Facilitation Guide

This resource is intended to support those who have attended our face-to-face facilitation training (most recently held 20/2/21 and 6/3/21). We generally suggest attending a face-to-face training before facilitating an improv session, but we don’t enforce it because we aren’t the improv police (those guys are NASTY).

Supporting Documents

“Supporting documents” is an uninspiring title, but it’s worth taking literally - these are some of the key things underpinning our approach to improvisation which are here to support you in making things happen in improv.

1. Our Self-Organising System Explainer explains our weird governance model. Basically, we aim for equality over heirarchy and achieve this through clear values and a respect for autonomy.

2. Our Anti-Discrimination and Harassment Policy is here to provide 'hard’ boundaries around unacceptable behaviour at Only the Human. It’s the big improv stick.

3. Our Core Behaviours are there to suggest how we navigate the ‘soft’ boundaries that make up improv. They also provide guidance as to how to work together. They’re a set of virtues we aspire to as improvisers and people. This is our improv carrot.

4. Our Theory of Change is our great big ‘why.’ We’re more interested in pretty good communities over perfect Harolds. The Theory of Change keeps us honest.

5. Our Improv Labs Guide is a little out of date but still includes some great tips around picking/choosing the exercises themselves.

What We Mean by Improv Facilitation

We generally think of improv facilitation as one third of a balanced improv diet:

1. First is improv coaching. Coaching involves paying moment-to-moment attention to improvisers and delivering corrective feedback based on their play. Coaching is challenging and requires a trained eye so we generally discourage novice improvisers from coaching each other.

2. Next is improv teaching. Unlike coaches, teachers have the support of a curriculum and generally are there to deliver the games. There is some discretion involved in choosing games and following the group’s energy, but corrective individual feedback is usually not given.

3. Finally, improv facilitation is primarily about holding a space to enable students to play, experiment and learn for themselves. Corrective feedback is rarely given, facilitators generally draw on exercises they already know (rather than designing their own), and corrective feedback is not given.

Although coaching and teaching is more complex, this is not to suggest that facilitation is at the bottom of the heirarchy. Rather, facilitation is important in creating spaces explicitly focused around play and experimentation. Students who focus all their energy on being taught and coached can lose the play-spirit that powers all great improvisation. The facilitator’s light touch is an essential part of any good improviser’s diet.

Feedback should always include an appreciative element too. Share what you enjoyed.

Safety and Boundaries in Facilitation

Improvisation is sometimes confused with freedom to do what you want and call it ‘art.’ This isn’t the case! Improvisation is a constant dance between freedom and form, so structure and boundaries are always relevant.

Facilitated improvisation is furthest down the “freedom” end of the spectrum, which paradoxically means that boundaries are especially important. Why? Because when there are few or no boundaries is when unsafe behaviour is most likely to happen. Think of the difference between Parkour and track and field - the more playful sport is the one most likely to create injury. The most experimental product design is the most likely to fail. As someone facilitating play in improvisation, you are most likely to witness the play wandering (or lurching!) into unsafe territory.

Therefore, when facilitating improv it is essential that hard boundaries are enforced and soft boundaries are negotiated. We have a few tools on how to manage this.

Check-in Procedures

Checking in is essential to clarify personal and group boundaries explicitly and up-front. Here’s how we like to do things at Only the Human:

1. Introduce yourself as facilitator, your name & your pronouns (e.g. they/them, she/her). You are also welcome and encouraged to acknowledge Country if you are non-Aboriginal.

2. Explain why safety is important to the group. We sometimes say: “By stating our boundaries we are able to take care of each other and ensure we all feel safe playing.”

3. Describe any hard boundaries—we generally suggest that touching should be limited to high-fives, hand shakes and shoulders and that racist, sexist or othering behaviour is not tolerated.

4. (Optional) Mention New Choice. New Choice should generally be reserved for the facilitator and only used where a hard boundary is clearly violated. To an extent New Choice has been superceded by Time Out.

5. Model the Time Out process and applause. Mention the “icky” feeling of calling stuff out and that we want to be able to have these conversations.

6. Mention that people can leave a scene if they feel uncomfortable at any time.

7. Invite people, in sequence, to introduce themselves, their pronouns and any boundaries. The group should offer a thumbs up (or some other affirmation) after each speaker, whether they identify any boundaries or not. Lead by modelling your own boundaries and/or offering an example.

