Full Circle Associates

I have been imersing myself in improv as both a learning, teaming and facilitation perspective. Last June, John Smith, Alasdair Honeyman and I did a presentation at the Virtual Communities conference in The Hague and most of the crowd looked at us as if we had totally lost our minds. So, it is always a relief to see others have lost their mind as well. Good company. Take a look at Jay Cross' article on Improv Education

Today’s workers perform without a script. Everything’s impromptu. Stage cues come from the audience in real time. Costumes? The dress code may be pajamas if you work from home. Rewards go to innovators who deviate from the expected. Success is measured by the take at the box office instead of seniority or past performances.

Training was appropriate when actors memorized their lines. Today, it’s OK to read from cue cards—you can’t know everything. Good props help make a show great. As Gloria Gery pointed out long ago, it’s time to “give up the idea that competence must exist within the person and expand our view that whenever possible it should be built into the situation.”

The Improv home page reports that the most popular form of improv today “is ‘spot’ improv, in which performers get suggestions from their audience and use them to create short, entertaining scenes. No matter where or how it’s performed, the essential ingredient in any improvisational performance is that the audience and the actors are working together to create theatre.”

[via Stephen Downes]