Whose Class is it Anyway?

By Kenneth Shand

Last year I worked on a week-long project in Italy. Inquisitive by nature, I could not help but walk past other teacher’s classrooms, curious to see what was happening inside, keen to learn new approaches and ideas. I soon discovered that in one of the classrooms, incredible things were happening. The students were communicating with ease, excited by the lessons, keen to share their enthusiasm. Yet it turned out that the teacher was not teaching English in the traditional way. Her whole syllabus was based on the theatre games of Viola Spolin. She was teaching them improv.

Viola Spolin, a Russian-Jewish emigree to Chicago, is now considered the “mother of improv”, mostly on the basis of her Improvisation for the Theater (1963). That book drew on her experiments with immigrant children in Chicago where, inspired by the collection, compilation, and celebration of children’s games initiated by Neva Boyd, Spolin practised a mixture of theatre tuition and social work. Paradoxically, though, it can be said that Spolin’s most enduring legacy provides the greatest barrier to using her ideas.

Spolin’s theatre games still underpin the increasingly slick and spontaneous routines of the greatest stand-up comedians and such performers are treated as expert improvisers, capable of riffing for hours off the occasional contributions of an audience whose main responsibility is to shout something out, then sit back and consume the product. Improvisers, whether we speak of comedians or jazz musicians, are regarded as an exclusive group. Yet this runs counter to Spolin’s aim.

In Improvisation for the Theater (1963), Spolin lays out a stirring manifesto for theatre educators. The principles could be applied to any educational setting, but they seem an especially good fit for the language classroom:

We learn through experience and experiencing, and no one teaches anyone anything. This is as true for the infant moving from kicking to crawling to walking as it is for the scientist with his equations.

If the environment permits it, anyone can learn whatever he chooses to learn; and if the individual permits it, the environment will teach him everything it has to teach. “Talent” or “lack of talent” have little to do with it.

We can, in fact, read Improvisation for the Theater as a radical approach to classroom management. The people Spolin worked with were not the stereotypical “theatre-types” you may associate with improvised comedy but rather the children of deprived and disenfranchised families, lacking a common language and still forging their identities. Underpinning her approach was her identification and description of the approval/disapproval mechanism:

Our simplest move out into the environment is interrupted by our need for favorable comment or interpretation by established authority. We either fear that we will not get approval, or we accept outside comment and interpretation unquestionably. In a culture where approval/disapproval has become the predominant regulator of effort and position, and often the substitute for love, our personal freedoms are dissipated.

For Spolin, the teacher-as-authority-figure was a stifling idea that took all the enjoyment out of learning. Her analysis of the problem still rings true today. I remember the first couple of times I elicited a panic reaction from an adult student when I tried to look at their written answers. Seeing in me the shadow of some tyrannical teacher of their childhood, they covered up their work in shame and fear. The Spolin principle of “mistake as opportunity” has clearly taken time to filter through.

What becomes clear when one tries to establish an anti-authoritarian classroom, one free of the approval/disapproval mechanism, however, is that it is not realistic or advisable for the teacher to surrender all judgement and give up all control. Spolin sought to replace teachers with “side-coaches” and learners with “players”, but these modified roles are no less active or important. Constantly monitoring and circulating the room, the side-coach is tasked with gently redirecting and defusing student attempts to control each other.

It is notable that when one first introduces theatre games to a class, “strong” students will inevitably complain loudly that their peers are not playing the game properly. Anyone familiar with children’s games knows that it is this peer-judgement and jostling for control of a game that really sucks the joy out of it.

In her use of a “Point of Concentration” for each game, a non-linguistic goal that the side-coach reminds the other players about, theatre games have some overlap with the principles of Task-Based Learning, as well as an obvious affinity with Total Physical Response and gamification strategies. In fact, it is very likely that most language teachers are already using a range of theatre games in their daily practice. This is probably the best way to start: using improv activities as warmers, coolers or fillers until one feels confident enough to have whole lessons based on them.

With that in mind, here are four improv games you can use straight away:

1. What are you doing?

Players form a circle and one begins miming an action. The player next to them asks “What are you doing?” and they must announce something they definitely aren’t doing. The questioner must then act out the action announced. The next player asks what they are doing and they must again announce something they aren’t doing and so on, so that play continues round the circle.

2. Half-life

A scene or task is completed against a two-minute timer. The task is then repeated, but it needs to be completed in one minute, then thirty seconds and then fifteen.

3. Gibberish Interpreter

Two students are given a situation: they may be making a complaint or a deal with each other, for example, or asking directions, or arguing. They can only speak in their own made-up language termed “gibberish”, which they alone understand. A third student must mediate between them, “translating” their words and actions into English for the other player. Both players are to accept the interpreter’s translation and proceed accordingly.

4. Two-Headed Expert

Two or three players act as though conjoined and stand before the class. The audience asks them questions on a topic they are an “expert” in, and they must answer with seriousness, alternating between themselves word-by-word.

Each game can, of course, be used to fulfil a conventional lesson objective. “What Are You Doing” could be used to consolidate a group’s use of present continuous, while “Half-Life” provides a fun frame for task repetition. “Gibberish Interpreter” might be chosen for a class on linguistic mediation, while “Two-Headed Expert” could be used to strengthen the cohesion and fluency of student output. Using the games in this way, though, without embracing Spolin’s teaching philosophy, is likely to give rise to weaker output.

A series of fun, energetic games that ends with student mistakes being boarded is unlikely to build the atmosphere of carefree acceptance the games demand, so the feedback stage of the lesson should be replaced by student self-reflection, termed “evaluation” by Spolin. The focus here is on whether the objectives of the game have been met and the decision about this lies with the players themselves: the students.

Errors should not, of course, be ignored, but become the basis of future lessons. It is helpful to think of each class as a live event, a performance. Within such a frame it is not impossible to conceive of alternating between an authoritative style when accuracy-based lessons are needed and a side-coaching style for work on fluency. An improv class is ideal for building that skill, as well as confidence and group cohesion, but shouldn’t be the only method used with, for example, an exam group.

If you are interested in learning more about using improv in the classroom, there is a wealth of great material available, from Adrian Underhill’s excellent free webinar on the IH London portal, to the excellent collection of activities found in Enlivening Instruction With Drama And Improv (2021), by Melisa Cahnmann and Kathleen McGovern or Erika Piazzoli’s academic/biographical Embodying Language in Action (2018). For great advice on side-coaching, Spolin’s British counterpart Keith Johnstone’s Impro For Storytellers (1999) is a treasure trove. In the end, though, it all starts with Spolin.

Bibliography

Cahnmann-Taylor, M. and McGovern, K. (2021) Enlivening instruction with drama and improv: A guide for second language and world language teachers. 1st edn. New York: Routledge

Johnstone, K. (1999) Impro for Storytellers: Theatresports and the art of making things happen. London: Faber and Faber Adrian Underhill

Spolin, V. (1963) Improvisation for the theater: a handbook of teaching and directing techniques. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press

Spolin, V., 1985. Theater Games for the Classroom: A Teacher’s Handbook. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Underhill, A. (2021) ‘Improvisation and emergence in teaching and training’, IH London Teacher Portal, https://teacherportal.ihlondon.com/path-player?courseid=webinars&unit=64a7f163ddc0df6a6306d036Unit, accessed 26 June.

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