Rounding these classes up and figuring out what I took from each class and each teacher is proving to be way more useful than I originally thought it would when I first suggested doing it!

Next up is Rick Andrews, head instructor from the Magnet Theatre in New York, who was in London for a very short stint and taught a class with us.

Rick is great! Just before coming over he had done a Reddit Q&A where, among other things, he talked a bit about the Magnet’s philosophy of support and how running a theatre is a lot more than a mere tool to feed your ego – it’s about supporting and rooting for people and wanting others to succeed. We love and share that philosophy and he proved to act on his words.

You lie more easily with your words rather than your behaviour. – Rick Andrews

His class focused on adding a bit of energy to scenes and fighting that very stagnant, 2 talking heads feeling we frequently get from improv shows. Being more active physically will even help you keep the fabric of reality in your scenes. When you keep talking for the sake of it, you end up adding information that contradicts what you initially postulated.

We can observe things, we can have ideas! – Rick Andrews

A good way of doing that is to start with a mental image of your scene. It’s much easier to be active in your environment, if you know what’s around you from the get go and what objects you have at your disposal. Interacting with these objects and your environment will help you move your scene forward without having to actively feel the pressure to be funny.

The harder you try to be funny, the more you push the audience away. – Rick Andrews

I’ll finish with a very handy activity. Be an active observer of life around you and improv shows in your life. Often times things happen or are said in an improv scene in a way that it very far from the way they happen and are said in real life. If we actively observe both and pin point these situations and words, we’ll go a long way to making our scenes more realistic.

If you feel like having a gander at that Reddit thread, you can find it here.

Check our website for information on more classes with guest teachers!

Written by Mariana Feijó