23 – Coaching, Part 2

[music] Welcome to Improv beat by beat. I'm Curtis Rutherford. I interviewed a whole bunch of different improvisers and then edited together chunks of those interviews to investigate different aspects of Improv one piece at a time. This is episode 23, coaching, heart two. This episode continues on from the previous episode. In this part, we are going to get more into the specifics of coaching, including exercises, giving notes, and coaching house teams. First up is Jenny Santangelo. How do you like to structure a rehearsal? So let's say you've got two hours, right? Yeah, two hours. So warm up, got to have a warm up. My personal preference is for teams to invent warm-ups every time. But I think that that also puts people in their heads in a weird way. So I try to wait and do that with teams that have been doing this together for a long time. Even if they're not advanced study students, as long as they've been performing together for a while, I think it works better. But I like to do a combination of a physical warm-up that's a stretching breathing one, a vocal one, and then a lip brain word. Like I should have probably done a little brain word before we did this, just to activate all of those parts of your bodies. Then I like to do either a set to start. If it's a team I haven't worked with that much, I like to use the set to go, "Okay, what sort of common problems are, where are they getting stuck?" Okay, it's all about the agreement or it's all about their arguing in a moment when they should be exploring or whatever. So then I like to do an exercise based around either something we've been working on, and then I like to build from that exercise into sets and go, "Okay, this is the exercise where we just worked on accepting accusations." All right, when we do this set, I want you to really focus on accusing and accepting and see what that does within the bounds of the set, and then we do a bunch of sets. And that's it. I mean, two hours isn't enough time, I don't think. I think three is really key to go, ideally I would love to be able to work on two separate ideas as like, diametrically opposed as possible. Like maybe one's about physicality, and the other one is about emotional exploration. And be like, "Cool, how can we then combine those two things in the second half with sets?" But with two hours you don't have that kind of time. It's pretty much just like work on one thing, and then let's try to get it on its feet. What are some of your favorite exercises to run as a coach? Ooh, you know what I really love is I love doing silent scenes. I've been doing this a lot recently, because when you have the UCB structure of talking about game and heightening and exploration, it feels very logic based, and very brain-listy based. And I think a lot of heightening and exploration and understanding why something unusual can be expressed through physical action. And so I like to do silent scenes with people where they can't rely on their words to communicate how they feel, and they can't use their words to stop something from happening. If they want something to stop, they have to physically stop it. What ends up happening is if you physically try to end something, the other person is going to also react physically, which is going to move the scene and heighten it, and you're going to end up with this great, you know, cause-reaction cycle. And the other thing that I really recently, with this exercise, discovered or finally realized, is you, without the narrative of language, there's no beginning, middle, end, which is what game should feel like, that there is no end to this behavior. Yeah. That like, at any point in a two-minute, three-minute scene, whatever, you're almost like opening a window and looking into a house, and you're seeing these people behave in this way for this amount of time. If you close the window and you come back a year later, ideally those people are doing the same thing, right? If you're doing a herald, or like, that's, you don't want a narrative. Right. I've learned something. Exactly. Now I learned my lesson, and I'll never do that again. Right. And with physical, you can't, you don't, it's harder to have a beginning, middle, end, because you're just working on, oh, when you look at me like that, while drinking that tea, I, this happens to me, and my body does this. Ooh, okay, so do it again, and I'll do it again, right? And then we go, okay, and when you get the crumpet, oh, you know what I mean? So it becomes less about like, you want to marry my brother, you know what I mean? Right. And since there's no present or future tense in physical actions, it all has to take place in mediums. Yes, and even if you, like I had a team that was doing this, and they were dealing with like a, like a soft little animal, and one of them was like playing with the soft little animal, and the other one put it in a box. And the guy for a moment was like, you could just see his brain working to try and reason why he had to take that, like the fluffy animal out of the box, and he like, he sort of froze for a second, and then he just went, and he took the animal back out of the box, and it's like so often in our scenes, we'll go, oh, if I can just explain this, then you'll do the thing I want you to do, as opposed to, oh, I'll just do the thing I want to have happen, because it will force, it will force the issue, and we don't do that. Right. So that's like-- It's also hard to set things up of like, oh, I'm going to give you a reason to do this thing, if the justification's already obvious, just do it. Just do it. Yeah, it's soft. I want to play with it, take it out of the box. Right. It's so funny. And it's also-- I find it really exciting to go, oh, language is useful only sometimes in these scenes. Like the comedy for me, and like I recognize that there are scenes that are funny because they're logical, and because of the word play and the logic and all of that, there's lots of different types of comedy. But watching these scenes, they're consistently funny in different ways, in a way that when you-- if you were to take 16 people and have them do verbal scenes, I don't think that your rate of laughter is as high as if you get it down to the bare minimum of physicality, because you're present with each other, you're reliant on each other for the information. You have to build the reality together because you don't have words to go, we're in a bank. You have to figure out, do they know I'm in a bank? Where do they think we are? Okay, I'll go where they are. Any others that you come back to? Yes, I love this exercise where two people come out. They're talking about something small, boring, and external. Okay. Like, oh, the grass is very green today, right? And as quickly as possible, you have to make it personal to you or to your scene partner. So that, let's say, you know, all the grass is so green today. You have maintained this garden. I have admired the way you have tended the garden. Or whatever, because I feel like so much of the pitfalls that people who are beginning fall into is talking about things outside of each other, as a way to like establish where you are. And that's great, but it can't stay there. Yes. And the easiest way for me to get out of that is to be like, how does this matter to you? How does this relate to you in some way? So I love doing that. I've just like external to internal, external to internal. And especially because it's the small stuff that is the hardest for people. You'll see so many teams when they're starting out and even a little while in coming out, you know, they'll get lace. And they'll come out and they'll start like sowing the lace. And they'll look at each other really scared and really nervous. And how do you feel about the lace? How do you feel about the lace? And then they'll go, it's good lace. Right? And it's like, okay, cool. We get you like dealing with lace. That's great. Now what? How do you feel about each other? Yeah. Is it going to look really great for your veil? Or do you feel like this is a dying art? And we are the last artisans to be, you know, like, is lace like Latin? Like how do you feel about this thing that you're doing? So that's an exercise I really like doing because once you get to opinion, then you can move forward and you can do new behavior based off the opinion. One of the things I love in a scene is when the setting is an extension of the character. And we can make moves just by like, oh, you are so entrenched in this. Yes. This is your cubicle. Yes. This is your garage. This is your craft store. Totally. That now we can make those moves about other things, but they instantly connect to this other person. Right. Same thing with clothing. Like if like if you're doing like a