The wallflower

In almost every class (oddly not the one I’m currently teaching) there is at least one, if not a couple people who have a tough time stepping off the back line for exercises. In the past I would give a little speech about getting out there, and conquering fears, but that is like telling an anxious person to just not be anxious. I wasn’t the best at validating those fears, mainly because I taught myself to put that foot forward and go, even though I was frightened as fuck.

Also, it felt like I was calling out the people that were scared and making it harder on them. I basically shined a bright light on them and said, “this person is scared.” Woof.

What I have started to do over the last few years, that I feel works better, is I just assign numbers to everyone in the class and will just call numbers out to do scenes. Even if it’s just warm up scenes. This helps in a few ways. The people that hug the wall will almost always go last if you don’t, which means the wall huggers will always end up doing scenes together. This helps diversify who is playing with who, and it makes sure everyone has equal time to practice. It also eases the tension for those people that are having a tougher time stepping forward. It also stops those moments where the teacher says “if you haven’t been out there, time to get out there” which just really punches people in the gut when they know it’s them.

It will also help with the pacing of the class. Waiting for folks can waste precious minutes per class. Calling out numbers just kills that.

I highly suggest when doing anything without a strict structure of who goes when, just assign some numbers and get people moving.