   • This should be framed as only things they want to share. E.g. “Share your pronouns if you feel comfortable,” or “Share any boundaries you want the room to be aware of.”

8. If someone doesn’t affirm a boundary offered by someone else, check-in with them curiously and without judgement. If it sounds like it will be a complex issue, suggest that we wait until the issue arises in a scenic context rather than trying to figure out a solution in advance (“If we need to talk about it in the moment, we’ll know”).

9. Conclude by clarifying that safety is a group responsibility and we all need to work together to ensure we feel safe and can have fun.

Facilitation Exercise Preparation

We developed this handy guide to running Improv Labs a few months ago. Note that some of it is out of date—especially the check-in procedures, which we’ve updated above—but there is some useful advice in there around session planning. In general, we suggest:

1. Pick “One Big Thing” - an idea, thesis or form - that you want to explore during the day. If you’re a facilitator who is experimenting with coaching, limit your coaching to this One Big Thing (e.g. ‘relationships’ or ‘physicality’).

2. Give ample time for warm-ups. Warm-ups are like stretching before physical exercise.

3. Ensure there’s some pure play time towards the end through scenes or long-form.

Facilitation in the Style of Viola Spolin

Viola Spolin, the grandmother of improvisation was notorious for never giving feedback on exercises. When students asked her: “How did I do?” she would respond by either saying “You played the game” or “You didn’t play the game.” Viola never taught people how to improvise, she trusted the games to do the teaching.

As a facilitator, the only area where you could offer corrective feedback is where people did not follow the rules of a game. If you’re practicing three-line scenes with the instruction that each character is named, you can point out when people did/didn’t name—but that’s all— and even then, often it’s better to hold back. Often people will figure out on their own and this is a better learning experience than being told what you did wrong.

You can also encourage self-learning with open-ended questions after scenes. “How did that feel for those in the scene?” and “What did you notice?” are good prompts. However, sometimes it’s fine to just churn through scenes without explicitly eliciting reflections.

Facilitators should also ensure people get a fair share of stage time, players mix up who they are playing with and that the evening runs on-time in a professional manner (but not like, TOO professional).

Difficult Conversations and Emotional Labour

99% of the time facilitation should essentially be without event. Time Out will get used, but most improvisers who have trained with us will understand reflexively if what they did was wrong or unsafe. Our goal is not to get it right all the time and never offend anybody (if you do parkour, injury is a matter of when, not if!), but to acknowledge when we did do something wrong and to grow from that experience.

As a facilitator, if an issue keeps occuring and isn’t resolved through the usual procedures you may need to make a difficult decision or have a difficult conversation. The Anti-Discrimination and Harassment Policy includes a right to expel people and as a facilitator that decision, in the moment, may fall to you. The Core Behaviours are there to both support you and can also be used as an acid test—if a person in question is consistently violating them, that can be grounds for expulsion too.

Beyond that, we’ve got no advice except to show up, grow up and be ready to fail. For issues that extend beyond the session, our Volunteer Support Officers are available to help too.

These difficult conversations often fall to the people most impacted by them—marginalised and underprivileged communities. These difficult conversations are often great opportunities for people who have privilege to step up and be allies. For example, if a male Improv Labs attendee is constantly making sexually explicit jokes about women during scenes, it is an opportunity for a male OTH Member to (a) call Time Out on the first instance of the behaviour and (b) If needed, have a conversation with and/or ask that person to leave.

A Few Other Notes

• Prioritise Impacted Voices. If Time Out is called on a scene because it impacts a particular group, prioritise those voices in the room. If a comment is named as racist, the perspective of the people of colour in the room should be given primacy.

• Improv is Not Therapy. We strive to create a safe and inclusive space, however, people who are acutely emotionally distressed will need to self-manage. Generally, in improvisation, we need to be willing to leave our baggage at the door. We’re play facilitators, not mental health professionals.

  • You can feel free to mention this at the top during check-ins too.

• Let the Bad-ish Thing Happen. Don’t use Time-Out because you’re worried about where a scene might go. Suggestions like “strip club” and “robbery” are loaded, but if we call Time Out too early, we risk turning our stage into a place where we can never play with dangerous (and often fun, important and relevant) ideas. Trust that we can go to those challenging places and figure things out from there.