three hand or something and you gift someone is like, that guy's wearing huge bell bottoms. Right? Right. We go, okay, cool. What does that say about the person? Right? How does the bell bottoms relate to your philosophy or how you like to carry yourself in the world? Do you feel great in your bell bottoms? That's funny. What's that about? Right? Or are you so clueless as to fashion or do you just not care about fashion? And you're like, like, staunchly against fashion changes? You're like, I bought these pants. They fit me. I'm never going back. You know, like whatever it is. But yeah, I think we get so hung up on the details that we forget how they relate back to the person. That was Jenny. By the way, Jenny and I talked more about inventing warm-ups and that part of our conversation was all the way back in episode three warm-ups. Up next with more about exercises is Sebastian Cannelli. It's like working out at the gym, like everything's working out multiple things. So like you can take away different things from different exercises. So that's like really interesting. I like making up exercises too. Yeah. It's the idea. I think that's what's so great about coaching. And some coaching gigs are great and I go in and I have to do exercises from the book. Or exercises that like people just aren't emotionally reacting to each other. So I like, well, just do I have like a list full of exercises that like work for that. But then when you work with the team for a while, it's so exciting to make up exercises. Yeah. Because you know there's strengths and weaknesses. And it's like, I really want to push this strength. So I really want to fill in that weakness. And you go, well, I am not, I think that people can repeat exercises. And I think that for some reason in the improv world, we just don't. Yeah. I took piano lessons. I played basketball. All we did was run the same drills over and over again. It's like, well, you know how to do a layup. We're never doing that again. Yeah. Yeah. But for some reason as soon as it's like improv, it's like I did that before. You don't know how mad that will get me. If I'm not doing that, I'm not doing that. I'm coaching your group and then you go, I go, okay, we're going to do this. I did that before. All right, well, I just watched your warm-up scenes and that you need to do it again, you know? The first time I learned how to do a scale, I didn't know how to do scales all over the piano. All right? Oh God, what the hell is wrong with us? I mean, it's everybody, 'cause I was that person too. I think it's just realizing, oh, all these exercises work on the same thing. - When I was on Hotspur on Lloyd, Jackie Jennings coached us a couple times. And one of the first things she had us do is we're just going to do a yes and exercise. Like, even before we did any warm-ups, it was not like in reaction, it was just like, I think we don't do this enough. I was just doing, redoing that 101, starting every line after the first with yes and, it was fun. - You want to know something? It's all 101, 201, 301 stuff. - Yeah, that's all we do. And we just change it slightly. We give you it in a different way. But to say, all you do is fundamentals over and over again, and we're just like, literally, it's the pendulum swing. You're doing a little too much of this, all right? Let's move it back, right? I think as you get older, or if you're doing this longer and you get better, you're just like moving the pendulum slightly. In the beginning, you're moving it a lot, because they're not as like sure as who they are at the top. It's very interesting just to keep on working on those same kind of things. I mean, I ran a 201 exercise with you guys the other day, which was like, sure, you needed it. - Wait, which one was it? - The neighbor one, the justification. - Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Literally basic, like just saying, "Why do you need this?" It's like someone comes up and say, "Hey, neighbor, can I borrow a bowl of sugar?" And the person goes, "Yeah, sure, why?" And they go, "I'm big and a cake." - Yeah, it's literally just remembering, like, to give reasons to why you do stuff. And then we obviously made it a silly or stuff, but that's just like, literally a basic exercise that we need to work on. - But the way that we did it, or the way that you had us do it was, at first, one person asking for a normal thing, and then giving the justification normally, and then it was one person asking for a normal, second person giving the justification normally. - Yeah, remembering that anyone could give the justification. - Yeah, it was a very nice scaffolding up of we're gonna build layer by layer. Great, now one person asks for the thing and gives the justification weird. Then finally, the ideal one person asks for the weird thing, and then the other person throws in their justification. - Well, I've run that exercise a lot, and I've realized, oh, it's good if you just build it. 'Cause I think how I did it was slightly different, and I've adjusted it to that. And that exercise goes by so fast. - Yeah. - Of course, I could take an extra 10 minutes to do the basic thing first, right? Because I think people are worried about getting to the fun silly part of practice sometimes. Sometimes you need to do a little work. - Yeah. - And I think that, as long as, if I'm coaching, I'm always honest about stuff. I go, oh, this is gonna stink about. This isn't the fun part. And I'll really go, it's not fun for me. I want you guys to be fooling around, right? But we gotta do the work. And 'cause it's good for people to remember, like they're paying for this, right? It shouldn't just be, I think people leave practice going, and at least I left practice. If I left a lot, I go, that was a good practice. But that's not always the case. Because sometimes you get stronger from having a tough practice, or something like that. And so I think that, I always, I try to be tough a little bit and have harder practices where we're actually really working on stuff, but I try to be transparent about, that's what we're doing, and it's like, really say like, oh, this is not fun. I know it's not fun. It's like that we're doing the work. We're eating the broccoli. - Yeah. - As I said, we're doing that. So when we're doing scenes later, we could have more fun in scenes. And I also, like, when we're doing non-fun exercises, I'll joke around a little bit more. (laughing) - Yeah, I mean, it sets people at ease. And it gets us back to like, hey, yeah, this is very heady. Just gotta put you in your head. I know whatever, but I did. - Yeah, that's like something I've become aware of. Like, if we're doing something hard and people aren't having fun, I'll like be a little sillier as a coach. And then if they're having fun, then I don't need to be a sillier. - Yeah. - And that's like just reading the energy of the room because people, it's with this thing, you have to make yourself so vulnerable and so like open to like, just even being emotionally affected by anything that happens, right? The only way you could do that is by being open and affected. And as soon as you're like, I'm supposed to be funny, I'm not getting laughs. I'm not having fun. You're not gonna be listening. Well, and you're not gonna be allowing yourself to be affected. - I will sometimes judge how I feel about having coached a group by the last 10 minutes more than anything else. If our 50 was like tough and not funny, obviously not ideal. But if that last 10 minutes is like super fun, great. Then it feels like we moved somewhere. We went past the weirdness and then, people love that. - Yeah. - Nothing better than starting a practice with bad warm up scenes and ending with a strong low and montage. There's nothing better. - It just feels good. - Yeah. Are there any exercises that you've come up with that you really like doing and that you don't mind like sharing? - Well, my favorite exercise I do with every group as soon as I have, like, start, I've stolen from someone but like, it's the emotional noise exercise. One person will just do a normal scene and the person on the other side before every line of dialogue, they say they have to make an emotional noise, right? And it doesn't have to be a cartoonish noise. It could just be something small, like a, right? Just like whatever you feel, just let it come out of you. And then after you make the emotional noise, you file that noise with the line dialogue that matches that noise, right? So if you make a say noise, you say something said. You don't try to like flip it, right? And I think what it does is it actually like improves listening because in order to honestly emotionally react, all we have to do is listen harder, right? The harder you listen, the more that it will