improv

Improv for health and wellbeing

December 29, 2011

As mentioned in a previous post, I was interviewed over the phone for an article in Natural Health magazine – published earlier this month. I’ve been given a pdf of the article, so if you’d like to check it out – here it is.  It’s great to see improvisation being spoken about as more than just a performance art, because it has so much more to offer.

I talked about the subject matter in a blog post in July – take a look.

How can improv help your Tweeting skills?

August 1, 2011

If improvisation was a social network, which one would it be…I think Twitter.

There is a short form game involving 2 players usually, where a short scene is enacted, based on an audience suggestion and it is timed and cut at 1 minute, the scene is then replayed but can only last 30 seconds, then again for 20 seconds, then again for 10 and then again for 5 and again for just 1 second. The consequence of this, is that the scene gets boiled down to its most important points, verbally and in action – usually very funny!

So, how does this connect with social networking – well, if you want to learn how to write excellent Tweets or Status Updates on Google + and Facebook, then you would benefit from playing this game. It really helps you get to the point and avoid the bull.

How can improv help with nervousness?

June 28, 2011

 

My Super Six Tips for Success

1. Simplicity Rules

There is a technique called “start in the middle” and another which says “speak to know what you want to say” and both of these are telling us essentially, to get on with it! Begin with what seems obvious. Just speak – start somewhere – stop procrastinating or worrying.

2. Question Yourself

When preparing to give a speech in public, don’t write down a script but do write down questions to yourself, so that during the speech you are essentially answering those questions in an improvised way. If you want to try improvising a whole speech, you can practice at home by picking a random topic and speaking for a couple of minutes on it.

3. What could possibly go wrong?

Shift your attention from yourself to others. Nerves come from anticipating what will go wrong so if you can switch that off and be in the moment, the nerves should disappear.

4. You, boring? No way!

People are often worried that they are boring. It’s important to remember that what is ordinary to you can often be a revelation to others – you are more interesting than you think…

5. Mistakes are offers

Nerves arise from fear of making mistakes. In improv, we love and embrace mistakes. We actually call them something else entirely – we call them offers. They are an offer to your scene partner to use or explore. In performance, they are often the way that audience relates to you. The audience are usually willing you to succeed and are very supportive when make a mistake or give an entirely unexpected offer.

6. Yes, Yes, Yes

In improv, we use a game called Yes And (see earlier blog posts for more on this) . Using the game of Yes And, we become more positive. Positivity is something associated with confident people, so saying yes equals confidence.

 

 

 

Who else is using improv in Business?

June 6, 2011

Are you wondering whether improv is really a useful tool in business?

Well, it’s being taught at MIT and Harvard, so that’s a pretty good endorsement.

In the news recently, I noticed this article called “Why using improvisation in business to teach business skills is no joke”.  Check it out here:

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/02/18/improvisation.business.skills/index.html

or read it below:

In a business world that’s more uncertain than ever it pays to be able to think on your feet. That’s why some business schools are using improvisation classes to teach skills such as creativity and leadership.

While many people might think of improvisation as unscripted comedy, it can apply to any form of spontaneous theater — and practitioners say that using “improv” to teach business skills is no joke.

Robert Kulhan is an adjunct assistant professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, in North Carolina, and CEO of Business Improvisations. He has been improvising on stage for years and now teaches improvisation to business students and executives.

“Improvisation isn’t about comedy, it’s about reacting — being focused and present in the moment at a very high level,” Kulhan told CNN.

As well as teaching people to react and adapt, he said improvisation can teach creativity, innovation, communication, teamwork and leadership.

Lakshmi Balachandra teaches Improvisational Leadership at MIT Sloan School of Management and is a guest lecturer for advanced negotiation students at Harvard Business School.

She was an improv comic before working in venture capital and finance. She went to study an MBA at MIT Sloan and said it was there she realized how much she was using her improvisation training in her business career.

“Improv teaches you how to think on your feet and how to react and adapt very quickly to unexpected events and things you may not have planned for,” Balachandra told CNN.

“It applies to leadership and it applies to negotiation, where you never have control over what happens,” she said. “Negotiation is a dynamic process — you have to be able to think on your feet and adapt.”

Kulhan and Balachandra both said that the key to improvisation is the “Yes, and” principle, and it’s an idea they believe is particularly relevant to business.

In performance improvisation it means listening to what someone else says, accepting what they say, and then building on that. In business terms it means accepting any idea that’s brought to the table and then taking that idea further.

Kulhan said this kind of “suspension of judgment” is essential for brainstorming and creative thinking, but unconditional acceptance doesn’t always come easily to high-flying execs. He said it’s not that critical thinking isn’t important — just that it can sometimes get in the way.

“There’s a misconception in business that you have to be 100 percent correct 100 percent of the time, whereas the truth is you have to be 100 percent correct about 10 percent of the time — the rest of the time you have to just make decisions,” said Kulhan.

