

where like you have to pick three scene or three things is where they work murder murder die

yeah murder murder die okay pick it where where they worked what they killed with and

occupation of the killer yeah so like how you do that game is one someone is dead on the

floor not actually dead but no that would make for clarify fake dead but make class

entire year no children were harmed in any of these improv games i mean unless you really want

it to no no no no we don't want to then you have people from the crowd give you scenarios

as like one could be oh they were at the water park or something like just some random

place that then the person has to act out and then it goes on to weapon it could be a

like they could have been a construction worker or something like that but before you do that

you have to pick three people from the audience to sequester so they don't hear

what the murder weapon and the location and the the occupation the murderer are

then you have one person who is who learns it all and then after they you get the other

people out or one of the other people out on stage who have been sequestered yeah yeah then

you have to act it out so but you can't talk you can't talk it's it's basically charades

it's telephone charades yes so that first person tries to communicate without speaking they can

make noise they can't speak words the murder weapon and the occupation and the location to

the second person when they think they have it they high five each other the second person

fake murders the first person so you got two bodies in the ground now and this goes on

until you all and so that second person tries to give information third person third

the fourth person and when they've all come out on stage and all murdered each other they get up

and you try to see if what the first kid knew to be true was the same thing is what the fourth

kid got at the end and sometimes you get it you can tell and this is true with all these games

if these kids are friends outside of class they can reach other body cues and language

much easier they don't know each other so as the game goes on or the year goes on they'll

get better at that oh like that counting game that one gets better oh so the counting game

this is a good whole group one because you're all standing up there and you stand circles make

as you want and then you decide how far you're going to count you're going to count to ten

and anybody in the circle can yell out a number but if two people say and you have to do it

in order from one to ten if more than one person says the number at the same time you

can start back over at one so if i say one and julie says two and then kylen brent say

three at the same time we have to start back over and you'll notice as they build a much

cohesive group they can and they can't talk to each other about it but they can reach others

like body cues and whatever and they think oh after a while like well julie keeps saying two

so i won't say two because you keep saying that after a while it's just pattern because we got

to like 25 or something in the last year but those were kids who have been together for

some of them for years and years years i mean like how old were you when we did

sousickle eight nine yeah so we did this like 10 years last year one of the days

jennifer wasn't there i made them do even numbers and odd numbers and i think i got them up to roman

numerals at one point because by the end of the year they did one to ten really not that hard

like it took them maybe 15 20 seconds so then i made them go to 20 and then i made them go

to 20 by even numbers and then i made them go to 20 by odd numbers and that the funnest

part was just them trying to figure out what the next odd number if you go to threes then

yeah they cannot do it by three is the magic it is a magic number so

one of the things that we were talking about kyle is at our middle school they're basically

going to do a theater class but they're they're basically kind of on their own for what they're

going to do and so she referenced the couple years that she had an improv class class in

the middle school and you were a part of that so what was your experience with them well

honestly it was it was more of the improv games that we normally play in in drama but also it

helped us bring new ones in too because we've had we had assignments where it was like

try and find an improv game that's just out in the world and bring it into this classroom

and try and teach it to us it was really fun experience because you had people who

never been on stage not really done anything and like then you had them going on stage to

they were really just in front of like seven or eight people because it wasn't that the class

was pretty small yeah like two or 15 it helped them boost their confidence and some of the

people that were in that class i was like oh well we might we might get them next year

because they seemed really promising like kids that seemed to really enjoy this and so you

thought a few of them were going to go up to where but we we got like maybe three or

four out of that program if it was they didn't they didn't you know decide to take like long

theater classes still have that they're not going to forget they got to do that i mean yeah it's

still a trait that you can have it's it's public practically public speaking like if you ever

get something that's like oh i have to give this presentation to somebody yeah that definitely

is a thing it'll help you hear i also really like um the airplane game but only when we make

someone think there's like a whole bunch of obstacles but there's nothing so the way the

airplane game works is you have a kid that is an airplane and a kid that's traffic

and you sequester those kids we put them in a dressing room that's how we sequester kids

they can't hear and the rest of the class builds an obstacle course for the airplane

usually out of children we can use bodies sometimes we use chairs or furniture whatever

and the idea is that the airplane has to get through the obstacle course without touching

anybody and they're blindfolded and the way they do that is the air traffic controller

