on oneself. It also involves risk taking on one’s part. Improv can help in developing this as one is constantly faced with new ideas that s/he must adopt in order to keep a story moving forward. Taking risks has become a normal part of Silicon Valley and the startup mentality as a whole for quite some time. While failure is possible, the potential of a big monetary payoff seems to make it worthwhile. In the improv world, risk-taking and failure are how actors improve their future performances. Improv also helps one learn how to fail in public, which can be very embarrassing and even emotionally upsetting if one is not trained for the possibility.
It is not about being the best or perfect at that moment, as much as it is about being in the moment and embracing the concept of life-long learning. In the classes attended by the author, we used the word “Ahougá” when we made a mistake or faux pas of some sort. There are some improvisation exercises which have the purpose to force mistakes on the team members. This teaches one how to move forward when a mistake is made without getting caught up in judgmental back-thinking.
Spolin stated “Don’t initiate! Follow the initiator! Follow the follower.” All of us have the ability to lead, and there are times when it is better for executives to step back and allow others to take over. Let things grow organically and see where they take the ensemble. Too much direction from the top tends to negate ideas from the bottom and can stifle innovation.
3. LITERATURE REVIEW
There is a fair amount of relevant research, articles, and talks on the use of improvisation outside of the theater. The articles reviewed show that improvisation can improve one’s communication, collaboration, creativity, and problem-solving skills.
1. “Beyond Productivity: Information, Technology, Innovation, and Creativity” edited by William J. Mitchell, Alan S. Inouye, and Marjory S. Blumenthal [10]. This is a rather lengthy book with a theme revolving around the importance of combining both the arts and STEM disciplines in order for the next generation of problem solvers and innovators to be successful. It is stated that this is “also an opportunity for each field to gain fresh, sometime uncomfortable, perspectives on itself.” It is pointed out that Pixar co-founder, Ed Catmull, embraced improvisation as a way to teach better collaboration within teams. The authors state that improvisation has a place in human-computer interaction or HCI. Finally, there are several references made to George E. Lewis, a professor of American Music at Columbia University, who said, “Improvisation is about finding structure, not imposing it.”
2. “Changes in Anxiety Following a Randomized Control Trial of a Theatre-based Intervention for Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder” by Blythe A. Corbett, PhD, Scott D. Blain, Sara Ioannou, and Maddie Balser [3]. Their work indicates that improvisation techniques can be used to help people on the autism spectrum disorder (ASD). They point out a number of studies and suggest that additional work in this area is needed. They created the Social Emotional NeuroScience Endocrinology (SENSE) lab “to better understand the social and emotional functioning of children with autism and related neurodevelopmental disorders and to translate findings into meaningful approaches and interventions.”
3. “Education in Professionalism: Improvisation” by Richard B. Gunderman, MD, PhD [6]. This paper looks at how Dr. David Fessel, MD, a musculoskeletal radiologist and faculty member at the University of Michigan, took classes on improvisation and eventually became a member of The Second City Conservatory. His primary reason was to overcome his initial fear of giving presentations, but eventually he realized that there was much more to this. He learned that improvisation reaches far beyond that of comedy and can be applied to the medical profession in terms of teamwork, collaborative communication, relationship building, learning, and self-awareness.
4. “Humour-in-the-loop: Improvised Theatre with Interactive Machine Learning Systems” by Kory Mathewson [9]. Mathewson is an accomplished improviser and, in 2015, he began his work on creating an AI system that could engage in improvisation with a human. He developed a set of Turing test rules that could be used to show success. He collaborated with Rapid Fire Theatre on this project and it is also here where he created the improvised theater experiment called Improbotics.
5. “Improv for Effective Collaboration Innovation?” by Jeannie Kristufek [4]. In this paper, the author presents several exercises used at IBM that she adapted from the improv world to help technical team members work more creatively and efficiently as part of a collective whole. A key component of improvisation is that it is a team effort and that no “star” exists. Everyone is tasked with contributing to the task at hand and one must listen to the other team members even if there is disagreement. Using a “Yes, and” approach allows team members to avoid the value judgment of ideas early on and keeps the discussion going. Several other key components of improv that she points out are: “show, don’t tell”, take risks, be in the moment and the know.
6. “Improvisational Computational Storytelling in Open Worlds” by Lara J Martin, Brent Harrison, and Mark Riedl [8]. Improvised storytelling allows the actors to place their characters in whatever universe and situation they wish based upon a simple suggestion from someone in the audience: in essence, what is referred to as an open world. The authors are researching how to do the same with an AI system that would be capable of improvising with humans in real-time alongside humans. They offer two possible approaches to help solve this problem: plot graph and neural network. Neither solution is perfect and much more needs to be done, but the goal is to develop an AI system that can communicate with humans at even some of the most abstract worlds that improvisers are good at creating.
7. “Improvisation: Methods and Models” by Jeff Pressing [11]. This paper was written in 1987 and, although it is mostly on musically improvisation, many of the ideas could easily be applied to theater improvisation as well. Even more interesting is the section on artificial intelligence that Pressing examines. Pressing notes: “There is traditionally no explicit mention of improvisation in the field. In making such a link, it seems clear that the successful application of AI concepts to improvisation rests to a large degree on the appropriateness of considering improvisation to be a kind of problem-solving.” He proceeds to discuss how improvisation is really a form of problem-solving in terms of a chosen search method and selection of an acceptable solution through problem reduction.
8. “The Use of Improvisational Theater Training to Reduce Social Anxiety in Adolescents” by Peter Felsman, Colleen M. Seiferta, and Joseph A. Himle [4]. This was a study conducted in Detroit in cooperation with The Improv Project, which is a part of the Detroit Creativity Project (DCP). The authors state, “This study is the first to test the efficacy of a school-based improvisational theater program as a mental health intervention, and it offers positive results.” The focus was on those youth who suffer from a recognized social anxiety disorder such as depression or social avoidance. I met with Beth Hagenlocker who is a co-founder of the DCP and in charge of the day-to-day operation of The Improv Project. During a 10-week period, students transition from the basic improv exercises to a graduation performance. There are others doing similar things such as Urban Improv in Boston, which is a part of Rehearsal for Life.
9. “Whose Classroom Is It, Anyway? Improvisation as a Teaching Tool” by Ronald A. Berk and Rosalind H. Trieber [1]. The focus was on using improvisation as a better way to engage and teach the Net Generation students. The authors used the following four improv exercises to demonstrate how this can be done: One Word at a Time/One Sentence at a Time, Speech Tag, Freeze Tag, and Gibberish Expert Interview. Their four reasons for using improvisation in the classroom are: 1. it is consistent with the characteristics of the current generation of students; 2. it taps into students’ multiple and emotional intelligences; 3. it fosters collaborative learning; and 4. it promotes deep learning through the active engagement.
4. IMPROV EXERCISES
Below is a look at the exercises used by the author along with a brief summary.
Table
