Improve Through Improv: ComedySportz Can Improve Your Individual Skills

Anyone who has witnessed the shenanigans at an improv show could tell you how entertaining, charming and all around wacky the experience is. However, when you look further into the entire idea of these silly charades, what is revealed is a team dedicated to constantly supporting one another in the hopes that they can get a few laughs from the audience. Like I'm sure many have encountered, these attempts can be embarrassingly bad at times. Nevertheless, the series of intense ups and downs as a team has improved every team individual's ability to work together and to think quickly as a unit. Sounds like a good idea for the classroom right? In high school, I was a member of the Comedy Sportz High School League and had the pleasure to participate in such hilarious activities. Every week we met for practice, which only required us to play fun improv games for two hours, and about once a month we played with other local high schools that also had the program at their schools. Improv was a good way for me, as well as the others on my team, to improve not only individual skills, but also social skills. This week I decided to take a look at the ways including an Improv program in schools could enhance a child's education by improving both individual skills and social skills.

Upon researching, I stumbled upon several businesses that have included improv workshops in their office training for the same reasons I have purposed including them in the classroom. In addition to individual and social skill improvement, Microsoft Online points out that it can also help with constructive criticism. "It provides instant feedback on what you're doing right and what you need to improve on." I think this is also an important part because it gets a person used to rejection and criticism - it teaches about failure and how to cope. One of the hardest parts of growing up can be the judgment and cruelty of others. By placing students in a playful situation that involves these lessons, it may be easier to learn to deal with the harshness of others.

In Comedy Sportz, my coach always reinforced the principles of a successful scene: who (are you; relationships), what (is the conflict), where (are you located), and, the most important, to never say no. The notion behind the last principle is that saying no to a teammate could hinder the progress of the scene. Unlike acting, which primarily focuses on the self improvement of one's acting, improv is focused on the team's improvement of their ability to create a humorous scene. Therefore, the team is not only constantly remembering the principles to a successful scene, but also about supporting one another. For me personally, this juggling helped me become a quick and alert

thinker, which has become an important life skill. Especially for students that are not as quick to improvise, it will help them fix this.

The most gratifying part of the experience (besides the moment when the audience roars because of a joke YOU just told) is the overall playful environment it teaches you thrive in. It reminds you to try and take the little things lightly, and to focus on what's important to progress. It also reminds you that success requires a lot of hard, constant work for a good pay-off. These are all positive tools that could seriously benefit students in the classroom, because it will instill principles that are not just important in the silly scene, but also in life.