actually hit you, right? And I think all people want to see is people reacting honestly on stage and being affected by each other. You could describe the most beautiful painting that you're standing in front of your own, the most beautiful couch ever. I don't see it. I don't know. I'm like a simple improviser like that. All I see are the two people on stage and I just want them to be affecting each other in an honest way. You get laughs. If someone says something mean and then you get upset, you'll get a laugh from it just because everyone goes, I would get upset too. They would mean and then they got upset, right? And that's just you having an honest emotional reaction from it. And I think people especially, like they overthink the emotion that they have to do. And emotion isn't about thinking. It's about feeling, right? And so that's why I do the emotional noise because I don't want you to control what's coming out of you. I want you to just let it come out, right? It's harder when we have to like put words to what we're feeling, right? So don't put words to it. Just give it a feeling. Put the feeling that you have inside you in the room. And then follow that up with the words that match that. Right. And that's literally my favorite exercise to do. Because you then have already set, this is the path I'm going to go down. You just need to start then talking as that person who feels that way. Yeah. Everybody's already felt that same thing now and now you're just like filling in all the details. Of course. And that emotion is going to change as the scene's going along, right? And I think like, if like someone's sad because they don't want to go to school, it's the first day back to school. And then all of a sudden the mother brings up like the lunch she packed and the kid gets all happy, right? All of a sudden we have something that's kind of playable, right? It's not that unusual. But if we keep doubling on it, all of a sudden we'll have something that's super fun. A kid that doesn't want to go to school, but it's amped to shit for lunch, you know? Right. A scene like that is sustainable. Also, I always like my scenes to be about emotion because I'm not clever. I can't come up with like a word twist and shit like that. But I know I could get excited forever. You know, I could get calm down and get excited for three beats easily without having to think. I think as soon as we let ourselves feel in the scenes, we're less detached also, right? It's always about the two people then too. Because there is that idea of like talking about something in the future, talking about something in the past, someone that's not in the room. I also run an exercise where it's like, they'll have to pick one of those three things. And then the person will say, when you talk about the, the prom, it makes me nervous because everyone goes out and party and I never drank before, right? So all of a sudden you talking about that, a future event, me being nervous that you're talking about, it brings it to the moment. It makes it immediate. It gives a reason why we're watching this moment. I think everyone is always like, why are we watching this moment? It has to be active. I think it just, you just have to be affecting each other. That's, that's always why we're watching moments because two people are having emotional balance going back and forth. One person's feeling this, then the other person's feeling this. And that's what makes moments not only like an improv but in life special. Yeah. Because that's all like life is, is like you connecting with people and being affected by other people. It's not about the, the coolest video games you could ever have, right? I always like lean on emotion. And so I've done a ton of magnet stuff, which I think actually has helped compliment and actually makes me an asset to a lot of people that are at UCB that are looking to study other stuff besides game because I add more to than just game. So I like work on emotional commitment and stuff like that, which some people here are great at learning about game and doing it that way. But I like sneak them through the back door learning how to play a game like that. That was Sebastian. The hay neighbor exercise by the way is an exercise to help with justification. And here's how the normal version works. One person says, hey neighbor, can I borrow some weird thing? Then the other person says, right, so you can and then says the reason they need it. Then the first person says, yep, thanks. That's it. One person says something unusual. The other person justifies and they both agree on every part of it. There's no argument about why. they need it, there's no disagreement. That's the base form of the exercise, which can then also be broken down into parts so you kind of scaffold it up as, "Sephanie, just discussed." Up next is Lindsey Kellorin. Do you keep track of your exercises? Do you like writing? No. I just like remember the ones that I really like and use them a lot. And I don't have a ton to be honest, because really I find myself nine out of ten times just working on organic scene work. Yeah. Because that's like what I find people. I remember once asking Kevin Heinz, "Oh, what exercises do you like?" And he was like, "I don't really care." Like teams like exercises, like groups like exercises, because they feel like the coaches come with something new. But yeah, most of the time we just need to do scene work. Yeah, I just need to do scene work. Yeah. How I can have the biggest effect and impact on you in these two hours or three hours is to work on organic scene work and get you to have good scenes. And I do feel like I can do that in two or three hours. I'm not saying it's going to be like long lasting and you're going to like, "Now we get it organic scene work." But I do think I can tweak things a little bit so that you could have good scenes and feel better about your organic scene work. So that's usually just what I focus on, what I've been focusing on lately. That was Lindsay. Remember that there are two purposes for exercises. The first, and this idea is one that I stole, I think, from Nicole Dresswell, is that an exercise really just gives the team the feeling of doing something right. It changes baseball into T-ball, giving you a nice, safe chance to take a swing and see how it feels to hit the ball. A good exercise can strip away all the other confusion of a scene and just focus on how much one particular skill can be enough for a scene, for instance, in the silent scenes exercise that Jenny mentioned. The second reason exercises exist is to drill a particular skill so that you're more likely to take it with you into the potential chaos of a full growing scene. As Sebastian mentioned, you may need to drill those things a lot. Most exercises are really just different ways of getting people to agree on something in a scene, which is a lesson we all need to constantly work on at every single level. Many coaches starting out worry about not having enough exercises, but scene work is always the most important thing. After warm-ups, I tend to do scenes, then run an exercise to work on a particular thing based on those scenes, then more scenes after that exercise, and then repeat. All in all, I run at most one exercise per hour practice. The rest is just scene work or running a full-herald monocene, whatever the form is that this team does and giving focused supportive notes. Up next is John Ascrabis to talk about coaching house teams, which are teams formed by a theater, as opposed to a practice group or performance group where the people in the group decide who gets to be in the group. I wanted to focus on coaching house teams in this episode because coaching a house team is closer to being a director. Your goal isn't just to get each individual better, but to get the whole team better, and to get their shows better. But it's also very different from coaching other teams because normally you're coaching people who have not done nearly as much improv as you have, but with coaching house teams, you're often more likely to coach your peers, people who you may have even been on a team with at some point. This interview, by the way, was recorded right after she had finished coaching my herald team, Sleuth. Here is John A. How is coaching house teams different than coaching practice groups? Advanced study, that kind of thing. I can't speak to coaching house teams. I guess I can only speak to coaching you guys. She's your the only house team I've ever coached, but it was so fun. But it's very different because you guys are my peers. There's a whole different dynamic than an indie team that has asked me to coach because I've been doing it longer than they have probably. In every case that I know of at least, whereas we've