The Improvising Teacher

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Improvisation: the process of combining the knowledge and skills we possess with the possibilities and materials available in the moment, and spontaneously creating.

The longest lecture in every semester of my improvisational ensemble is an introductory talk I give that tells the students what to expect from the class. In this talk I always share five basic tenets that form the foundation of the work we will be doing - there may be others, depending on my passions of the moment, but I always include these five:

  • Every human is a master improviser

  • The basic unit in free improvisation is a sound

  • Every sound goes with every other sound

  • Tell the truth

  • Have fun.

I share this with you here, because as I was editing this chapter, I realized something was missing from the discussion, and it was this grounding set of assumptions about the work. Some of these will be discussed explicitly in this chapter, some will not, but they underlie everything I do as a facilitator of improvisers. As with my beginning students, I feel it is important to have them in the back of your mind, even if  you are not quite entirely sure of their implications or how they will be fleshed out in future discussion, because in one way or another, everything I do connects to them.

Every Human is a Master Improviser

“I’m not here to teach you how to improvise. Every one of you, simply by virtue of being human, is already a master improviser.”  That’s the first, and most important thing I say in every semester of the Brandeis Improv Collective. I point out that every human is always improvising––spontaneously, continuously, and simultaneously on many levels, from the ongoing creation of our perception of self and world, to our every interaction with ourselves and others. The first step towards becoming a better improviser is knowing you are one, and this is as true for me as an instructor as it is for my students. In my improvisational ensembles, everything flows from this awareness of ourselves as a group of beings whose essential nature is improvisatory, choosing to spend time exploring improvisation together.

Improvisation is not a thing we do––it is the process by which we do things. The thing I’m doing is teaching this class, and improvisation is the process by which I’m doing it. I believe the most important thing I can do as a teacher of improvisation is show the improvisational process in action, by committing to being an improviser in the classroom - combining my knowledge and skills as an improviser and facilitator of improvisation with the possibilities and materials provided by both the individual students and our experiences together, and spontaneously creating each moment of each semester. I’ve found my students learn more efficiently and understand more deeply when my primary commitment is to maintaining improvisational flow  in both the smaller improvisation of each class, and the larger improvisatory arc of the semester. I am continually showing them both how to access and how to exist within this state of being, by creating a space where it is the most important thing, more important than any set of exercises, lessons, or goals in the syllabus. 

When a group of people focus on improvising together in this way, they will develop skills, awareness, and knowledge which make it easier to improvise. They will co-create a common language for talking about their improvisations, and a musical language to express their unique identity as a group. But what is most exciting to me, and what will have the biggest effect on their lives, is that they will discover overarching truths about improvising, truths that are not just specific to this class, or to improvising music, but are always true whenever one is improvising. 

 I know we will discover these truths together, but I don’t know exactly which truths a particular group might need, when they might need them, how they may need to experience them, or what new things we will discover along the way. In improvising my class, my primary objective is to recognize when an opportunity for a breakthrough in understanding presents itself, and to  guide the class to an awareness of it.  To give you an idea of how this works, here are a few of the more common lessons we may encounter at the beginning of a semester, and how I might improvise with them.

Maintaining a Safe Space to Play and Learn

To practice improvising, we need to access our creative impulses freely and allow them to manifest in the world. Without that willingness to play, it’s  difficult to improvise together.   I use the beginning of every semester to convince the group that improv class is a safe space to play, explore, and create, free from traditional boundaries, hierarchies, and the judgments attached to them, a different kind of space from every classroom they have been in, where free expression of one’s truest self is honored above all else. 

First I tell it. I state it as one of the guiding principles of the class, in my introductory lecture - “Free improvisation is not based on any particular style of music.  We can freely choose from all the possibilities of the moment without fear of being wrong or making a mistake, because there is no inherently right or wrong combination of sounds.  No musical style is telling us what choices we “should” be making, so we are free to make any choice we want.  When we accept this freedom we also accept a personal responsibility for our improvisational choices.  Without these conventions to guide us, we must each develop a personal awareness of how the choices we make effect the music we are creating.” 

Next I show it. I begin the class with non-musical warmups, and in the first few classes I make it a point to improvise during these warmups in the silliest, most outrageous, and playful manner possible, to illustrate they really can do anything without fear of judgement.  I never, ever, accept the role of judge. I never talk about the improvisational process in terms of right or wrong. And soon the students begin to see class time as a safe and sacred space to play. But it is often useful to stop the flow of improvisation in order to talk about something I’ve seen, or show them something about what has just happened. How do I do that without sacrificing the sense of freedom and safety we’ve been establishing? 

The first time something happens in class where I need to interrupt the flow of an improvisation and talk,  I tell them what I am doing and why, framing our inquiry in this way: “When I stop the class like this and talk to you, it’s not because what just happened is wrong or bad, it’s because I‘ve seen an opportunity to show the class a lesson. When these lessons occur naturally in the course of our improvisations it’s an incredible gift, and although I may be pointing to something one particular person did, it’s not for the purpose of singling you out or judging your success or failure, it’s to bring a lesson I think is interesting or valuable to the attention and awareness of the whole group.” This framing is important because it sets up the expectation that everything that happens in class is a lesson about improvising. Those lessons are a gift we’re given as a result of working together, and we can confront and work through them safely, freely, and without fear. Once this principle is established (it may take some repetition for the class to accept it), anything that happens can be the subject of discussion without triggering the fear and anxiety that often accompanies public reflection and assessment. This frees me to use any lesson that occurs to further the entire class’s understanding, while still maintaining an active improvisational flow.


