The nanonanofilm Improv Comedy Podcast · Dave Heron

Interview with Ed Pithie (Dingbats Improv) - Part 2

·21 min·1 clip

Ed Pithey recounts beer being thrown at Play It By Ear during a disastrous Canterbury Rugby Club performance.

1. The nanonanofilm Improv Comedy Podcast presents Dave Herron’s second interview with Ed Pithey about teaching and performing improv comedy. 2. Dave Herron hosts, while Ed Pithey appears as the founder of Dingbats Improv in Hawley and Crawley and an experienced improv teacher. 3. The episode asks how improv teachers can build confidence while adapting their teaching to unpredictable students, rooms, and audiences. 4. Pithey says imposter syndrome remained part of his experience even after teaching hundreds of classes. 5. Pithey recalls rehearsing his first workshop with two friends before delivering it to seven people. 6. Pithey explains that drop-in classes require different approaches because returning performers and beginners may need different things. 7. Pithey contrasts his early seven-page, line-by-line workshop script with his later willingness to change exercises during class. 8. Pithey describes changing group work when a room is too tight or echoey and adding focus exercises when students are unfocused. 9. Pithey says a teacher must “improvise as you teach” instead of only teaching people how to improvise. 10. Pithey discusses Genre Cauldron, a Chris Mead warm-up using relationships, locations, and activities to generate platform ideas. 11. Pithey admits that quiet periods during Genre Cauldron can trigger worries that students are bored. 12. Pithey describes teaching as partly facilitating a party because many participants attend to have fun rather than become improvisers. 13. Pithey identifies over-explaining and repeating instructions as one of his shortcomings as a coach. 14. Pithey says he sometimes interprets students looking at the floor as boredom even when they may simply be listening. 15. Pithey’s advice is to remember the worst gig because every later performance can be compared with that experience. 16. Pithey recounts Play It By Ear performing at Canterbury Rugby Club’s Oktoberfest for an audience expecting music, beer, and possibly rugby. 17. Pithey says the group performed in front of the stage, received boos and thrown beer, and lost the microphone to a woman who rhymed against them. 18. The interview remains conversational and self-deprecating, moving between teaching anxieties, performance failures, and venue-specific audience reactions. 19. Improv teachers and performers adapting to difficult audiences. 20. Listeners seeking polished scripted comedy or predictable venues.

As heard by us

A candid improv conversation about teaching, over-explaining, and learning from a worst gig.

Dave Herron and Ed Pithey spend this episode on the nuts and bolts of teaching improv: what shifts between a drop-in, a scene skills workshop, and the labs, and why a harder class can feel less fun before people hit their stride.

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Why you'd press play

You want a candid improv chat with a worst-gig story and teaching nerves.

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