all been on teams together and performing together. I think one of the pitfalls of coaching house team is that as the coach, maybe you see it too much to their knowledge and you don't want to push anybody too hard. You want to respect everybody as a performer. Yeah, that's the worry that I had probably the whole time. The balance between pushing you guys to be better and then also respecting your opinions and your takes on the scenes and knowing that I definitely missed stuff. Sometimes you guys had a game and I didn't see it. It's important for you guys to be able to speak to that. I feel like all of us have that same feeling when we're coaching of the like, oh, I don't want to push too hard. I think we all are way too far on that side because I know like for me when I'm getting coached by anybody, it very much is, oh, I want to know your opinion. I want to steal it. I want to like absorb as much of your improv as since I can. Yeah, totally. But the other thing that weighs in for me I think is something that I think about with my very first coach, Patrick, Nooth. He just made us feel good. Like he made us think that we were good. The first thing we worked on was group games and it was amazing and he made us think that we had the talent to do it. Yeah. And I think that's an important thing you have to do too. That was Johnna. Up next is Liz Nooth. What was something that like took you by surprise when you first started coaching Harold teams? Because it's a little strange like even knowing that like, oh, I had been doing this longer than almost anybody in this room. I would still have that feeling of like, oh, am I a fraud? And then it would like, it's a weird balancing act of I'm giving notes to my peers. And then you realize like, oh, that's all I want. For me as an improviser is notes from other people who my respect, I don't care about this hierarchy. But I feel like from the coach's standpoint, I felt at first this kind of like weird, am I in the right spot? Is it okay for me to give this note? Yeah, I definitely felt that way and continued to feel that way coaching Harold night and even noting teams after their show like, oh, I really hope I don't offend anyone. I hope nobody thinks I'm a big, I think I'm a big hot shot for giving them notes. But you know, we all get notes from our peers. Yeah. I think it was surprising to me how I don't know, I felt, I feel lucky to coach. Yeah. Harold teams, there was like, I got to watch bright light do three person monocenes. You get to just like kind of watch incredible people do whatever you want them to do. And of course, I try to like give them exercises that serve what they're working toward. But like to get to watch Jess Morgan and Cory Palmer and Matt Climman do like a three person monocene or like it's a love triangle where they're playing paintball. Right. It's the best. It's so exciting and gratifying to watch people work. I don't know. I'm 100% agree. There are times where I've like left coaching where it's like, well, I just got paid to watch some of the funniest people in New York and therefore the world. Yeah. Be real funny for an audience of one. And then yeah. And then also coaching, I've encountered people not wanting to do exercises and and sighing and being frustrated when coaching Harold teams. Yeah. It's still the same challenge of like that you get from a 101 practice group to some degree. That was Liz and here is Will Hans. What's unique about coaching house teams as opposed to teaching in general or coaching in general? Okay. Well, they're better to start with so they don't need into the basics. There's more pride involved. I've almost never had bad attitude for anybody. But they are less easily dazzled by you. They're more desperate like they want it to be good or they're going to get cut. And so like they need to they need to feel like you will deliver them to success. There's a pressure there like if it's not going well, everybody starts to kind of not like each other. If you see that happening, how do you adjust? What I'd like to be able to do is just genuinely be good enough to make it better to fix it. But I've had it go both ways. I've had teams that I wasn't able to help and teams that I was a really good fit for. Confidence matters, but also house teams can detect bullshit. So you can't lie. But you can be a supportive parent. You can notice what they are doing well. And when you say it, they'll be like, that's true. I am they'll know if you're right. So you just have to be able to see it like usually there's like two sides to every coin. Whatever they're doing badly is tied to something they're doing well. So you have to help them taste success. Right. If they're having strong shows, that's when in practice, you can really go after hard stuff because they're feeling good. It's like, all right, things are going good. Let's and they'll be into it. They'll let's try something we're not good at. Let's try something new. They're excited about it. Shows aren't going good. Back to the basics. And that's that's you got to deliver. I haven't always been able to do it though. I try to narrow the goals of the million things we could do in a herald. Here's what we are going to try to do. Rounded initiations. Do all initiations have to be grounded? No, there's lots of ways it seems can work, but that's what we're we're going to look at our show and measure it that way. We're not going to worry. Maybe we're not going to worry about connections so much. I'm going to call the blackout the minute you get me anything. I'm we're not going to work too hard in the third beats right now. I want good grounded first beats. Let's make sure we say yes three times at the beginning of every scene before we try to make a big game move because we're not on the same page. And again, say why? Where you're coming from. They'll usually either agree with you or they maybe they'll point something out that you haven't noticed. But if if you're good and you've watched a lot of improbable, you're saying probably make sense and they're willing to give it a shot. That's been my experience. And then maybe not be honest with how the show went. Don't tell me bad show was good. Don't tell me good show was bad after a bad show to be like, okay, bad show. I won't say like that. I'd be like, that was a rough one that didn't feel too good. Let's go over it. And then I'm going to go through and try to find the things we did right and then try to pick some scapegoats of where it went wrong that I don't mind casting our bad energy on. It's like, this scene derailed things. You know, before that scene was actually feeling pretty good. And everyone remember, it actually was feeling pretty good. And so we lost one scene. That's that feels easier than we lost a whole herald. All right, we - You lost that one scene, what do we do? We bit off a little more than we could chew here. We missed something here. Somebody feels really bad, they apologize. But now we remember all these three scenes. I don't know, like confidence is a big part of it. - Yeah. - But also just being actually good enough to make them better. Also recognizing that you can't, like you're only the coach, like the coach doesn't come to the plate. They have to be good. Also looking what they wanna do, you're not a teacher. You don't have to force them to like eat vegetables. Unless the vegetables are gonna make them stronger. Like, do they, are they a premise team? Do they just hate organic stuff? Do they wanna blow it out in the opening? That's not my taste, but I want them to feel comfortable. - And how much do you talk to them of like, "Hey, this. " - I try to dump all the information. I'll say, "I don't like these kind of initiations." But I think you guys do, and I'll back it up. You know, you did this scene, you did this. Let's try, let's do one where we really try to blow out the premises and you'll see what that feels like. I'm a big fan of like, find it on its feet. Like, we'll know when it feels good. - That was will, here's more from Liz. What do you feel like is often your goal when you're coaching a heral team? - Similar to the way that Brandon Scott Jones sort of guided Wicked City. I try to steer them toward what best suits their team's personality. I try to discover it with them. Maybe I'll have them run their opening a bunch of times and see like what it looks like to me that they communicate well. And I will try to like, nudge them into the direction of doing something that challenges them. 