usually stands in a higher position where they can see we usually make the course on the

where they can see everything around them and they give directions to the person who's blindfolded

so they might say you know take three steps to the left and they and they have to learn

because their right left might not be the same as the airplanes where they are they have to

learn give very specific directions um and and so the kid might have to walk through narrow

spaces or walk sideways sometimes they have to crawl we don't do anything where they can get

hurt i always stand right next to the kid so if i feel like they're getting off balance

like they might have to step over a child then i'll hold their hand so i don't want anybody

hurt but it's they have to trust that other kid and that kid has to be specific about

their instructions and the rest of the class has to work together to build the obstacle course

but inevitably it only works once a year there's two games like that only work once

a year and i'm not going to say the other one here they will decide not to build an

obstacle course but not tell the airplane that and so the the traffic air traffic

controller just makes up obstacles are on the stage so the kid is like rolling or climbing

or scooting to the left or whatever and there's nothing on the stage but the other kids are like

you're almost there you've got it no don't take a step that big and they're just so they've made

this obstacle course out of thin air and every time it happens like the kids are mad at the

end they're like oh i didn't touch the engine really well because there was nothing to touch

but every year someone's like well let's do it where there's nothing i'm like go just go

and it's great because they're all working together everybody's having a good time and

we're not here to like make fun of the airplane or or embarrassed or whatever we're

to make them succeed and that stage is much farther across when you're blindfolded than if

you can see it's like 10 miles across that stage well and it's about a shared experience

as well right like that's the whole point of all of right whether the shared experience

is an actual obstacle course or everyone being there to make up an obstacle course

and one person yelling no no no don't take a step and then like four other people

like literally you can see them like visualizing something in front of that person

the shared experience is the goal not not whether or not you play the game by the exact

rules or whatever yeah yeah if you start an improv game and it starts to slide in a direction

you think is more interesting there's no one you do whatever you want to do it's your class

right so you can change the rules and it's about well another big important rule in

improv way i've talked about is yes and so whatever somebody says is having an improv you

if you're in the improv it's true right so if you say to me there are aliens landing in

parking lot i can't be like no there's not but i could be like oh let's go see them right now

so whatever and that's and this is these are these are all skills that you can just branch

out of other places just i mean say yes try new things if they're not like illegal or

dangerous go go do that thing go to that concert or read that book or watch that movie go

to you know take a hike or whatever try things that are made a little out of your

comfort zone just to try them and you might think oh i'm never going to do that again

but at least you can say you tried it you know and improv games the same way there's someone

like oh i'm never doing that again one game that we used to play a lot and it morphed it

wasn't called this originally we called it for a long time and i think mckenzie gave me this

name there's a chair right there right there and the way the game works is everybody's in

a chair it's kind of like musical chairs and you say but there's one fewer chair than there

so there's a kid in the middle of the the circle and they say something like everybody with

red hair so all the kids with red hair get up and they have to run and find a different chair

while the kid who was in the middle also looks for a chair and whoever gets to a chair last

they're it and they do the next thing so you wonder something everybody has like everybody

with brown hair everybody wearing pants or something like that so there's a bunch of

kids then you'll if you're in the middle you don't want to be in the middle second

you want to get to a chair and we used to have great fun with that game was a great way to find

out about people like oh all these people's birthdays were in july or oh you also hate peas

until one time brody decided to do a barrel roll in front of me walked through a play in

the game and i fell over him and broke my toe and if you've ever had a broken toe you

can't do anything about that it's just broke broke for a long time it's all swollen and

whatever so we no longer play there's a chair right there right there because i did not know

that i should tell the children they cannot barrel roll during the game who knew no one knew

so that was a learning experience for everybody so go try that with your kids but

tell them not to barrel roll man the new a news game where we had where we didn't invent

i don't know because we one day like dad just brought it to yeah yeah it's from it's from

whose line but yeah it's where you have one person who's a completely normal interviewer

and stuff like you're a news person one person who has some minor quirk to it and then

you have sports and weather and weather's thing like you have to give something to weather

so all the other anchor people have quirks besides the one straight man it's like and

the straight man doesn't know he or doesn't act like he's just like okay and then goes on

yeah like it was funny because you have like you just have these random things and someone

would just be like that person believes he's a toaster and then you just go on with it

the guy thinks the toaster is a toaster i also i also really enjoyed that we have a

