Teaching Organic Group-Work Improv Workshop with Cameron D

You are welcome to take inspiration from these notes for personal use, but don't copy what I've written.

Organic group-work requires each improviser to follow and to lead many times in the space of a few minutes. Each player switches from follower to leader to follower without hesitation. Judgement is eliminated so that action is taken. Ideas are executed now or discarded instantly. Our goal is to serve the scene above the individual.

And try to have fun while you're doing it. :)

Teaching structure

This workshop is structured as a series of five to ten minute long organic group-work performances called "independent films". Each performance will be prefaced by a lesson and exercise that will become a focus of the next performance.

Spontaneous and unprompted Happy Birthday

During the next two hours of this workshop, every person here will sing Happy Birthday to themself. When that person starts singing, we will all join in as quickly as possible. You decide when you sing and you sing without permission or announcement. You can sing at any point from now until the end of the workshop. Everyone must sing Happy Birthday to themself from now.

Extreme eye contact

You will keep eye contact with a partner for 3 minutes.

Palm-to-face following

No talking. Players split into pairs and choose player A and player B. Player A will be the leader, they will hold the palm of their hand up to player B's face, about 10cm away. Player A will move their hand and player B will follow. Player A must keep player B safe. Their movement can start simple, then become more challenging.

In version 2, player B can freeze their position to depart from player A. Player A will continue to lead as if they are being followed by player B until they find another player B to lead.

No thank you to brown water scenes

Some bad scenes warm-up, where anyone at any time can say "no thank you" and walk out of the scene.

Group object

Players one-by-one enter the performance space and become a piece of an object. At first, the object is named, then create objects that are recognisable but not named.

Challenge players by getting them to transition between objects by themselves.

Players should not play characters. They should all be part of the same object.

Circle soundscape

Independent film

For the next five minutes, you will all be participating in a student art project, aka an independent film. It can be weird, it can be boring, it can be whatever, the content is not important. What is important is that, like a student, you must be committed to whatever you are doing. If you are playing a character, you must be sincere. If you are being a tree, you must be a real tree. You can do whatever you like and change what you are doing as much, or as little, as you like. If you engage with other players, they may engage with you, or they may not. I encourage you to push through feeling silly. You have five minutes starting now.

Secret Mission

You will perform a Harold. Before we start, I will assign each of you a secret mission. e.g. be an astronaut floating in free space. You can perform your mission at any point in the Harold. When you see someone performing their secret mission, jump onboard and perform it with them. Be on your toes. Everyone must complete their secret mission before the end of the show. Here are some example secret missions.

• Replace an onstage character by doing what they do and saying what they say.
• Be a ghost trying to communicate with the onstage characters.
• Play a talking object.
• Be possessed by a demon halfway through a scene.
• Play Father Christmas in every scene.
• When a scene ends, do not stop playing your part in the scene.
• Make a real phone call on your real phone.
• Leave the room.
• Be an audience member watching the show.
• Make breakfast in the middle of a scene.
• Take someone into the toikets.
• Ask others what their secret thing is.

2025-08-01 3-hour Perth workshop

Some highlights of lessons I learnt.

• This workshop made it clear that using independent film as a teaching tool works well. It permits players to do what they like, interact or not as they like, put them in charge of their performance choices. Plus, adding structural elements, like soundscape and group object, give the group a common language or traffic rules. They can do what they like, and should, but when they see the practiced group games they are trained to quickly jump into them, like a football team recognising a practiced play.
• I emphasised doing what you like within the bounds of safety and decency. Safety is a concern we must learn to play and be safe.
• I found it contradictory to give instructions after observing each independent film. After all, they should do what they want and there is no wrong answer. I realised later that part of my teaching role is to notice patterns and encourage students to break that pattern. For example, a student acts as if they are in a normal performance, so they watch others in scenes and are too polite. I need to encourage them to do what they want. They can perform their own scene in parallel to others because it is an independent film, not a performance. A pattern is a script written in the mind of the student and I should encourage them out of that script.

A rough recollection of what we did.

• ZZZ, walking ZZZ, silent ZZZ
• Explained Spontaneous Happy Birthday. Some people got it done right away. By halfway through the workshop everyone had done it. I added level 2, which was to sing Happy Birthday to someone else. We got a good pattern going of singing then calling for a speech or singing for he's a jolly good fellow.
• Extreme eye contact for 2 minutes. A nice warm-up.
• Palm-to-face following. We did the usual version then levelled up. A following person could break away from a leading person until they were picked up by another leader. Some organic rules emerged, such as leading two people at once.
• No thank you to brown water scenes.
• 5 minute independent film. No extra instructions. Good way to start.
• Group object.
• Another independent film. I told them to look out for a group object and they have the choice to jump in on it.
• Circle soundscape.
• Another independent film. I told them to look out for a soundscape and they have the choice to jump in on it.
• Independent film with secret missions. Worked well.