'Cause I think that when people are like, doing something that challenges them, they're probably doing their best work. Especially at the level of heral night when people maybe sometimes can feel complacent or maybe they have one foot out the door because they have a project that they're working on that's sort of taking up a ton of their time or a job that's dominating a lot of their time. Even though like, maybe people are reluctant. In some cases to do really hard work, it frees you up to be the most in the moment when you're doing something really challenging. So I try to challenge them. - I love seeing that when a team takes on like, a hard form or something like that that makes them turn off the parts of their brain that slow them down from being funny. And also balancing that, balancing the like hard work with like just getting to do like a three person monocene. Just getting to go back to the basics of improv that they're all so good at. - That was Liz, now here's Will again. - So coaching house teams, you have to earn your credibility as someone who knows what they're talking about. - So I was in New York forever from like 2000 to 2013. So by the time 2012 rolled around, if I was coaching somebody's team, I had like respect. Oh, this is one of the senior teachers. - Yeah. - It was a fucking Will on, man. Even though the last team I coach got half cut after I moved so I didn't do such a great job with that last team. Then I went out to LA and some people had heard of me. No one knows who I am. No one has any emotional associations with me. And I got asked to coach a Harold team right when I moved because it was in a couple of New Yorkers on it. And they were looking for, they were actually getting a second coach. They were like one of these teams where they were like an assemblage of parts and they weren't jelling and they knew it. They weren't the worst, but they wanted to be better. - And this was a Harold or a Messall? - Harold team. - Okay. - New Harold team, but some vets on it not coming out of the gate too high. And there was only like six or seven Harold teams in LA at this time. So there weren't many. There wasn't a long walk to the bottom of the pile. So they had me as a coach and I was kind of excited. I was like, "Oh, I actually have to be good." They don't look at somebody else. I kind of wanted. I wanted to be good. And it was a lot of adjusting. It was a lot of being agile and changing my approach just like watching the practice, watching the show adjust. Took a while. I think I started coaching them like in January. And I had enough credibility to keep going, but I don't think we hit a groove until April. But then we really were a good match. We had a really good time. And that team got really good. Mostly through their own talents. But I was calling the right plays, I guess. But there was some adjusting. They had one show where I wanted them to do no sweeps. And it was a miserable show. It was a worse show that they'd ever done. It failed so badly. And I was like, "Okay, we'll never do that again." That was a mistake. We're not gonna force it. That didn't work. But to their credit, they tried it. I was like, "That's where you got to be." And also, that's irrefutable. I will never bring it up again, 'cause it failed so hard. But I can't have my ego invested in that. I can't be like, "That's my idea. I have to die on that sore." No, that didn't work. Let's not, life's too short. We tried it out. What can we learn from? Let's try something else. And every team I coach, I feel like I learned some lesson that I take to the next one. I really were taught in the opening with the last team I coached in New York. They were called never, never. And we actually did pretty good openings. I was in really good openings. But then I looked back. They didn't need it. They needed scene work and agreeing in the scenes. And I should have, it was really because of that experience that I stopped teaching the opening so much in classes. I was like, the skills in an opening are not transferable to the rest of the herald. So that's gonna come second. I'm gonna make them good at scenes first and then I'll go back and make the openings better. So yeah, I try to take lessons from the previous. I used to always try to coach the bad teams. That's I shouldn't say bad. The struggling teams. The teams that were having trouble getting coaches, I'd be like, "Well, if I'm a real coach, I should be able to take these teams. Anybody can coach San Dino and make them funny." Or whatever, my brother coach San Dino, I just realized I'm shitting up my brother. That's not what I meant. Yeah. But anybody can coach a great team and you look good. Yeah. You were the manager of the 98 Yankees Jotori. Congrats. You had like some of the most amazing players of the decade. I was wanted to take like a team that was struggling. It didn't always work. Yeah. It wasn't, I wasn't a help. I found it's a very different skill. It's a lot more confidence building on the struggling teams. Yeah. And a lot more fundamentals. Last year I was coaching two-heral teams, one of which was Iggins where it was like, I was there probably their fifth or sixth coach or whatever they've been around for a while. And it was fun. So they're pretty seasoned, right? That's exactly it. They know who they are. They know how they work. And so it was just, how can I, what can I throw at them to keep them still having fun? And where are they going off the tracks? Because it's too easy. And they can be off the tracks for a while. They still have it work. And kind of seeing, can I see that before they've gone too far? And your other herald team was somebody newer? Yeah, was Foxhole, which was that, that was for most of them, it was their first herald team. So it was a very different experience. Yeah. Actually, I feel like I maybe wasn't good with any of those struggling teams back at the day. I think I was more cocky as a coach. I was like, I can do it. And I, I maybe wasn't ready to do it. But I tried anyway. Okay, another type of team is your veteran team. Yeah. With everybody's fifth team, and they're tired. And they actually don't want to be rehearsing. Yeah. Like they don't want to be jerks about it. The theater's making them rehearse. They like being part of the theater. But they're not psyched. They can't be. They've done it too many times. They would often get me, 'cause I'd be a guy I'd been around forever. So I'd be one of the few people that'd be there, like a peer or even senior to them. Part of it is like kind of being realistic. And it's like, they're not, they're done growing. Yeah. I have to just like sort of, I can only like push them one notch up from where they are. Yeah. And just let it go. Like, fun was more important than fun. I'm like, I just had to keep it exciting for him. Let's enjoy it. Like what's fun to do? We're all good, right? What's fun? It's more about what are our strengths and let's do it than like, what are our weaknesses and fix it? We're not fixing it. But I'd send teams where I couldn't do that. One trouble with the veteran teams is a lot of times, whenever it's like left overs, it's hard. When it's like just people from different areas and different philosophies, then nobody wants to do it the other person's way. They can theoretically, but they're not excited to. Right. It's really hard to coach that. I almost would try to talk about it. The best I could like diplomatically. I'd be like, I feel like some of us like to do this kind of scene. We're really looking to do this. So can we maybe take turns? Can we like play the player? If Eric Tenoe is initiating, probably a premise. He likes to do it. He's really good at it. Like just assume it's a premise. And if Jesse Falcon initiates, he doesn't know what a premise is. And he'd rather initiate just a truthful, exciting moment and build it from there. So if Jesse initiates, that's the player we're running. It's probably not from the opening. Jesse probably doesn't remember what opening we did. But Jesse's fun and magnetic and has an exciting and so like let's let the initiator. The initiator's going to call the hand we're playing. Hell that work. Half and half. Yeah. That was will. After a show, the coach of the team typically gives the team notes. A big part of coaching a house team is seeing their shows without seeing what they're doing actually on stage in front of an audience. You can't really guide them that much, which means coaching a house team is a big investment because you're not only investing the time of coaching the team, you're investing the time of showing up to their shows and giving them notes. But that's a crucial part of what makes a team a better team. Here's Johnna. So I really am not a fan of telling a team after a show that it wasn't a good show. I think practice is a time to do that. I just personally don't see a lot of benefit to coming down hard on somebody after a show. Because I think a show should be a space where you get to experiment. And sometimes you're going to fail. And sometimes you're