broadcaster because our our theater class is not very sportsy in general that is a true story so

it's always really funny to watch because dad never like nobody ever puts like me or kyle up

you know the football they they hit a home run with like the into the hoop i think one time

i said the sports announcer was doing sports from in the dodgeball game oh yeah like i think

it was kaden yeah well no kaden i usually had kaden be my straight man because kaden could do

straight like like he's pretty deadpan he he was so deadpan but while also feeding

to the quirks which is what what which is one of his particular skills uh because you can't

win improv the idea is to make everybody give everybody stuff to do so you're not

going to be like i'm going to be the best person this improv scene you want everybody

to look good and give everybody material to work with it's why you yes and and don't just

down so yeah that's a good game so kyle when you were in the class in the middle school

other than the improv stuff what do you remember from it it was mainly an improv class uh but i

do remember it was weird because most of these kids hadn't been on stage before so like

it was like wait can i do this thing well what happens if i do this thing like yes

no man like if you just do this it'll be fine uh one of the assignments that i really

enjoyed that duly made us do was a like a tiny little like five minute play thing

from those yeah from those was it was it from frantic frogs and other frankly

fractured fairy tales yeah that's a good time that's actually reader's theater but

that's a really good book to use it to put a bunch of little scenes in this also like

challenge people to build because at one of the days it was like all right now you're

going to build the set for what your characters are supposed to be acting on but

it was a miniature scale we weren't automatically in the stage doing stuff because we had a play

going on for it at some point i'm sure we did but it was like here is what your characters

houses would look like or something like it was it was really fun that way i mean it

explored more ways than just getting on stage and saying some kind of line that you have

right so if you feel like you if you're in this class you feel more comfortable teaching

it and you wanted to branch out into doing some smaller theater projects like building many

like doing costume drawings like making lists of songs that would be soundtracks for shows

like thinking about what your what your characters look like you could do that stuff

and once again i would strongly suggest the book stage and school which there's got to be

a new edition that's come out because i bought mine 22 years ago and i have older ones than

that that were in the building when i got here it's just about giving children creative

outlets in a way that maybe because they're not going to be tested on this right there's

not like well you have to have this piece of information to pass standard at the end

of the year it's not that's why this is so much fun because you have a lot more leeway

than what you would get in other you know you're not trying to build on it so

they can take a different math class next year you just do stuff and then they can

do more stuff later do all the stuff so i mean the one sort of downside of taking

the everything's improv idea is if you have the drama parents who thought their kid

was taking drama and was going to be in a play and they're expecting that and i don't really know

what the right answer to that is like if your school has thrust you into a drama program and

they're expecting some kind of outcome where you have a school-wide play or you know or

whatever then like i would say you need to target like plays where you where the pieces

are small so too much light makes the baby go blind would be one because those skits are

almost improv anyway and then that way you could have like if they're expecting you to do a play

then you need to kind of pick something that you can break into small pieces and farm out

to the kids which i would still play a large part of the year doing stuff like this and

then maybe the the last part of it try and put something together yeah i think erica said

when she was on the show that when she was first year to the theater class she just did

one show at the second of the year so if you do have a program you're stepping into

then hopefully whoever was there before you has lesson plans has some kind of background has

community support and we talked about some of that in the earlier episodes and we'll keep

talking about that about how to put up your first shows and that kind of thing but i just

wanted today to talk to those people who are just like no boots on the ground now like i

didn't have to do that clearly i was ready to do theater as soon as i got out of college

when i was in college if someone said go teach a theater class i would have been like

yes let's go right now all right how do we summarize this and there's lots of improv sites

online i just my list is what i've gone back to several times and like i said it's kind of listed

in like these are whole group these are half the group this is small group isn't individual

so that you don't give them things that are too scary you need to do that for you good

brothers you need to have a direction going the direction can change because we all just

kind of like which is like the whole point of the game change so and this i just feel

like of all the different classes i've taught improv is the least stressful because you get

points and you're not worried about is the audience going to like this and you're just

like let's just try let's just throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks right everybody's

being silly anyways so nobody has to worry about being embarrassed right right and that's

the whole point if you have to learn it's okay to just try and if it doesn't work

you say oh that'll work well thanks guys thanks for like make sure to hit the like

and subscribe button on my podcast yeah hit that notification bell is there a like and

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