The Four Teachers

Last week, I started directing my very own group for the first time. I have taught a few (read: two) workshops in the past, and even refer to myself as a Co-Director of a troupe for a period of time, but I don’t feel that I have given a single improviser any advice that has actually helped them improvise better. I was nervous and excited about my first ever class, with a bunch of relatively inexperienced improvisers, all looking to me for advice. Would I give good, insightful advice, like I had seen so many people that I admire capable of doing? And more importantly, what kind of teacher would I be? As my fellow Monkeys in Hattiesburg can attest, I was a bit of a taskmaster when it came to practices. (Hell, I’m being polite. I was a downright dick when it came to tardiness.)

It was about then that I started trying to think about all the teachers and coaches I have had through the years and tried to figure out what they do that I like. And me being the kind of guy who loves to analyze and define, I started categorizing them. Thus, I created my methodology of the Four Faces of Improv (Teaching). I imagine it being laid out in a box, with a type at each corner, and cross lines inside the square. These aren’t hard and fast rules by any means, and in fact a number of teachers sort of straddled two corners, and I assume that varying degrees of hybridization between each corner gives us all the different kinds of teachers we have.

Artistic: This is the kind of teacher (and nay, improviser) that believes that Meisner and Stanislavski make the cornerstone of any improviser. To them, improv is but an extension of acting that all of improv must be approached treating it like, well, art. They hold high regard to the great craft (and will often go out of their way to call it a “craft”). Generally, most scenes done under their tutelage are not necessarily funny, but they are real. Artistics favor things like depth and meaning over entertaining. Required reading: “Impro” by Johnstone, or any book that when you read the word “actor”, you imagine the writer pronouncing it with very round vowel sounds.

Shamanistic: This is the kind of improviser that insists that everyone stretch for twenty minutes prior to practice in the dark, with shoes off and soothing music playing. This improviser is very insistent on things being organic, and that everyone strive for deep levels of interpersonal communication, usually by improvisers “connecting” by staring into each others eyes for long periods before starting scenes. Required reading: Hard to say. The particularly deft ones in this category have read “The Inner Game of Tennis” and the “Zen of Archery” (which, I must admit, I have read both), but all of them usually talk of Buddhist philosophy, emotional openness, etc.

Analytical: After fifty years of improv, we understand the mechanics of what’s going on fairly well now (at least well enough for a search of “improv” on Amazon.com to turn up just shy of 500 results), and the analytical is the master of breaking down improv into the gears and springs that make it up. These are the minds that came up with The Rules that are now quoted nearly everywhere, under the belief that under enough torture, a scene with confess to almost anything. That’s not to say that’s bad, because the analyticals are the ones critically thinking and writing about improv. Required reading: “Improvise” by Napier for sure, but the analyticals are the ones who own every improv book they can get their hands on.

Fun: These people don’t really want to worry about anything in an improv scene (and really, aren’t they better off that way?), and instead are really only concerned about entertaining the other people in the group. They value teamwork, creativity, spontaneity, and having a good time. These improvisers almost always come from a short-form background (or no previous experience), and just like doing this because it’s interesting and entertaining, and they like making people laugh. Basically, a “funnie” leaps headfirst into the melee, and doesn’t look back until everyone’s at the bar having a beer after the show. Required reading: “Truth in Comedy” by Close, Halpern, and Johnson, and usually nothing else.

Sure, I may have categorized the whole thing, but half the fun is finding out what particular combination of these four elements you have. What kind of teacher am I? It’s perhaps too early to tell, but you may as well just go ahead and ask my Monkeys; they probably have a better idea than I do.

Oh, and I note to Hattiesburg improvisers: I was late for the first practice.