going to succeed. And you need to feel like you can experiment. To me, shows feel different than practice. It feels like a different space. But that was something I grappled with. How do I note this show? Because I want to be positive about it, but maybe it wasn't the best show. But in general, also, you guys had good shows. So it was pretty easy. But sometimes when we didn't, definitely, we all knew it and felt it. Yeah, that's true. I feel like it shouldn't be something you do know it. And you feel it. I don't think I need to hammer home how that wasn't a good show. Exactly. We can just get the notes on it and then move on. Yeah, exactly. But you also don't want to water down the times that a show really is truly great. I think you have to have some sort of distinction between-- that was a show. Yeah. That was a great show. That's the difficulty in coaching a house team. I can be a little more blunt, maybe, with a practice group. But also, I've really gotten away from being needlessly mean. I'm much more of a positive, I think, person in terms of notes. Because I feel it actually brings out better in you to feel like you're in a safe space and to be OK with experimenting a little bit, rather than get shut down and then be-- to uncomfortable to make moves after that. - One thing I've thought about for a while is, could I coach an entire, could I do a two hour practice session where I only point out the things I like? - Wow. - So could I do that like, like how we train, I mean, how we train dogs a little bit? Like there was the switch like a while ago where it was like, oh, we used to like chastise the bad behavior out of dogs. Now it's, let me keep supporting the good behavior and it's so much more effective. I know that's how Sean totally coached us for basically the whole time. I tried it on a human before it wasn't super effective. I'll be honest. - Maybe it's because I think I veer more towards the, let me just say this note, move on, move on. That I feel like the need to, what are the things that I loved in this and really focus on that? - Yeah, it's a hard balance. - Yeah. Has the fact that, so with like Harold and Lloyd, we have to like grade them. - Yeah. - With grade the teams. - Yeah. - Grade on like these different criteria. Has that changed how you, or did that change how you would like watch the shows or evaluate the shows? 'Cause it is very much like, was there game in every single scene? If there was not, it is at best a seven or an eight or whatever it is. How were the group games? What was the stage picture? How was the support, all of that stuff? - I guess it hasn't really changed how I've thought about shows too much because everything on that list is what I think makes a show great, really, you know? Maybe that list encourages you more to think about it as how the team did though, 'cause there's nothing about like what an individual performer did. - Yeah, yes. - So sometimes it was almost challenging to note, 'cause it's like, oh, it was, you know, a great show for the most part. There was this huge scene that stood out is not great, but like, so I have to say the show was a seven. - Yeah, exactly. - I just watch so much improv anymore that it's always for most slightly maybe thoughtful place every time, it's no longer just like, I rarely sit back and just enjoy for the sake of enjoying it. It's usually like, I'm watching it, I'm part of it in my mind a little bit. - Yeah, that was Johnna. The Sean she mentioned is Sean Destin, who coached her Lloyd team Graceland. I still think a lot about the ways I can give positive notes rather than negative notes, and that's the thing that I try to re-remind myself consistently when I coach. I think we're all kind of tilted towards giving negative notes, so I try to constantly push myself in the other direction. Some people will try to give a complement sandwich of notes, complement, critique, complement, which is a common thing, especially in professional training and feedback, and it's wandered into improv coaching, and honestly, I think it's bullshit. Don't give positive notes just to blunt a hard note, and don't give negative notes just to have something to say about a scene and prove your critical eye in coaching. A fake positive note, just to soften the impact of a critical note, feels false. And false notes undermine the team's respect for the coach. If you're giving a hard note, but you think that person needs a win, you can give the hard note in a positive way. And on the other side, giving negative notes on an otherwise great scene gives improvisers the feeling that no scene they do will ever be good enough, which can get people frustrated and in their heads. If there was a point in the scene where someone made a choice, and it made that scene great, it was that crux point where the scene went from okay, to getting kicked into third gear, that's your note. Hey, you made this move, and you both jumped on board and just killed it from there. Just point out that great choice. Here's more with Will about noting shows. - Which is strategy and giving notes after shows. I feel like that's my weakest. My weakest. - I will just go through piece by piece. I will say like, I'm not great at hiding my tone. If I don't think it was a good show, like I've realized it's like, yeah, it's a good show, but this didn't work. It's so obvious that this wasn't really a good show. I go through tied to whatever I was coaching for if I'm coaching them. - Okay. - So we're working on this. Let's go through a scene and talk about that. - Exactly. So one of the Lloyd teams I coach just had a show, and it was a great show and it was a great supportive show, which I had been trying to get them to like, are you guys as a group acknowledging each other's ideas and building them and giving each other space, but still jumping in and confidently doing that with each other? And they did that and so my notes were just, hey, I loved when you did this, I loved when you did this, I loved when you did this. And then it, but it was still, this is what I want to now work on for our next practice. So I try to kind of like bridge, past, and future in that way. - Yeah. - I worry that I give too many notes after shows. - Yeah, I talk forever. If I, when I was doing a Harold team lesson, like in it's been two years, I would talk forever. But I didn't care because I knew it meant a lot to them. And I was like, and you know what, I was coming off in New York where a team, my coach half of them had been cut. So I was like, no, it's not happening again. This is going to be a successful team, or I'm going to at least know that I did everything because I can't, I can't bear to think I let them down. - So I was talking to Sebastian Cannelli about it and he's very much of the, pretty much his notes after shows are like very direct, very like this is the thing, but he keeps it pretty short for a while. Like he was coaching, he was coaching my current team for a little bit. And it was very much just like overall, he was gonna say, good show. And he was gonna say, hey, I love this or. - I think I always do say good show to start. I think it's polite. - Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely. I always say good show. - I think it's good show, like just casual. - Yes, yeah. - I don't think that's bad to do. - No, but the notes would, he's very much of the opinion that I'm going to, I'm not going to tear it apart. If it was a bad show, whatever, fuck it, I'm just gonna say, nope, those, that was whatever this was. - There's something to be said for that, like dwelling on your mistakes might just teach you to make more mistakes. And dwelling on your successes maybe gets more success. I think the hardest thing is if somebody is disrespected by the rest of the team. If there's one or two players who are not respected by the others, that's the hardest to deal with as a coach. I don't want to say it during notes after a show. It's like, well, this person initiated, but everybody hates this person, so everybody ignored them. Also, if somebody's feeling left out and disrespected, it's not a fragile ego's. If somebody was disrespected publicly, I think it has to be addressed. - Yeah. - On purpose or not. If it's like, you know, this person swept and nobody saw it. If you, the coach, say that, it relieves a lot of the pressure. The person feels heard, then they're in their position where they can say like, it's okay, it's okay. But you can just put a little quiet shame. Yeah, it's tough though, because in the back to the game thing, if games are so subjective and everybody, but things that nobody will, nobody will ever duck responsibility of listening. If you're like, you didn't hear this. Everybody assumes, okay, that's right, I should do better. Forget