Good teaching scenes
Injecting any fun and originality into a teacher-student improv scene isn't easy, but here’s some options to steer through this old classic
Most improv schools train performers to avoid teaching scenes. It’s understandable why a scene with one character teaching a skill or process to another becomes a go-to. They clearly set out a game, and they come with a setting and status that we all understand and relate to. A-grade for you.
However, more often than not, these scenes tend to be somewhat transactional and lacking an explorable relationship beyond what’s being taught. Invariably they involve one improviser controlling the scene while the other has to struggle playing being bad at the task in hand. This is never an ideal situation to find yourself in - always better to play a person who is competent at what they do, but with an unusual point-of-view.
In rehearsals for Winner - the improvised sports biopic at The Free Association - we knew that coaches are an archetype in sports biopics, and that we’d have to find an interesting way of playing a whole lot of teaching scenes. We struck upon a useful scaffold for the arc of a teacher, coach or mentor in a narrative show.
This works in 3 stages:
The coach meets the mentee - who is either skeptical or captivated by this expert. Usually the coach, grizzled and worn-down by a life in their sport, either doesn’t want to get back into the fray or thinks the protege is not ready
The coach reluctantly agrees to train the mentee - for a ton of valid reasons: they see something of themselves in the mentee, they catch wind that their own rival is training another competitor, they need to restore their reputation (see John Candy’s character in Cool Runnings).
The mentor has to die, either literally or figuratively, in order for the mentee to fulfil their destiny: “I’ve taught you everything I know”. “You must do what I could not!”, “Avenge me” etc etc.
That’s all well and good for a longer narrative show, but how can we best approach a standalone teaching scene when it happens? This is Stage 1 and a bit of Stage 2 of the mentor’s arc above.
Repurposing Will Hines’ excellent ‘You Asked To See Me’ exercise, we can inject a fun dance into a teaching scene, with a bit of jeopardy about whether or not this relationship has any legs. You can run this as an exercise to get a bit more depth The basic gist is:
Mentee: Teach me how to be the best ‘XYZ thing’.
Coach: Ahhh, you wish to become the best? Why?
Mentee: A personal reason why they want to be the best ‘XYZ thing’.
Coach: (either accepts or rejects the reasons) You may fall short / You’re not ready.
Mentee: I don’t care. I want this.
Coach: Ahhh, fire in the belly. That’s good, but in order to master ‘XYZ thing’, there are three things you must do.
Mentee: Just 3? I’ll do anything!
Coach: Good. Here are two normal things you’d expect to have to do to get good at ‘XYZ thing’, and a third very unusual one.
Mentee: Wow, that third unusual thing is really strange. Why must I do that?
Coach: Some personal justification for the third unusual thing.
Mentee: That’s a lot.
Coach: *Shrugs* Fine. Try it your way. But you will fail.
Mentee: Ok, I’ll do it / I can’t do it (but I will eventually once my way doesn’t work).
Navigating a teaching scene in this way requires having a precise awareness of status in a scene (see more on that here). It can work with either an unusual student or an unusual teacher, but as in any scene, playing both at once is harder.
A student with an unusual point-of-view is fun to play. They’ll frustrate the teacher, but ultimately they will have to show some potential, otherwise the teacher simply won’t agree to teach them.
The student can still be convinced that this potential coach is an oracle, a legend of their craft, even if they’re a bit odd (See Yoda’s introduction in the Empire Strikes Back). If we treat the teacher as too crazy, the student has no reason to stay in the scene. The grounded response is to find a different teacher (unless they have no other option, like Luke).
If they do stay, the game of the scene can easily become ‘this teacher is terrible’, which is pretty limited compared to ‘this teacher is very unusual, but ultimately brilliant at what they do’. The teacher’s uniqueness should be what makes them great, and why we’re watching a scene about it in the first place.
Also, famously, the student teaches the teacher. If the teacher has an explorable flaw, they also have a game to play, or a journey of growth to go on themselves. In a full narrative show, this helps rest having to play our protagonist’s plot and story constantly. In a stand-alone scene, it’s something else we can explore to learn more about the relationship between student and teacher, or just mine for comedy.
Improvisers: what do you make of teaching scenes? Have you struck on any other ways to make them sing? Let me know below!
By happy coincidence, the narrative improv comedy show I’m directing for The Free Association: Winner - the improvised sports biopic - is in monthly residency at The Museum of Comedy from July to December 2023. Details and tickets
Great ideas for how to approach a teaching scene. Too often I've told students to just avoid teaching scene, but they keep coming back so this is very valuable. Cheers, Shaun!