“We get bogged down in analysis paralysis, or just the pressure of being right, and we feel like we have to be correct all the time. But if you just make a decision you’ll have room to adapt and react and get it to work within the parameters you need.”

Kulhan said principles of improvisation can help anyone hone their business skills, and if you can’t get to an improvisation class you can still apply the fundamentals of improv to your own life.

“One way is to self audit — see what you’re doing in real time and how you affect other people in real time,” he told CNN.

“You can take that ‘Yes, and’ phrase and test it out at home or in meetings, and try exercising suspension of judgment — try out the principles in real life.”

 

What is improv?

May 11, 2011

Earlier on today, I was asked to define improv in one sentence, so I thought I’d share that with you – just in case there is anyone viewing my website and still feeling unsure about what improv actually is. My answer was simple. Improvisation is the art of listening and responding or reacting. Simple huh!

A few questions for you…

How often do you really listen to people?

Do you give stock responses to questions or comments?

Does your conversation revolve around the same set of subjects?

How good are you at improvising in your everyday life?

Longform Improv Basics

April 12, 2011

Long form improvisation is making up scenes as you go along. Other forms of improv rely on games that are often looking for jokes. Long form improvisation requires the performers to do it all on their own. Generally a group of improvisers will take a single suggestion for their audience and create anywhere between 20 and 90 minutes of made-up scenes.

I took part in a showcase of Longform Improvisation at The Marlborough Theatre in Brighton run by Brighton improvisers, The Maydays. We produced a 50 minute show using a number of different techniques – more below.

Long-form is a fantastic tool for increasing your listening skills because you have to be present and attentive to make it work – which requires active listening. Long-form helps you create trust in yourself and everyone around you.

I began to understand that there is some formula for giving structure to the whole thing.

I’m going to detail the structure, as I see it. I may use terms unfamiliar to you, but I plan to expand on each of these in future blog posts – so make sure you subscribe to this blog if you are interested in finding out more.

BEFORE

To open/launch a scene there are several tools you can use, which include:

1. Word Association

2. Monologues

3. Rants and Raves

4. Press Conference game

5. Invocation

DURING

1. Naming – make sure you name each other, makes the characters/scene more believable

2. Paint the scene – you can add imaginary costumes, props, scenery, environment, sounds effects, anything to help build the picture

3. Attitude – choose an attitude and stick to it – you may choose to play agreeable character versus disagreeable character – but be careful not to block your scene partner

4. Game of the scene

5. Tag outs

ENDING

There are lots of ways to end a scene – known as edits.

1. Object – a player comes onto stage and takes an object from one of the characters in the current scene and turns it into something else, which in turn starts a new scene.

2. Verbal – a player comes onto stage and starts speaking to start a new scene – be clear you are not just trying to join the current scene

3. Swarm – all the offstage players go on stage with a movement and/or noise inspired by something that happens in the scene taking place – the people in the current scene join in

4. Sweep – when you feel the scene needs to end, just run across in front of them!

5.Fade in – similar to the verbal edit, when you use a fade in, you might be just miming though and quietly start speaking, gradually getting louder.

 

 

Multi-tasking, Context Switching and Shift Left!

February 18, 2011

For the past few months, I have been taking multi-tasking to a whole new level. If you work in role that involves managing different assignments or you are self-employed, this might resonate with you. I have been juggling three very different roles within three very different projects and three very different industries. After several months of this intense activity, I noticed my brain beginning to find it harder and harder to keep up!

I was doing an excellent job of managing my time efficiently and effectively, but my brain developed, what I can only describe as a “lag” when I tried to go from one thing to another – which had to happen a lot and not just on what I term “split days” – where I work on one job in the morning and another in the afternoon for example.

I was discussing this with a friend in IT and he referred me to a term in the world of computing called “context switching” – in fact, he said “context switches kill” – thankfully, context switching doesn’t kill your brain!

“A context switch is the computing process of storing and restoring state (context) of a CPU so that execution can be resumed from the same point at a later time. This enables multiple processes to share a single CPU. The context switch is an essential feature of a multitasking operating system. Context switches are usually computationally intensive and much of the design of operating systems is to optimize the use of context switches. Switching from one process to another requires a certain amount of time for doing the administration – saving and loading registers and memory maps, updating various tables and list etc.”

For me, the most interesting part of this is the final sentence, which I believe likens my brain to a computer or should I say a computer to my brain?!

Both my brain and the computer need time to switch from one process to another, time for storing information and time for recalling information.

I wanted to find out if this function of my brain could be improved, like it can be with a computer and guess what; I found the perfect improv tool to do it!

I’ve long been a fan of an improv game called Shift Left (also know as Shift Left, Shift Right)

The game: Four actors stand in a square formation. The two actors at the front at any given time are in a scene based on audience suggestions. The actors, who are at the front, and therefore the currently played scene, can be changed by a caller who calls “shift left” or “shift right.” Each pair at the front is given a theme for their scene – I usually play with one emotion, one object, one relationship, one non-geographic location. (You could also use one occupation, a starting line of dialogue, or a film/book genre). The director/coach calls Shift Left or Shift Right at random and the actors either move one square to the left or right accordingly. The scenes can go round and round in different directions and at different speeds. The audience always sees a continuation of the scenario/characters set up initially by each pair.