comedy. Listening really, people are willing to be responsible for that in a way that's helpful. If you need, if you need someone to take responsibility, they won't ever take responsibility for a game that didn't like, but they will take responsibility for your improv fundamentals. Or I'll be like, you know, you were the straight man for three lines and then you weren't, you looked like a hog. I'll say that sometimes. It looked like you got tired of who was singing karaoke and you grabbed the mic and sang, and you sang this song. Coaching any team is a lot of like, dealing with that kind of like, not ego stuff. With house teams, I feel like there is like some ego thing. For sure, yeah. They're so invested in it and it's really important to them. They're probably really good. They probably were some of the best people in their classes. And they're in a system where they don't have a lot of control. There's an AD who's picking who they play with and they're held that gets notes all the time. It's a pressure cooker for egos. Although I will say on the side of you can survive it and then go into the entertainment industry, you will be invaluable. Like improvisers are so much easier. I mean, I haven't worked that much in the industry. Now I'm acting like a big shot. Not true. I'm trying to. I mean, they're trying to like get writing jobs and stuff. But like, improvisers are easier than standups. Right. If you've been through a Harold Knight, you've been through the hardest collaborative experience you'll ever have. And if you can just pick up some muscles there, you will be a sought after collaborative partner. Yeah. That was Will. Here's Sebastian again with a bit more about dealing with problem people on a team or practice group. If your team is having drama and I coach you once or twice, I don't need to know about it. (laughing) How do they like fill you in? Are they sending you emails? Yeah. Or like people be like, this person is like judging other players. Don't do that. Don't ever say that to a coach or a teacher. Oh, there's only one crazy person in this group or don't ever. Yeah. Because then I don't know if that person's crazy yet, but I know that someone's judging another person. That's the only thing that a coach or a teacher learns from that. I don't know why. I guess they're trying to be like, "Ah, well, I'm better. We're like equals." But that's, I can't speak for everyone, but I know instantly that I don't have a feeling about the other person, but I have a feeling about the person that approaches me to say that. It's very much the unreliable narrator thing of, you're telling me this, but what you're, what I'm hearing is really underneath this, which is you feel so insecure in your spot that you need to say your problem is this other person and then tell me, "Hey, any problems I have, it's that other person." Of course. And I've coached teams where people were actually problems. And you know what happened? They got rid of playing with that person. Yeah. Great. And that's fine. And teams have approached me and be like, this person has been trouble. I go, I know. And then I go, I'm watching the series. And I go, I know. And they go, we're gonna ask them to leave. Is that's okay. I go, of course, it's your team. You know? I would love it if you said, no, that's not okay. I know. That person, I don't coach if that person isn't here. (laughing) But usually, I think to leave a team, especially if it's fun, usually it has to be behavior. outside the scenes or like not showing up or like not paying dues. That's the stuff that I go, yes, get rid of them. Yeah, which is also the stuff that we don't see if we're coaching. So why do we need to be? Of course. We can definitely answer questions if you're not sure how to handle that because we've been on teams. Yeah, but just to say like, hey, this person's a problem, whatever. Yeah, it's also a lot of people come up to me and ask, what do I do if the person doesn't get the game? That's really hard question. A lot of people ask me what to do when other people are doing stuff wrong. Yeah, and I think like try to do your part rights and that will probably help the other person not do it wrong. Now I'm like nitpicking how people talk to me after practices. But that idea of the other person not getting the game, I find interesting. I understand it. Like sometimes, especially you do Jams or something like that, you see that. But a lot of the time, since game is about or often about that interaction between people, I know, I know. What does that mean if one person doesn't get it? It's absolutely ridiculous. It means that there is no game. Yeah, it means that you were playing something in your head and you didn't communicate it or it wasn't agreed upon. I do an exercise where the literally the people will like frame the game and the other person repeats the frame and then they shake hands because it takes two people and agreement before we actually play the game. So when a person goes to the person's not doing that, it's great. So you're still playing with the person, figure out what to do with that. And it's okay. It's by case basis. It's hard to give advice. It's just I find a lot of people taking the onus off themselves and putting it on other people. There was a while where I mean still pretty much but anytime a team asks me, hey, we want to work on game. I'll go, okay, great. What are you worried about? And they'll mention all those things. And then pretty much whatever they said, it's going to be great. We're going to work on framing. Yeah. And I want to do stuff like that of seeing them agree, watching them repeat exactly what their scene partner said that was unusual, watching the unusual person even like acknowledge and send something unusual. Yeah. I love that. That was Sebastian. Now finally, one more time here is Will who essentially interviews me for a bit. Give me some advice. Tell me, let's say I'm going to coach a hero. Okay. Like, oh, Shannon's asking me to coach a team. Do you got any advice? Do way more steering than asking, like ask to find out what they want. Yeah. But it's okay to just say you guys are doing this opening because they're going to take it out of the take the discussion. Exactly. Because they're going to have there's going to be a lot of talk of like, oh, we want to do this opening or we don't want to do this opening or we want to do this style. We don't want to do this form of the herald or this variation. Okay. If you have an idea for that, go for it. I like that. Okay. How about game verse acting? Not that they're not exclusive. But like I feel like certain exercises work on yes-ending and listening and truthfulness and certain exercises work on game and unusual thing. But maybe nobody thinks that but me actually. No, that I say that out loud. Okay. I would agree with that. I'll give you scenarios. Yeah. I'm coaching a herald team. Because it is very based on scenarios. And I think team by team, I pretty much try to feel it out of what voice do I feel like this team has? Okay. How about a team that's very silly and fun, but they're criticized for not being grounded. Like they heightened like crazy. It's got a lot of just big, like just goes nuts. But the audience kind of likes it. But maybe they're maybe they're not committed in a way. They're not getting improv respect from people. I would. I can only think of I can think of old teams that would fit this like the law firm when it was a herald team was like this. Yeah. And I'm sure there's there's always teams like this. Yeah. I don't mean not respected, but just like they're like they could just go crazy. Yes. I would have them do like genre stuff and like Oscar moments, that kind of stuff of how much can we do of that to give what's the base that they can return to? So when things get crazy, do they have a reset point that they can go back to? Oh, that's interesting. Then go back to what? I like that genre one. Why do you why do you say that? I can guess because it is there's something innately comedic about it that are satisfied there need to be wacky exactly, but it's still the base reality. Yes. That's a really good idea. Yeah. They can have fun with it, but they're still committing to the reality. And you're not saying, hey, I want you to act more because we're comedians. I mean, yes, we should act more and all that. But the reason we act is to make things funnier. Right. So have a base so that we know when you've left it and come back. Yeah. You guys were cowboys in a under not underwood deadwood in a deadwood style thing in the beginning. Yeah. And then you lost it because it got too crazy. That move of you shitting yourself would have been so much funnier if you had still been calamity jade or wider or whoever. Instead of goofball, make