You Can Teach Improv (Yes, You!): The Ultimate Guide to Class Planning, Skill Building, and Helping Every Student Leave With a Win Learn the secrets of improv teaching today! Whether you’re just starting out or leveling up, this book unlocks your inner instructor and helps you to deliver memorable, effective, and fun classes. You’ll learn to:

Comedy Acting for Theatre. The Art and Craft of Performing in Comedies Analysing why we laugh and what we laugh at, and describing how performers can elicit this response from their audience, this book enables actors to create memorable – and hilarious – performances. Rooted in performance and performance criticism,Sidney Homan and Brian Rhinehart provide a detailed explanation of how comedy works, along with advice on how to communicate comedy from the point of view of both the performer and the audience. Combining theory and performance, the authors analyse a variety of plays, both modern and classic. Playwrights featured include Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Christopher Durang, and Michael Frayn. Acting in Shakespeare’s comedies is also covered in depth.

Innovation At the Speed of Laughter: 8 Secrets to World Class Idea Generation Innovation at the Speed of Laughter explores the unexpected ways in which the tools of improvisational comedy can improve business performance. Combining his insights as a successful businessman with his expertise as a performer, John Sweeney reveals eight secrets to jump-starting workplace creativity and corporate ideation developed from the quirky, spontaneous art form of improvisation. The secrets include ‘Accepting All Ideas,’ ‘Deferring Judgment,’ and ‘Creating a Statusless Environment.’ Sweeney and the Brave New Workshop have used these secrets to help companies like General Mills, 3M Corporation, Hewllett-Packard, and Disney develop wonderfully uncommon ideas. Innovation at the Speed of Laughter will similarly help businesses, leaders, and individuals tap into their innovative potential–for creative expression as well as profitability.

Healing Improv: A Journey Through Grief to Laughter. In 2009 Bart Sumner’s life was shattered when his 10-year-old son, David, suffered a traumatic brain injury at football practice and died in his arms. Finding a way back to the road forward in a world where mourners are told “He’s in a better place” or to “Get over it” is a daunting and painful journey. He came to realize that the twenty-five plus years he spent as a performer and teacher of improvisational comedy was not only the key to his own survival, but also a powerful tool to help others mired in grief. Healing Improv: A Journey Through Grief to Laughter is an emotional and honest recounting of his family’s trek through grief to the founding of a nonprofit that provides no-cost Comedy Improv Grief Workshops for others suffering with loss. Mr. Sumner’s approach is unique in its application of improv comedy exercises to grief treatment. Healing Improv includes many of the improv games used at Healing Improv workshops so that others can also benefit from the curative, life affirming fun. Pairing these techniques with his family’s powerful and touching story of survival makes this book a strong ally to…

The Brain’s Playground: Using Improv Games To Teach Social And Emotional Learning The Brain’s Playground: Using Improv Games to Teach Social and Emotional Learning is a textbook that supports individuals with Social and Emotional Learning using improv games. Social and Emotional Learning ( www.casel.org ) includes five areas: social awareness, relationship skills, self-management, responsible decision-making and self-awareness. Improv games are used to create teachable moments when working with individuals of all abilities. Improv games help individuals to learn and connect while having fun in inclusive settings. The Brain’s Playground: Using Improv Games to Teach Social and Emotional Learning promotes connection through enjoyable activities that build relationships, improves social skills and increases verbal and nonverbal communication. The Brain’s Playground: Using Improv Games to Teach Social and Emotional Learning is a tool to be used by providers in the field of education, special education, psychology and more. Improv is used not only in theater, but in life.

Easy Street: A Guide For Players In Improvised Interactive Environmental Performance, Walkaround Entertainment, And First-Person Historical Interpretation EASY STREET is a guide for players in improvised interactive environmental performance, walkaround entertainment, and first-person historical reenacting. It’s also about much, much more than that, because the principles of effective Street play apply to any situation involving connections between people: sellers and customers, teachers and students, service providers and clients, programmers and end-users, co-workers, teammates, and fellow members of Leagues of Superheroes thrive wildly when these principles are in play. A-E Shapera has performed and taught at Shakespeare festivals, Renaissance Faires, fringe festivals and historical reenactments for over twenty years. Her walkaround character, Jane the Phoole, has performed by invitation at England’s Muncaster Castle, home to the original “Tom Fool,” and is the Official Municipal Jester of the City of Milwaukee. With a pithy blurb by bestselling author Christopher Moore!

Improv Yourself: Business Spontaneity at the Speed of Thought Discover your improvisational skills for a more productive, more dynamic work life Whether we know it or not, most of us use our improvisational skills every day in the workplace when we deal with clients and colleagues. Improv Yourself shows the reader in clear detail how to use and hone improvisational skills for better business interactions and a more productive work environment. Business expert and all-around funny guy Joe Keefe offers expert guidance on nurturing our improvisational skills to help us think on our feet, deal with customers, interact with team members, present new ideas, and brainstorm. Full of humor, wit, and expert business insight, Improv Yourself is like nothing else on the business shelf (could you tell I just made that up?).

58 1/2 Ways to Improvise in Training: Improvisation Games and Activities for Workshops, Courses and Team Meetings This book is for trainers, facilitators and anyone in need of a swift, energising activity. Each of the activities is improvisational in the sense that it generates what I call impro energy, a current that runs between participants. You recognise impro energy when you see people who are clearly “in themoment”, alert to whatever is going on in the here and now. It is generally characterised by laughter, prompted by people making things up off the cuff. At its best, impro energy results in flow, when the quality of the work is both high and seemingly effortless…

Rainbow of Desire is a handbook of exercises with a difference. It is Augusto Boal’s bold and brilliant statement about the therapeutic ability of theatre to liberate individuals and change lives. Now translated into English and comprehensively updated from the French, Rainbow of Desire sets out the techniques which help us `see’ for the first time the oppressions we have internalised.Boal, a Brazilian theatre director, writer and politician, has been confronting oppression in various forms for over thirty years. His belief that theatre is a means to create the future has inspired hundreds of groups all over the world to use his techniques in a multitude of settings. This, his latest work, includes such exercises as:* The Cops in the Head and their anti-bodies* The screen image* The image of the future we are afraid of* Image and counter-image….and many more.Rainbow of Desire will make fascinating reading for those already familiar with Boal’s work and is also completely accessible

Improvise This!: How to Think on Your Feet so You Don’t Fall on Your Face by Mark Bergen. Businesses are sending their top managers to improvisational classes to learn how to give presentations, how to talk to clients, and how to finesse difficult situations. But those same skills can be mastered with the help of the simple and fun exercises found in this book. The authors explain how improvisation comes into play in our daily lives, and the rewards of taking risks in those situations. Improvise This! is filled with true-to-life business scenarios and offers methods for not only surviving but triumphing in those situations, making this a valuable and entertaining resource.