Posted on Monday, 16 April 2012

I may be wrong, but I believe my friend Porter Mason put together a group (The Porter Mason Project?) which he coached (for free?) in order to gain more coaching experience.  All of those players went on to improv acclaim afterwards! If someone more in-the-know would care to set me straight on this if I’m wrong, I’d appreciate it. improv-is-easy: When you feel like you know how to help other people get better at improv, then it’s time to give coaching a try. You won’t be 100% sure because you’ve never coached before, and that’s OK. Give it a shot, maybe with a new team or a practice group made up of people you know. You’re not a douche, so you won’t charge a lot of money (or even the standard rate) because it’s a learning experience for you… like an internship, if you will. If you’re good at coaching, you’ll do it more (hopefully). If you’re not, you won’t (hopefully). The PIT has a “10,000 Hours” program that places people who wanna learn to coach with new groups (I might be mistaken about the details). It’s a great idea, and far more noble than the standard “It’s time I start making money repeating things I learned in a class!” way of doing things. Again, (and I’ll bold that because it’s important), start coaching when you feel like you know how to help other people get better at improv. With specific exercises. By being able to quickly identify the problems of that specific group and the individuals in it. By being able to communicate well. Also, being a good coach has NOTHING to do with being on a house team. It isn’t presumptuous at all, and I wish people didn’t feel that way. I’m heading into rant territory (I had a similar rant about coaching during Chris Gethard’s symposium), but I’ll save that for another post. Hope this helped, and thanks for asking! Anyone else with a question, please ask! (Just be patient, as I usually answer them in the order in which they were received, unless it’s very simple and I’m in a rush that day.)

I may be wrong, but I believe my friend Porter Mason put together a group (The Porter Mason Project?) which he coached (for free?) in order to gain more coaching experience.  All of those players went on to improv acclaim afterwards!

If someone more in-the-know would care to set me straight on this if I’m wrong, I’d appreciate it.

improv-is-easy:

When you feel like you know how to help other people get better at improv, then it’s time to give coaching a try.

You won’t be 100% sure because you’ve never coached before, and that’s OK. Give it a shot, maybe with a new team or a practice group made up of people you know. You’re not a douche, so you won’t charge a lot of money (or even the standard rate) because it’s a learning experience for you… like an internship, if you will.

If you’re good at coaching, you’ll do it more (hopefully). If you’re not, you won’t (hopefully).

The PIT has a “10,000 Hours” program that places people who wanna learn to coach with new groups (I might be mistaken about the details). It’s a great idea, and far more noble than the standard “It’s time I start making money repeating things I learned in a class!” way of doing things.

Again, (and I’ll bold that because it’s important), start coaching when you feel like you know how to help other people get better at improv. With specific exercises. By being able to quickly identify the problems of that specific group and the individuals in it. By being able to communicate well.

Also, being a good coach has NOTHING to do with being on a house team. It isn’t presumptuous at all, and I wish people didn’t feel that way.

I’m heading into rant territory (I had a similar rant about coaching during Chris Gethard’s symposium), but I’ll save that for another post.

Hope this helped, and thanks for asking!

Anyone else with a question, please ask! (Just be patient, as I usually answer them in the order in which they were received, unless it’s very simple and I’m in a rush that day.)

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