The perfect check-in doesn’t exist
Check-ins are a great way to connect physically and emotionally to yourself and others, and they’re usually found at the beginning of an improv workshop, class, show, or team practice.
As facilitators, check-ins offer us a great opportunity to read the group, figuring out where they are and what they need at that moment, and adjust our plans accordingly.
Unfortunately, because everyone is dealing with something, the perfect check-in doesn’t exist.
Some people experience great discomfort in sharing the tiniest piece of information. Others create discomfort by oversharing. Every response, or lack thereof, is a valuable clue to how you can facilitate a safer space for all and provide a better learning experience.
Based on my own experiences as an improv student and teacher, I’ve written a non-exclusive and non-prioritized list on how to improve the check-in experience for everyone in the room.
1. Make sharing optional
This one’s easy: let them say “pass” or “I can’t think of anything”. And let that be as awesome as a share.
This is especially important for people new to improv. They may not use it but just knowing there’s an emergency exit makes them feel safer.
A pass might indicate that the question is too difficult, that they don’t feel safe enough to share, or just that they can’t think of anything. Whatever the response is you have to make an educated guess on what their needs are.
You could also invent a group-specific code word for passing, such as “banana”, but I’d save that for later.
2. Make sharing easy
Ask easy questions and lose the superlatives. It’s okay to not know the most interesting thing about yourself or the most positive thing in your life today. And having a shit day doesn’t disqualify you from doing improv.
As an alternative, you could ask more obvious questions. “What is something very normal you did earlier today”, “what is your dominant hand” or similar things that are true but not necessarily the most interesting.
Creative answers to obvious questions might indicate someone’s urge to be clever or funny, going back to them feeling safe or not.
As a bonus, connecting through the things we have in common is easier than the things we don’t have in common.
I just turned 42, and I still don’t know what my favorite movie is. But I brushed my teeth this morning. I’m convinced there’s a better chance of us bonding over clean teeth than Strange Days from 1995.
3. Go first!
Be the first to check in and set the bar as low as you can.
Be honest, obvious, and consider a little bit of planned incompetence by saying “I can’t think of anything”. The only risk you’re running is lowering your status and building trust by showing that you’re human too.
4. Explain why
Explain to the group what a check-in is and why you’re doing it. It may not be as obvious as we believe it to be and the group may have questions.
Depending on the group and the context it can be as simple as “a check-in is a way to connect as a group before we start”. Other times you might want to include more, such as “this is where we establish physical boundaries for our session, working from a place of consent”, and so on.
5. Keep it short
This is relative, as some workshops require longer, more thorough check-ins, but see if you can limit the number of check-in questions to somewhere around three. This way people will pay more attention to what the others say during their check-in because they’re thinking less about what their answers will be.
6. Accept everything!
Whatever someone share is always enough and accepted! Thank them for checking in with a simple “thank you”.
More specifically… If you’re with me this far, let’s go a little bit deeper
7. Make sharing optional, names and pronouns
These are the two things T.J. Mannix asks during class introductions:
1. “Great, what do you prefer to be called?” (some people choose a neutral or different gendered nickname than what’s on their registration)
2. “If you want to share your pronouns, mine are He/Him/His.” (Makes it routine. Not a big deal. Also, I say mine first so no one feels weird mentioning the pronouns.)
It’s considered good practice to not use ‘preferred pronoun” or “pronoun preferences”, as that implies they’re simply preferences.
8. Make sharing easy, the big easy
This is foremost for bigger groups because of time but works surprisingly well for small groups too.
Have the check-in question be either a number or any letter from the alphabet.
Potential clues of discomfort can be big numbers (344432 instead of 4), creative numbers (lots of decimals over integers), or clever tricks (using terms like π or ε).
The urge to be original is strong. If you get 50 different numbers in a 50 person check-in you can use the opportunity to point out that improv is not about being original and that we’re allowed to re-use the ideas of others.
9. Make sharing easy, the quick dip
Sometimes the energy level of a group can be hard to read, especially after a break or a long session. A quick dip is just doing a quick round where everyone shares where they’re at on an energy scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is the lowest, 10 is the highest, and being at 1 is as good as a being at 10.
Let them know that it’s okay to be tired and that there’s no pressure to get up to a higher level (often you’ll hear “I’m at a 5 but I expect to be at a 7 once we get started). Then you can let them in on the truth: this is your way of trying to figure out what their needs are in that moment, to see if that matches your plans. If it does, great! If it doesn’t, also great! But consider doing an exercise more suited to their needs or tweak the one you had originally planned.
The quick dip can also be used to prepare the group for the next exercise. If the group average is at 3 and you need more, consider doing an energizer before the next exercise. If they’re at 9 and you need less, consider doing a focus exercise to get them more centered.
10. Keep it short, part two
You want the check-in to be efficient but also to not feel rushed. Using specific questions can be a good tool for time management, narrowing down their answer.
“Tell me about your improv experience” will take longer to answer than “how long have you been doing improv”. The first question will most likely give you a better answer while the second will provide an answer that is good enough. It’s a trade-off, use what you need.
Same for a check-out, “what is your one takeaway from today” gives shorter answers than the more generic “what are your takeaways from today?”.
One last thing
I’ve love to see more check-ins done at jams and mixer team shows! It’s hard to find time in the pre-show hustle and bustle, my suggestion is to keep them short and focus on physical and emotional safety, something like this:
- Please say your name and let us know
- if and where you give other consent to touch you and
- if there are any triggers you’d like us to know about.
“My name is Terje, I don’t like to be lifted and I’m not comfortable with doing scenes about rape today”.
In the heat of the show, I don’t expect everyone to remember everything from the check-in, but the quick and dirty check-in has given us better odds than if we didn’t.
My standard check-in for most workshops
Name first, then I ask them to share something nice that’s happened in their life the last 24 hours, big or small, and if they can’t think of anything that’s okay.
This is followed by examples, from the smallest I can think of to the biggest, like “I had a glass of milk, that was nice” to “I won the lottery” (if that’s true for me).
I go first, making mine as ordinary as I can. For small groups, I like to ask harmless follow-up questions to show that I listen and hopefully make a small connection. For bigger groups, I say thank you and move on to the next.
Is this perfect? Probably not, but there’s always a context. My check-in comes right after I’ve explained my 3 workshop rules and we’ve practiced saying ‘nope’.
One more one more last thing
You could also use exercises as a tool to read the group. How they’re playing together is another way of figuring out where they are and what they need.
tl;dr
Safety first! Chickity-check yo self before you wreck yo self!
Thank you for reading!
Terje Brevik is a teacher and performer of improvised theater on and off stage and he loves to travel. He’s the founder of Tøyen Impro, Oslo Impro Festival and the former director and co-funder of Impro Neuf. Check out his stuff and connect at terjebrevik.com.
