Welcome to the second part of our interview with Patricia Ryan Madson. Last time, Madson talked about how she got into improvisation and what it has meant for her as a person and as a teacher.
In this segment, Madson talks about forming the Stanford Improvisers in the early 1990s, and teaching over 40 adult improv classes through Stanford’s continuing studies program.
This is the second part of our interview with Patricia Ryan Madson, author of Improv Wisdom and senior lecturer emerita at Stanford University. Improv Wisdom is a philosophy book that prescribes 13 maxims from improvisation as tools for a life of positivity and excitement.
You can learn more about Patricia and Improv Wisdom at improvwisdom.com.
In this segment, Madson talks about forming the Stanford Improvisers in the early 90s, and teaching adult improv classes through Stanford’s continuing studies program. In fact, she holds the record for most continuing studies classes taught at over 60 sessions. More than 40 of those are adult improv classes.
Interview
Patricia Ryan Madson: … Once I was sort of into that, it took on a life of its own! The students wanted to keep working. They kept coming back. They demanded an advanced class in improv. The department allowed me to teach an whole course in nothing but improvising!
And after a couple of years of that, those students said, “We want to keep working together!” So I said OK, and the department said I could teach an advanced class, and the advanced class became the first Stanford Improvisers.
On Forming the Stanford Improvisers
PRM: So there were a lot of people who wanted to do it, and I didn’t know how to have a huge class, so we picked 16 people — almost randomly — the people who sort of wanted it most, and they became the first Stanford Improviser group in 1991.
But I never thought of that as founding a group. We named ourselves the “SIMPs” (The Stanford Improvisers), and we came to class and we studied and played, and they wanted to perform, so they’d go out and they would do little shows for the dorms.
And since I knew the Theatresports model from [Keith] Johnstone, we would offer a public performance of Theatresports. And sometimes Johnstone came! Once a year or so.
So things began to sort of pop at Stanford. There were the undergraduate classes, and my group the Stanford Improvisers who kind of had a life of their own. I encouraged them to be independent and not depend on me for leadership as a group. I was their teacher and the sponsor of what they were doing, but they were off and running and developing what they did.
On Teaching Adult Improv Classes
The work at Stanford spawned into the Stanford Improvisers and they developed a kind of satellite. The father of one of the Stanford Improvisers was the head of Stanford’s continuing studies program, which had just started in 1990. An adult education wing open to anybody who wanted to pay to take a class.
The idea initially was: we’d take some senior professors and let them to offer a sort of vanity course in something they like, and the public would come and sit at the feet of the great professors and hear them pontificate on this and that. And that’s how it started, with maybe 15 classes of erudite senior professors.
And at some point, I got invited in… I guess it was in 1991, they said, “Do you want to teach an improv class for adults?” And I said, “Well, I will, but I don’t think so… I’m not sure if the Silicon Valley elite here will want to show up and jump around and be a bunny or whatever they think we do.”
But, I’m fond of saying, “Let’s run it up the flag pole and see if anyone salutes.”
Well, I was wrong that it wasn’t going to work out because it was a real phenomenon. The class sold out every time and became very popular. I’ve taught it, I think, something like 45 times. I had the distinction two years ago of being the teacher who has taught the most continuing studies classes — 62 different classes — since the beginning of the program.
Well what happened is, ordinary people — I think part of it was the course description — the course description said something like, “If YOU’RE the kind of person who if you had to stand up at the last minute and say something, would find yourself tongue-tied, or think you’re the kind of person who can’t think on your feet, then this is the class for you. Improv isn’t about comedy, it’s about common sense and paying attention to reality.”
So that description just seemed to be what everybody wanted to hear. Because everybody considers themselves not an improviser, everybody would like to be better at it, and everybody imagines that it’s some kind of magical skill.
John Sexton: It seems almost fashionable to say that you’re bad at public speaking.
PRM: Right. 25 adults would show up for a 10 week class, and things just went great. And the more I taught it, the more I got better at teaching it, and the more I figured out stuff and made up games, the more I improvised stuff which seemed to be solutions to problems I’d see.
That’s what Keith Johnstone advised in Impro for Storytellers. You don’t just make up games. A game is designed to meet some kind of need. So you figure out some kind of structure that might [meet your need] and you test it.
So six or seven years into doing this, people kept saying, “You ought to write a book! This stuff is really helping me, I’m getting a lot out of it, it’s helping my life!” So I started in the mid-eighties, I guess, or end of the eighties, writing a book on improv.
But I’m an academic…
Wrap-up
That’s it for this part of the interview. In the next part, Patricia talks about the fascinating process of writing Improv Wisdom, from concept to book deal to publication.
You can get more information about Patricia Ryan Madson and her book at improvwisom.com
Improv wisdom is available on Amazon.com for about $10
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