Owning Your Improvisation 

I‘m in front of the class because of my knowledge and experience as both an improviser, and a facilitator for other improvisers. I’m skilled at helping people become more aware of their improvisational process, how to dance that awareness between the different ways this process manifests, and how to better partner with others in that dance. But this doesn’t give me any special status, power, or control over my students and what they do. Every person in my class is the sole owner and curator of the ongoing improvisation of their life.


Successful improvisation depends on trusting and taking ownership of our own creativity. Most younger people and students are rarely in a situation where this is truly allowed, so it’s important to explicitly give ownership back to the students as early as possible in the semester, and to never claim it for myself.  This begins the very first time a student obviously looks at me for approval after completing an assigned task, which often occurs in one of the first exercises I give to my ensemble:

Exercise 1: One Sound 

Everyone in the group plays one sound, in sequence, focusing on playing a sound that expresses the feeling/affect of the moment.

A person who is tentative about expressing themselves in front of others will almost always look towards me after they play their initial sound. First, I bring up the fact that they have looked at me for approval to their attention, as this survival behavior is often so habitual they are not aware they’ve done it. Then I tell them they never need to look to me for validation. Everything they do is their choice––not mine, not anyone else’s. In this group, they always have ownership and control of their improvisations. Whenever or however they choose to improvise, no matter what they do, it is theirs, a gift they are freely giving to the group to use in our play together.

Next I have them practice the same exercise, while physically, emotionally, and energetically claiming ownership of their sound as it ends. This may take several tries, and several iterations with different students, but once this concept is understood and accepted, the class takes a huge leap in their understanding of improvisation as an expression of self, and in the felt level of freedom, safety, and trust. When someone publicly and intentionally accepts this responsibility and power, perhaps for the first time in their lives, it is one of the most intense and emotional moments of the semester. 


Active Silence

Many of the initial improvisational exercises I use are designed to show students how to express themselves, to allow their inner impulses to give voice to outward expression. These exercises encourage being active. This is exacerbated by the dominant culture, which tends to reward activity and outward expression, and to look upon them as being of greater value than reflection, listening, and stillness. The excitement of being in a situation where students are  encouraged to express themselves freely, both individually and with others, also makes many people want to play as much as they can. 

Experienced improvisers understand the value of silence and stillness, and their relation to active listening. It’s a profound subject, which is dealt with in increasing complexity over the course of the semester, so I try to introduce it and stress its value from the very beginning. In my music ensembles, opportunities for this lesson generally first appear when there is an expectation someone will play at a certain time, but they do not. This often occurs in one of the first exercises we do as a group, particularly when it is done with a pulse: 

Exercise 2: One Sound at a Time

Step 1: Everyone in the group plays one sound, in sequence, focusing on playing a sound that expresses the feeling of the moment. Once everyone has played one sound, keep going around the circle, each person playing a sound of their choice. You can change your sound each time around or keep it the same. 

Usually, at some point in this exercise someone doesn’t create a sound when expected, other people don’t know if they should play, and the exercise breaks down into nervous laughter. At that point, I stop the group, and say “That was great, because now I have an opportunity to introduce one of my favorite musical and improvisational concepts: silence.”  I explain the idea of  “playing silence”, defining silence as an active choice. We can play sound or play silence––it’s a choice we’re making all the time, and both choices are equally vital to the success of any improvisation. We then continue the exercise with the instruction that at any point, anyone can choose to play silence rather than sound. This choice gives everyone the opportunity to experience both actively choosing silence, and perceiving when someone else is actively choosing silence.  

Once an idea enters our awareness it also expands out into the larger improvisatory arc of the semester. This simple lesson about silence contains the seed of many important and related ideas.  When it seems appropriate, I can now talk about how sound and silence together allow us to create a single sound, a phrase, a section of an improvisation, and the improvisation itself, which is their introduction to compositional improvisation and form. Or I can introduce the idea that silence is also active in the sense that when we are playing silence, we remain fully engaged in the improvisation by actively listening to what’s going on, and being willing and ready to play at any moment the music might need us. The choice of playing or not playing can lead into work around making strong choices, with total commitment, while still being willing to give them up when the music requires it. Which may find us grappling with the idea of ending. Which may lead us back again to discussion of composition and form. Which can lead to... 

These are just a few examples of how I improvise the arc of a particular class, by gratefully accepting the lessons as they occur. I never know exactly which idea is going to lead where, and how it’s going to get there. Improvisation classes never move in quite the same way, or end up in the same place, and they often take us to places I haven’t been before. But because we are improvising the class together, we are free to discover them however they occur, and to explore them in whatever way we can imagine.

These pivotal moments of teaching improvisation may be peculiar to the way I frame our understanding of improvising together. But I’m convinced that if you’re teaching improvisation, no matter what style or modality you’re engaged in, you have the choice to be an improviser, and allow what’s actually happening in the class to determine its flow, rather than your preconceived ideas. Depending on what you’re teaching, and how you’re teaching it, the lessons may be very different from those outlined above, but the principle remains the same. Every act of learning is an act of improvisation, and a lesson that occurs within the improvisational flow of the class is always more powerful than a lesson imposed from without.