8 Ways Improv Helped Me Be a Better University Instructor

One of the many valuable experiences of my high-school education was being part of my school’s improv team.

The Canadian Improv Games are a tournament for high school students who perform improvisational theatre. Teams of students compete in four out of five 4-minute-long events in which they’re given prompts from the audience and must build a coherent, entertaining piece of theatre out of those prompts. Judges rate teams on various aspects of performance, and adjudicators give feedback.

The events are a bit different than the ones you might watch on Who’s Line Is It Anyway? or at Second City. You can read more about them here (on account of Avast says the official site is infected with malware). The important thing is, like all improv, they involve getting up in front of an audience and trying your best to run with what you’re given.

Here’s why that helped shape the skills I continue to develop in order to teach at the university level.

1. Improv taught me to stretch my limits.

As I’ve written before, one of the cardinal sins of improv is to reject another performer’s suggestion. When your teammate puts an idea out there, your goal is to run with it.

Sometimes, that means trying out things you wouldn’t normally feel comfortable doing in front of an audience. And guess what — usually the experience ends up being OK, or, at the very least, a lot less terrifying than you’d have thought before you gave it a whirl.

Improv taught me to stifle that knee-jerk “no” when I’m nervous or scared and save it for times when I really mean it. That means trying out new activities, lecture structures, and assignments, even when I’m not sure they’ll work.

2. Improv taught me how to disagree productively. 

Disagreement is a big deal in improv, because when performers disagree, the scene can get shut down. “This is going to be an adventure scene!” “This is going to be a quiet, introspective scene!”

To keep disagreement from shutting down the performance, everyone’s ultimate goal has to be the success of the scene, not just your own ideas. You have to find what you can work with in the other person’s ideas.

When I lead discussion in lecture or grade assignments, my experience in improv helps me to find something in each comment or paper that works, no matter how different the student’s ideas or skills are, and to build on it the same way I’d build on a teammate’s dissenting suggestion.

3. Improv taught me that sometimes overplanning is as bad as underplanning.

And it did it all through the magic of this little phrase: plug and play.

“Plug and play” means treating improvisation like Mad Libs: creating a template with a series of blanks that can be filled with anything without changing the structure of the piece. It’s not a recommended improvisation technique, because it takes away the spontaneity and creativity and changes improv into a scripted piece with a few words the audience supplies.

One of the advantages of live performance is that you can react to what’s going on and build new things in the moment — and losing that vitalism to a too-detailed plan, whether on the theatrical stage or in front of a class in lecture, takes away one of the most important reasons to create or teach face-to-face.

4. Improv taught me to manage my time.

There’s nothing more difficult to grasp than how long it’s been when you’re in front of an audience in a high-energy performance. At the Games, there’s an official timekeeper whose job it is to give you “calls,” letting the team know when you’re down to, say, a minute, thirty seconds, ten seconds.

When you’re in front of an audience, time seems to pass differently. It’s important to keep an eye on how much you have left and to know what you can get done in a particular duration. It’s important to be able to switch gears in an instant to use the remaining time effectively.

Likewise, I can’t always predict how long an exercise or lecture will take. I have to keep an eye on the clock and decide how to use the remaining class time in the best way possible.

5. Improv taught me to have confidence in my instincts.

I am naturally the kind of person who likes to stop and think. I want to know what I’m doing next.

But sometimes, whether in a theatre show or a lecture hall, decisions have to be made fast but without panic. And the only way to learn how to do that is experience.

6. Improv taught me to listen to my colleagues.

I am also naturally the kind of jerk who wants to plan everything herself. At first, my “job” on the improv team was to guide the structure of the scene. My skills were pulling together plot points into a coherent, cause-and-effect storyline and planning an effective narrative structure.

That was too bad for me, because, in improv, you can’t dictate what everyone else does all the time. You’re not a one-person show. You’re not the quarterback or the coach. You’re another team member.

So, I had to learn to build with people, not for them. And it helps when I bring the same approach to the classroom, because being a mini-dictator in a room full of adults isn’t the most productive use of my energy.

7. Improv taught me that I can get up in front of a crowd with nothing prepared and be OK. 

“We’d like a location from the audience.”

That instant between your request and the responses from the crowd is when anything is possible. The next four minutes stretch blank ahead of you and your team, but you will get through it, because you have before, and, no matter what weird suggestion the referees choose, you can again.

I definitely wake up in a cold sweat every so often because my brain has decided to treat me to a simulation of what it would be like to arrive to lecture without my notes and Powerpoint. But in real life, when the projector goes dead or I’m losing my voice or a student asks a question I wasn’t prepared for, I’m calm. Not pretending-to-be-calm, but actually calm. I know I can handle it. Heck, I can build an entire four-minute scene from, like, a two-word prompt.

And actually, honestly? That calmness is half the battle.

8. Improv taught me to be what’s needed, not what I want to be needed.

In that moment of chaos when everyone’s jumping to become the character the scene needs, there can be little stand-offs when two people go for the same role. Part of performing improv well is being OK with diving on the floor to be a table or a bike instead of the protagonist.

Some days you play the hero, some days you play the hero’s chair.

Likewise, it’s easy to want all the knowledge to come just from me, or to convey a concept in a particular way. But sometimes that’s what I need, not what the students need. And the latter’s more important.

So that’s that. Eight ideas promised, eight received. Only, as we say at the Games… but WAIT! There’s more!

9. Improv taught me that the most important thing is for everyone to have a good time.

Winning is great. Nailing a scene is great. Coming up with the exact right witty line is great. Making the audience cheer is great.

But my best memories of improv? They’re my memories of teamwork and community.

My best memories are those moments when it felt like the eight of us were creating something together that everyone was into. When someone made a suggestion, and instantly, the rest of us fell into place. When every team clapped and shouted wildly — sincerely — for its competition’s success.

At its simplest, improv means that when we win, we all get to win.

When my students succeed, I succeed. And when they enjoy succeeding, my success doesn’t end at the classroom door.