Teaching Social Skills Through Sketch Comedy and Improv Games: A Social Theatre™ Approach for Kids and Teens including those with ASD, ADHD, and Anxiety. Introducing a Social Theatre™, this book provides guidance on how to deliver fun and transformative activities to develop social skills in teenagers and children. Drawing on ideas from Social Thinking®, CBT, mindfulness and assertiveness training this book develops games, skits and short plays which can be adapted to suit children and teenagers including those who are gifted, typical, and those with mild to moderate cognitive abilities. These activities will help participants become more assertive and flexible as well as improving confidence, focus and self-esteem. Social Theatre™ can be used in small groups, in class or throughout the school, as well as in group therapy sessions. It provides a new and inclusive way to teach social skills and collaborative learning and is especially useful for those with anxiety, ADHD and ASD.

The Improv Mindset: How to Make Improvisation Your Superpower for Success We improvise every day, but how many times do we get stuck in our heads overthinking?Now you can learn how to leverage the skills of improv for your life. Improv isn’t just for actors, comedians, and writers, but is one of today’s most powerful tools for success in business, social situations, public speaking, communication, becoming a more fearless person, and just plain having more fun in life. Being able to think quickly on your feet, be in the moment, and to roll with any sudden changes makes any person more confident. This book will break down these techniques with exercises you can practice both at home and put to use in real-life settings. You’ll learn: You don’t have to be born witty to apply these methods, you just have to be taught them and that’s what this book will do.

A smart, witty and accessible guide to the rewarding and joyful practice of improvisation. An asset to students and teachers of improvisation in schools, drama schools, higher education and theatre groups, both professional and amateur. It will also be of benefit to organisations and individual readers who want to discover how improv stimulates creativity and confidence in all areas of life. The Improv Book opens up this exciting discipline to a wider audience.

Encourages reluctant participants to engage, collaborate, and develop not just skills for drama but skills for life. Following the ninety games and exercises aimed at developing core skills, the book offers scenarios for a series of improvisational challenges that test participants’ abilities in mediation, communication, negotiation, assertiveness, and managing emotions.

Applied Improvisation has become an important and growing field of exploration, research, and human cooperation. The book goes far beyond an introduction to alternative applications of Improvisational Comedy. It also delves into underlying theories that are usable in all human endeavors, from personal enrichment to every aspect of organizational development and cooperation. It includes working ideas, theory, structures, methodology, stories, notes, references, and practices, as well as exercises that can be used in any setting where learning and change are desired. This revised edition is also about tapping sources of creativity, in your gatherings and in your life. The material is intended to be used by individuals, within families, community development organizations, in government, in the military, in not-for-profit systems, religious gatherings, among business owners, executives, and companies, by corporate career-track leaders, trainers, educators, teachers, motivational presenters, and all others who understand how important it is to communicate effectively and easily, and to work cooperatively as we trudge our way through this ever increasingly complex, urgent, delicate, and small world. Revised edition: 2017

Ensemble!: Using the Power of Improv and Play to Forge Connections in a Lonely World Drawing on a combined expertise in improvisational theatre and psychiatry, author team Dan O’Connor and Dr. Jeff Katzman show readers how improv skills are the perfect antidote to loneliness and isolation. I know what you’re thinking: Hold on…improv? Like getting on a stage in front of an audience? What if that’s not my thing? Don’t worry: this isn’t a book about becoming an improv theater expert, and it’s not really a book about performing. It’s a book about loneliness–about our feelings of disconnection and isolation, ones that we may have been experiencing since long before the pandemic. More importantly, it’s a book about becoming unlonely–by borrowing from the collaborative and creative tools of improv. Authors of Life Unscripted Jeff Katzman, a professor of psychiatry at the University of New Mexico, and Dan O’Connor, multifaceted actor, writer, and director, have created a process they call Ensembling that helps us build an ensemble of relationships in our lives and more deeply enjoy the groups we already belong to. This is a process of becoming a little vulnerable with each other, and of embracing the moment in which we find ourselves….

Drama Menu at a Distance: 80 Socially Distanced or Online Theatre Games ‘For however long we must keep our distance, we will continue to create, to reinvent, to strive and to feed our creativity. At a time where performers are needed more than ever, training the next generation of performers must go on!’ Glyn Trefor-Jones, from his IntroductionDrama Menu is the revolutionary, hugely popular concept that has transformed the planning and delivery of drama classes for teachers and workshop leaders around the world. Choose an Appetiser or two, a Starter, a Main Course and a Dessert – and voilà! –…

Improvise to Success! 16 Simple But Powerful Principles From Improv Comedy That Will Take You to Personal and Professional Success! Face it: the world is amazingly unpredictable. No matter how prepared you are, or how well you plan, things will go wrong, surprises will happen, and people will do unexpected things. The key to achieving success while maintaining your sanity is to learn how to improvise and flow with whatever life sends your way! Whether you are an improv performer, a fan of improv comedy, or have never even seen improv before, you will immensely benefit from learning how to “flow in the moment” with anything that happens to you. Everyone, including you, is improvising every second of every day. Life is not scripted. No matter how much you want things to turn out exactly as planned, life usually has other plans. Life, after all, is the ultimate improvisation. People who master the ability to improvise can: * Direct their activities so they are always moving forward towards what they want (no matter what happens) * Stay calm and relaxed no matter how intense things get * Make the most of any situation * Flow with what happens – to…

The Improv Comedy Musician: The Ultimate Guide to Playing Music with an Improv Group Learn musical improv from Laura Hall of “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”Are you a musician who performs with an improv comedy group? If so, this book is for you! You’ll also greatly benefit if you are a music director, improv team leader, improv teacher or coach, improv actor or singer, or just a hardcore Whose Line fan. This book is an opportunity for me to share knowledge gained from my years of improv experience. You’ll learn how I do what I do on Whose Line is it Anyway (plus get some insider stories about the show!) And you’ll get tips and pointers on how to play for live improv shows, play in different styles, accompany improvised songs, know how to approach long and short form, improvise musicals, be a valuable team player, and lots more.

Improv Nonsense: All The Posts This is a book about long-form improv, the art of making up comedy scenes as you go (meaning no script) on a stage. Improv Nonsense was a critically acclaimed blog about long-form improv, written by Will Hines, a teacher and performer from the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. The blog ranged from Will’s off-the-cuff musings like “New students sure do like to use the name ‘Janice’” to long, detailed essays like “Why are there fewer women then men on improv teams?.” It was sharp, opinionated, made no effort to include the newcomer, interesting, friendly, helpful and often completely wrong. Six years of posts, almost 600 pages of stuff. This book can be obtained in digital format for less than €10