I’ve found this clip to show you what this would look like (for understanding structure only)

You will notice as an improviser, that you are playing two different characters in different scenarios when you play this game and it is this aspect of the game that I believe exercises the appropriate part of my brain, to develop my context switching skills. It’s important that you have a director/coach who is shifting the scenes at varying speeds – but this should be down to seeing the right moment for the edit – not just at random.

Games like this can really improve your ability to move from one set of thoughts to another at speed – although I have to confess it is pretty funny when people forget which character they are and continue their scenario 1 with their scenario 2 partner or vice versa.

If you get the chance to try this game, please do. If you’d like a lesson in “how to”, just get in touch and I’ll be happy to help.

Listening and Supporting – One Word At A Time Story

December 16, 2010

I had the pleasure of running a short workshop for a well known charity today. Just 4 participants, with a brief to improve communications. I decided to focus on the skill of listening. Basically, it doesn’t matter how good you are at communicating, if your colleagues have no listening skills, they still won’t receive your message.

I used an improv game called “One Word At A Time Story”. I was delighted to discover that none of them had heard of this game, nor played it before. The game sounds pretty simple but in practice, is a bit harder than it sounds. You can get any number of people playing it, from 2 upwards. In this case, it was 4 – although I got them into pairs to have a go at it, so they felt less exposed.

Then they got up and stood in a line, to tell a story, using just one word at a time, each.

I gave them a first name and an object – Kevin and Spaceship. They ended up telling me a lovely story of Kevin and his spaceship. The spaceship had never been into space, because Kevin was too busy eating cheese and crackers. Although he soon switched to crisps and marmite and this meant the spaceship could finally go into space.

Aside from the silliness of the story, a few themes came up. Firstly, it was tricky at times to stick to one word. When they were reaching the end of a sentence, people were tempted to finish the sentence themselves with 2 or 3 words. It highlighted the fact that during this game, they were all equal and needed to trust each other.

Another point came up, which was about a concept called “group mind”, which I describe as collaborative thinking without planning or conversation. Another way of looking at it, would be intuition – a group of people using their collective intuition to sense one another’s thoughts or feelings or ideas. The group I worked with today, showed a good deal of group mind and were very supportive of each others ideas.

One of the common issues that this game throws up, is “too many cooks, spoil the broth”, in other words; during the game (the story) people introduce more and more characters, themes, props, locations – this can be very confusing for the listener/audience. This can be a problem in the workplace, when people are trying to out-do each other with their ideas – or they are so busy thinking of their own ideas, they forget to listen to other peoples ideas. They become competitive rather than collaborative.

So to develop listening skills, a sense of sharing and cooperation and to support each others ideas, try a game of One Word At A Time. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you’d like some support with it.

Interesting three letter words….

September 11, 2010

Two words interest me in particular, they are BUT and AND.

I spent an interesting afternoon delivering a workshop to a group of music teachers. One of their key issues was negativity in the workplace. They wanted to learn about being more positive. I used a game called Yes And! to explore this.

We started off by discussing the following terms:

  • Turning Against (which equates to blocking entirely)
  • Turning Away (which equates to committing, begrudgingly or with conditions)
  • Turning Towards (which equates to enthusiastically committing)

The teachers were asked to get into pairs and make offers to each other and then to use the different terms above to make a response.

For example:

Offer:

Let’s go to the beach

Selection of responses:

Turning Against: No, I hate sand (totally blocked, nowhere to go from here)

Turning Away: OK, but only if we can go by car and be home for the 6 o’clock news (conditions!)

Turning Towards: Yes And let’s get an ice cream on the way! (Notice how this response commits to the offer and adds something to enhance it)

We continued this for a while and discussed how the different types of responses changed the energy or the dynamic of the conversation.

At the point where these principles were clear and established, we played more with the Turning Away and the Turning Towards. We tried giving the same response but in different ways.

For example:

Offer:

Let’s paint this wall

Selection of responses:

Turning Away: Yes, but only if we paint it red

Turning Towards: Yes, and let’s pain it red

It was at this point, we recognised that sometimes our responses are delivered in a negative way and this can hinder our progress.

In the example above, we both gave the same response but we said it in different ways. If we use the word BUT, we appear to be taking some power or positivity away from the person’s offer/idea/suggestion/request.

If we use the word AND, we appear to be adding something to the person’s idea. We are saying yes and committing and offering our contribution, to enhance their idea.

I asked the group to go away from the workshop and keep considering, whether they could introduce an AND instead of a BUT in more of their communication.

Try it yourself and see the difference it makes to the way you feel and the way others respond.

Just discovered an interesting podcast that makes reference to the game YES AND…it shows you how the tool can be used and developed further beyond my use mentioned in the blog