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Joining a class that would run over several weeks that would teach his improvisational writing and rehearsal technique used by Mike Leigh I found that the class would watch as a direct, three actors and a write did exactly this. We didn't get to improvise - I enjoyed acting at the time. We didn't get to work with the actors - I wasn't so much into directing yet. And we didn't even write. This was meant to inform our own projects. I didn't. I found it hugely frustrating to be watching others do stuff, have fun and learn from the experience, while we in the 'class' were meant to pick it up from a chair at a distance. All we were taught was how, through demonstration, to run an improvisational session. 

LESSON > if you aim is to teach someone to do something, have them do it not sit on the sidelines.

Fig. 1. Edmund de Waal - Ceramics and Creative Writing

In discussion on Desert Island Discs this week. Some marvellous insights into his take on the creative process - the confidence to make it up if it all goes wrong, as Ella Fitzgerald does in the particular track he chooses of her singing Mack the Knife and forgetting the words.

Edmund de Waal
Desert Island Discs
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/b01p067p
Sunday 25th November 2012

'This is making it up as you go along. This matters to me because this is what the experience of making things is like. That’s improvisation. That’s when when you think you’ve got it made before you start. And then …   it all goes … it doesn’t go wrong - it goes different'.