Children with strong social-emotional skills are better able to cope with everyday challenges and benefit academically, professionally, and socially. But the benefits that can be derived from these skills can only be seen if children are given the opportunity to develop them.This accessible guide helps teach children to participate in social-emotional learning. Offering fun group activities including social skill-based improv games, participant written plays, and basic plays that can be transformed using the creative minds of children themselves. To increase participant comfort levels with these activities, the book allows for a graduated exposure of techniques, starting with improv trust building and joint focus games, and progressing to improvisation and writing sketches.Featuring additional downloadable content, including worksheets and lesson plans for classroom use, this is the perfect companion for educators and therapists.

Improv to Improve Your Leadership Team: Tear Down Walls and Build Bridges You’re a leader with a problem. There’s a fungus-like growth in your organizational culture you can no longer ignore. It starts slowly with a few people feeling maligned and/or excluded, spreads resentment, leads to disengagement, and finally…resignations. What a nightmare! But WAIT! You have stumbled onto the exact solution you need! With this book, you can QUICKLY discover how to use the principles of applied improvisational exercises from the arts to help teams effectively connect and communicate, creatively problem-solve, increase workplace safety and employee retention, and guarantee client and stakeholder satisfaction. It’s all contained here.

Improv to Improve Healthcare: A System for Creative Problem-Solving Healthcare organizations cry out for a tool to decrease untoward events and bridge the communication gap between professional clinician teams and clients. Discover how to guide your team to creatively problem-solve, build emotional and social intelligence, increase workplace safety and employee retention, and guarantee client satisfaction with the results-don’t-lie Improv to Improve Healthcare system.

You Can’t Learn Improv From a Book is a guidebook of creativity and exploration. In this insightful manual, you will embark on the exciting adventure of teaching improvisation to high school students. Improv isn’t just about laughter and quick thinking; it’s a powerful tool for fostering teamwork, boosting confidence, and unlocking the untapped potential within each student. Get ready to watch your students not only embrace the spontaneity of the moment but also develop crucial life skills such as communication, adaptability, and creative problem-solving. The chapters ahead serve as a compass, guiding you through the dynamics of teaching improv and offering a toolbox of ideas to make each lesson engaging and memorable.

An A to Z of Improvisational Terms, Techniques, and Tools The Improv Dictionary: An A to Z of Improvisational Terms, Techniques, and Tools explores improvisational approaches and concepts drawn from a multitude of movements and schools of thought to enhance spontaneous and collaborative creativity. This accessible resource reveals and interrogates the inherited wisdoms contained in the very words we use to describe modern improv. Each detailed definition goes beyond the obvious clichés and seeks a nuanced and inclusive understanding of how art of the moment can be much more than easy laughs and cheap gags (even when it is being delightfully irreverent and wildly funny). This encyclopedic work pulls from a wide array of practitioners and practices, finding tensions and commonalities from styles as diverse as Theatresports, Comedysportz, the Harold, narrative long-form, Playback Theatre, and Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed. Entries include nuanced definitions, helpful examples, detailed explorations of the concepts in practice, and framing quotes from a leading practitioner or inspirational artistic voice. The Improv Dictionary offers valuable insights to novice improvisers taking their first steps in the craft, seasoned performers seeking to unlock the next level of abandon, instructors craving a new comprehensive resource, and scholars working in one of…

A solid theoretical basis, tested in the daily practice of its authors and the groups to which they belong. A clear, structured and defined system for use by both experienced and novice people.

The Improv IllusionistUsing Object Work, Environment, and Physicality in Performance Object work, environment and physicality are essential for improvisational theatre. Skilled improvisers can draw audiences into the performance by helping them see things that aren’t there. The Improv Illusionist is the first book dedicated to physical improv. It reveals why these skills are so important, how to fix bad habits that develop over time and practical techniques for being more physical on stage. The book features over 50 exercises to help improvisers develop their skills through solo and group work. Instructors will also find notes and tips for teaching physical improv.Improvisers of all ages and experience levels will learn how to: * become more playful through exploring physical activity;* eliminate miscommunication with other players by adding precision to object work;* get new ideas for scenes by exploring the environment and activities;* develop an eye for real-world detail and how to reproduce it in improv;* add more visual flair to scenes;* stay safe, both physically and emotionally, in shows, rehearsals and classesEven the most seasoned improv performers often struggle to be more physical, so this book fills an important niche in improv actor training.

Nick Mataragas has opinions on improv. Lots of opinions. You may not agree with them. But then again, you might. Improv: A Rant is Nick’s unfiltered view on the state of improv today, what makes for good scenes, and how you should treat the profession. Whether you agree with the thoughts or not, this book will make you think about what you are doing on stage.

Fifty Key Improv Performers: Actors, Troupes, and Schools from Theatre, Film, and TV Fifty Key Improv Performers highlights the history, development, and impact of improvisational theatre by highlighting not just key performers, but institutions, training centers, and movements to demonstrate the ways improv has shaped contemporary performance both onstage and onscreen. The book features the luminaries of improv, like Viola Spolin, Keith Johnstone, and Mick Napier, while also featuring many of the less well‑known figures in improvisation who have fundamentally changed the way we make and view comedy – people like Susan Messing, Jonathan Pitts, Robert Gravel, and Yvon Leduc. Due to improv’s highly collaborative nature, the book features many of the art form’s most important theatres and groups, such as The Second City, TJ & Dave, and Oui Be Negroes. While the book focuses on the development of improvisation in the United States, it features several entries about the development of improv around the globe. Students of Improvisational Theatre, History of Comedy, and Performance Studies, as well as practitioners of comedy, will benefit from the wide expanse of performers, groups, and institutions throughout the book.

This book is the toolkit to teach, learn, share, practice, and play short form improv comedy. Learn some basics of how improv works and learn over 120 different games and exercises. Along the way there are some anecdotes, stories, and tips about the art of improv that will help the performer and the every day human. Life is improv and improv is life. Learn short form improv comedy for yourself, for fun, for work, and for life. Classic theatre games can offer life skills of how to “yes, and” your every day life. Learn a brief history of GoProv from it’s founder, Steve Freeto while learning how silly games can offer a boost of confidence along with all of the accolades given to improvisers. Go, improv!