goofball or whatever. Right. Right. Okay. Yeah. I like that. Well, how about new team, first-terald team? They're all new. Does that happen anymore? Yeah. Absolutely. There's one mousse right now is all, I think all Lloyd. Yes. They're everybody is straight from Lloyd. What should they be doing? They're still learning. They're still excited. And they're all kind of on the same level. I think your highest percentage shot of a great team comes from that scenario. The first thing I might have them do is can you do a herald under 20 minutes? Because my guess is they're going to start overthinking of what they did great on Lloyd. I've just like, hey, doing scenes, you know, being committed, really listening and all that stuff. And they'll get that like herald a little bit of a freeze of the stakes are bigger. But if they're just like doing it to the point where you're doing it from muscle memory, right? You're assembling the rifle quick. You're not like, oh, how does this piece go in? Is that the best way? They're just like doing scenes. They're editing hard. They're not letting people stay out too long or not letting people die on the vine if it's a great scene or just like fucking suffer through a bad scene. I might start with them like, can you do a nice quick, clean, 20 minute herald? And with every herald the notes I would give would be these are some things I want to now push you guys to do as far as weirder forms or voices for the herald. Like if I see them doing more like you guys started to do it felt like all these scenes were in the same world or connected. Let's think about, I'm going to do some exercises to work on that, but then we're going to go back to a normal herald first. So that way it's still like the only focus is hard edits. What would you do with that team? Yeah, it's tough because you want to see them, right? You're very good to react to what you have. Yeah, exactly. I know that this is the time when they can be pushed the most. Yeah. And they'll be really excited about it. Would you write away like give them like a big push? I'm going to watch them for two weeks and then push them somewhere or another. I'm basically going to see how good are they at premise and game. How much of that do they have down? And when you say a big push, like what would be an example of like are you going to like okay guys we're going to do an all organic transition herald? No, just like what I'm going to do. No, no, no, no, it's more like in notes. I'm going to go harder on notes. Gotcha. Yeah. I'm just going to be like you got energy. You're going to sit here for 40 minutes after show with me. We're going to go through every scene. Right. And this is what you did. This is what you did. Right. All right. And then after and every practice I'm going to it's more just an intensity. Yeah. It's like the they're just out of the kiln that you can still or that's hardened. They're the clay is still soft. Yeah. So it's like the first fire I guess. I don't know. I don't know. It's like still moldable. Do you ever give teams homework? I have done that. I don't do too much though. Billy Mary used to do that a lot. Yeah. That's fun. That can be inspiring. What type of homework? Imitate a come in Imitating somebody you saw in real life. Yeah. That's a character. Yeah. Come in with a line from a real conversation and that's going to be your initiation for a scene. Everybody assign each other a movie to watch that you think would be helpful. I don't know. That's essentially like things of what are things that we can steal from reality. The class sometimes they'll have my classes memorized a Shakespeare monologue. Yeah. Like six lines of Shakespeare. Yeah. Maybe not even that many. Yeah. Six lines. Yeah. You have to memorize six lines. And I just I said it's good gimmick to have in your pocket. Mm-hmm. Shakespeare comes up a lot. If you can just do six lines you'll blow the audience away. Yeah. It's like totally wrong way to teach. It's like teaching a gimmick. Yeah. But it's more just to make them do something and then come in and do it. All right. Everybody get up and do six. I mean it's sort of a bullshit that it's like that's for a class where it's like they need to have fun next week. I need them to have kind of a good time. So I'll have them do this not that hard thing and it won't take that long. Yeah. That was will. I asked will about giving homework because it's something Sylvia Ozil said done while coaching one of my first teams and I loved it. Homework I've given teams are often things like memorize the Miranda rights, which is particular to the United States of course. Know how to play Texas Hold'em. So you can play a game of poker in the scene without the weird thing being how badly some people are playing. Know the ten commandments which is weird dumb little bits of real world stuff to help make your scene just that much more real. A couple last things that I've noticed about both coaching and being coached. When I coach I for a long time assumed that everyone in the room was constantly judging me or my choices or notes. Every frown or furrowed brow I would interpret as someone disagreeing with one of my notes or disliking me as a coach. Then I realized that when I'm being coached I frown all the time on the backline especially when I'm processing a note from a scene I know I did badly on or I'm sometimes grumpy because I had a long day or I was unhappy with my performance or whatever but it was never about the coach. The other side of that is while being coached I would often think the coach was either selecting me for harsh notes because they didn't like me or thought I was bad or was ignoring me because they didn't like me or thought I was bad. But again they weren't. On both sides there's a tendency towards focusing only on ourselves and assuming that everything is personally about me. So if you're coaching a team trust your instinct on what they need to work on and the team will follow. If you're on a team know that your coach is very invested in your team and is giving all of their notes to make the team as a whole better. and let your coach make the big decisions for your team. What opening or form to do, et cetera. You can all discuss it and mention how you feel about different things, but leave the decision up to your coach. It will save you so much time and argument and heartbreak. Just let your coach make the decision. That's what you're paying them for. Finally, I'll say the hardest part to learn about coaching is when not to give a note. I talked on the last episode about focusing on roughly a single note per scene, and this is related to that. But if you've done improv for a while, you develop a sense of all of the ways scenes fall short. And your first impulse is going to be to note all of them. Sometimes though, the people in the scene know it's bad and they know why it's bad. And so it's not worth it to go through a bad scene and give notes. It may be better if you know that the people in the scene know exactly why it went wrong to just acknowledge that and then move on. While coaching herald and Lloyd teams, there have been times when after a bad herald and practice, I've just said, no notes. We're all in our heads after the last exercise or whatever. Let's take a break. There's also times where good or bad, it's better to just let a team do some scenes without worrying about them being perfect. To, you know, just practice. If you trust a team enough, you can trust them to do some scenes without your hand on the handlebars. Just as in part one, I had production help with this episode from Alejandro Cardona. You can find his video essay series, Curio Essays, all one word, on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Reddit. And one more friend of the show, Chris Scott, who is in coaching part one and many other episodes of this podcast, has started a newsletter about improv called, It's Only a Suggestion. It contains thoughts about improv, exercises, things to work on. So far, he's done about three and they are fantastic. You can find them at tinyletter.com/cascot, or you can find the links at the website for this podcast at CurtisRutherford.com/improve. That was episode 23, Coaching Part Two. Please rate and review the podcast on iTunes. And if you have any feedback for me, please send it to improv at CurtisRutherford.com, C-U-R-T-I-S-R-E-T-H-E-R-F-O-R-D.com. Also, if you want to support me and help pay for the hosting costs of this podcast, you can do so via my Patreon. Patreon.com/ActuallyCurtus. Thanks so much to everyone who has done so, and thanks to everyone who is part of this episode. Hi, I'm Jenny Sianiangelo. Sebastian Cannelli. I'm Lindsay Calleran. John Ascrabis. Liz Nooth. My name is Will Hines. Alejandro Cardona. And I'm CurtisRutherford.