The Lisgar Collegiate Institute improv team is practicing for its competition at the national championships in April.
Making the Canadian Improv Games is no easy task, but it’s something Lisgar Collegiate Institute has become quite good at.
On April 5, the Centretown-based high school will be performing at the National Arts Centre in front of nearly a thousand people in the preliminary rounds of the annual high school competition.
Only 20 of about 3,000 schools qualify, but Lisgar has qualified almost every year since 2004, won a national title in 1999 and 2000 and was even featured in a documentary about the improv art form.
The tournament’s director, AL Connors, says a team can’t have that kind of success without a great coach.
“It’s all about creating positivity for the kids. If a coach has a positive energy, it usually translates into a team that’s good no matter who is on it,” he says.
Lisgar’s coach, Kathleen Klassen, started a team at Lisgar in 1996. It only took her three years to build a national champion. She wasn’t a full-time coach last year and her school failed to qualify for the improv games.
Klassen says she uses drama to emphasize communication, confidence and emotional support instead of just teaching the building blocks of improv.
“For me, a team has to understand the notion of working together, developing synergy and working towards a goal as a unit,” she says. “Increasing self-esteem in students is what I consider the most important element of drama.”
Lisgar will need to use that confidence if they wish to advance through the preliminary round and on to the final on April 7. Only the top five schools advance.
Sandra Chwialkowska was a member of Lisgar’s 1999 national championship team. She also filmed a documentary chronicling the school’s journey to the games in 2007.
She says Klassen’s teaching techniques can help students get ready for the national spotlight.
“Performing on that stage is so daunting, especially for a young high school student,” says Chwialkowska. “But Klassen makes your team your second family – she creates a positive environment where you won’t fail because everybody supports each other.”
Klassen says the students are dedicating significant time to prepare for the Improv Games, including four practices a week.
She says practice is necessary to build their confidence by getting them to commit to characters and different scene narratives.
“I use lots of breathing techniques to help calm them. I use the concepts of team – that they have others to rely on and to support them to sustain them through their events,” she says.
Chwialkowska says Klassen-run practices are long and rigorous.
“They’re tough, but we all wanted to be there because Kathleen makes it fun. She makes you want to be there because she is enjoying it herself as well,” she says.
Chwialkowska says you can learn valuable life lessons with improv. She says it helps you think on your toes, listen to others, perform on stage and build a sense of community.
Klassen agrees. She says she teaches improv because she believes students can learn from the dramatic arts.
“Learning to adjust to the new is one of the most important skills we can learn in life,” says Klassen. “We never know what new information we will get in life. Improv is about taking new information to alter the course of a scene.”
The national competition is open to the public for $18 a night.