COURSE OUTLINE
Improvisation for Non-Actors

Title: IMPROVISATION FOR NON-ACTORS

Length of course: typically four 90-minute sessions over four weeks

Objectives: This course is intended to provide a safe space for experiencing improvisation in a variety of areas. There will be some limited discussion related to play theory and improvisation theory.

The focus of the course, though, is doing improvisation. The key areas covered will be:

●	general exercises
●	music / song
●	dialog / sketch
●	storytelling

Class Plan: Each class will begin with an immediate activity, most likely Zip, Zap, Zop. We will do exercises in each of the subject areas at each meeting, the model being more of a spiral than a line.

The other major component of the class will be to build a safe environment that fosters trust among the students. There are some techniques for doing this in a long-term course or series of courses, in this course, we may go no further than making sure people know they can opt out of any exercise.

A primary axiom of the class that must be continually in focus is that there are no mistakes. Improvisation is unedited, immediate response and therefore everything should be taken as an approximation, not a statement.

General Exercises

From the large vocabulary of theater/comedy improvisation techniques that have been developed, we will use the ones that focus on:

●	building a safe environment
●	listening
●	responsing, not anticipating
●	

Music/Song

●	rhythm improvisations
●	melody improvisations
●	chord/harmony improvisations
●	lyric improvisations (one word at a time, one line at a time)

Dialog / Sketch

The focus here is on listening and responding. Techniques will include:

●	one/two sentence prompt, one/two sentence response
●	heightening responses
●	dialogs without words (sounds only)
●	four-square exercise
●	short-form sketches

Storytelling

●	basic storytelling techniques
●	storytelling in the round – prompted by instructor

Reading List

There is no reading list per se for this course, but students will be encouraged to look at the book Free Play by Stephen Nachmanovitch.

Web References

There are a wide variety of web references on improvisation in music, theater, prayer, teaching, etc. We would like to have a website ready with links to those references. If that is not finished, we will provide some links on paper.

Feedback

Part of the course will be to provide feedback to the instructor at the end of each session.

Student Evaluation

There are no evaluation criteria for this course.