By Sarah Gaul, comedienne and notorious killjoy.

CW: sexual harassment

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Improvising is most people's worst nightmare - getting up in front of an audience with NOTHING PREPARED. That is also the real joy of it. A lot of your (and my) favorite comedians started doing theatre sports or improv - think Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Jimmy Fallon, a lot of the SNL crew.

Unfortunately we are learning, one New York Times article at time, just how deep a culture of sexism and misogyny runs in hollywood and the arts industry. Most of us in the industry have been well aware of this since our first open mic. This stretches to the improv community as well. Recently, one of my favorite improv theatres in New York ceased to operate because the Artistic Director was accused of sexual assault and predatory behaviour by multiple women. The artistic director (and owner of the theatre) resigned after mounting pressure, then weirdly rescinded his resignation a fortnight later after announcing he was pressured to resign/was a victim of a lynch mob/his actions were misconstrued. His teachers resigned and the majority of students demanded refunds for any remaining classes. Aaron Glaser has been banned from UCB after multiple women accused him of rape. Notorious asshole Kurt Mezger infamously publicly posted that the women going after Glaser were nothing but a 'lynch mob,' and they should go to the cops rather than go after his career. We have heard how the women who Louis CK bizarrely masturbated in front of abandoned their career in comedy, traumatised and disheartened by the way CK was protected again and again by those around him. These women are extraordinarily brave but sadly their stories are not unique.

I wrote this piece of Facebook and an alarming number of people shared it and found it useful or relevant, so now it's going to live on my blog. Here are some red-hot tips for men in improv and comedy. I've experienced all these things first hand. If you're a man in comedy, read it, read it and read it again.

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1. Where possible, go out of the way to have women on your team. We can be quite good at improv when given the chance.

2. If you’re putting together a lineup for an show, go for 50/50 women - can’t find women to make up their 50%? Go looking in places women frequent such as under rocks, in bat caves and on Facebook.

3. Even better - organise an all-women jams! Line-ups! Festivals! Year-long events!

4. Women also make great hosts, MC’s, judges producers and techs. Try it out.

5. Women come in all different glorious, perfect forms - check what pronouns everyone is comfortable with before going onstage.

6. If you are improvising with a woman, see if you can let her finish her sentence before you start yours. Your ideas are not more important.

7. Read number 6 again.

8. Challenge yourself - try and avoid endowing women with boring traditional roles such as secretary/girlfriend/nagging wife. While we are excellent at those roles because we are diverse and excellent at everything, we are also good at playing Other Roles too.

9. Don’t sexualise women’s bodies onstage ever unless they initiate it. It’s gross and boring and makes you look like a dick.

10. Don’t bring like sexual violence, harassment or DV onstage. It’s not fun to watch and it’s not fun to ‘yes and’ especially if you’re in front of an audience. It’s not edgy comedy, it’s insanely insensitive and dumb.

11. If you’re playing the role of a woman, you don’t have to characterise her as feminine and low-status. We are often neither of those things in real life so try it out onstage too.

12. Ask beforehand what level of touching onstage is okay. If you don’t know, just assume none.

13. If there is one male on the team, don’t assume he is team captain. Chances are, he isn’t.

14. If you are a male improvisor/comic and think you’ve never done any of the above, write ‘I’ve never done any of the above’ on a piece of paper, scrunch it up and put it in the bin. Because you almost definitely have.

15. If this makes you uncomfortable, instead of getting defensive, interrogate why, in a non-performative way. Don’t ask your fellow women improvisors to assure you you’re ‘one of the good ones.’ It’s not their job.

16. Don’t harass us backstage, don’t “accidentally” walk in on us changing or touch us while waiting side stage- we are probably busy focusing on the show and don’t needy your perv ass distracting us from being our best.

17. If you’re a male improv teacher or coach, don’t sleep with/touch your students. It undermines their credibility as performers and is really gross.

18. Improv rules because we are taught to ‘yes and’ other people’s ideas - before you throw out a potentially insensitive, sexist or triggering offer, think if it’s something she would happily say ‘yes and’ to when not onstage.

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