Keith Johnstone

By Kat Koppett

25 March 2023

On March 11th, the great improvisational theater master Keith Johnstone, passed away at the age of 90. (See Hollywood Reporter: Keith Johnstone Dead: Improv Trailblazer, Dies at 90.) It is hard to overstate the impact of contributions to  on the artform, or by extension on the slew of related fields from comedy to education to business that have drawn from his teaching. His seminal 1979 book, Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre, and his many theatrical formats, most famous among them, “Theatresports” remain actively referenced and performed globally. Keith is to improvisational theater what Thiagi is to interactive learning design and facilitation - a mentor to innumerable members of two or three generations of practitioners and innovators, one of a very small handful of folks who created and defined a field.

And, like many innovative thought-leaders, Keith was a contrarian who defied convention and resisted tradition, Keith, as I experienced him, mostly through summer intensive programs at BATS Improv in San Francisco, could be a curmudgeonly and confounding teacher. Although he attracted adoring disciples, I also saw him frustrate and confuse students. Often after watching a show he would begin his feedback with, “It was terrible, guys. Just awful!” The more traditionally slick or technically adept folks were, the more disdain he was likely to express. He detested musical improvisation. (One of my personal specialties.)

I began to appreciate and glean value from his classes when I realized that he was working most for the benefit of the students observing, not for the students on stage in the scene he was coaching. So, when I was one of the students being coached, I learned to surrender to his will and allow myself to serve the learning goals of the larger group, rather than only focus on building my own skills. “Stop. Say this. Go over here. Move this way,” he was likely to instruct. “Did you see it? What did you notice?” he would ask the observers in his master classes. From the inside it could feel like the opposite of accessing my spontaneity or trusting my impulses. From the outside, people seemed to have revelations.

I recognized that this experience with Keith has informed how I set up and facilitate fishbowl role-play practice in training context now. In Fishbowl role-play, volunteers practice a scenario in front of the room. In some versions, they are coached and given feedback in real-time, in others various participants “tag-in” and take over the role-play. Sometimes more than one participant can play one character. As in Keith’s master classes,  the goal with this type of scenario practice is to provide opportunities for the observers to learn as much, if not more than for the participants who are actually engaged in the performance of the role-play. The format allows the group to test and iterate various behaviors and strategies and watch them play out without the consequences real-world experience entails.

But often, both the participants and facilitators get confused - or can forget - that the learning is as much for the observers as it is for the players. ( If that is not the case, then fishbowl role-play is the wrong tool. If it is the players whose skills we most want to build, then design a concurrent pairs or small-group activity.) Therefore, I make sure to highlight this aspect of the design to the attendees. To that end, I say to the volunteers and for the benefit of the observers as well, “Imagine that you are our avatars in a video game. We will be experimenting through you. We will learn as much from your unsuccessful attempts as your successful ones, and you do not need to feel any personal ownership for what happens. We are not evaluating you, but rather exploring the situation. “

I never got a chance to discuss this pedagogical dynamic with Keith so I have not idea how deliberately he considered it. I am sure he had no idea the impact he had on my facilitation as well as on my career in impro(v) - both on and off the stage. I am sure I also have no true idea of the full impact.

Here I will leave you with some of my favorite of his quotes that are perhaps relevant to our field.

“In a normal education everything is designed to suppress spontaneity, but I wanted to develop it.”

“The most repressed, and damaged, and ‘unteachable’ students that I have to deal with are those who were the star performers at bad high schools. Instead of learning how to be warm and spontaneous and giving, they’ve become armoured and superficial, calculating and self-obsessed. I could show you many many examples where education has clearly been a destructive process.”

“There are people who prefer to say ‘Yes’, and there are people who prefer to say ‘No’. Those who say ‘Yes’ are rewarded by the adventures they have, and those who say ‘No’ are rewarded by the safety they attain.”

“If you believe you're good already, you don't need to do extra stuff to impress us. Your best work comes when you're absorbed; because then your ego is away.”