The Applied Improvisation Mindset: Tools for Transforming Organizations and Communities How can the practice of improvisation become the lens through which we view the world? The Applied Improvisation Mindset takes readers deep into the maturing field of Applied Improvisation (AI), with stories of 18 practitioners from five countries who embrace an improvisation mindset to create a more collaborative, equitable, sustainable, and joyous world. Myriad organizations have discovered how the mindset and skills applied by great improvisers onstage can reveal emergent, generative ways of interacting with others offstage. With case studies on developing presentation skills, reducing anxiety in teens, or preparing climate risk managers across the globe for the challenges ahead, this second volume serves as a valuable resource for both experienced and new AI facilitators. It is a primer for higher education and K-12 faculty combatting traditional teaching limitations and a practical “how to” for theatre practitioners, artists, educators, or anyone seeking to transform their organizations and communities.

Therapeutic Improvisation: How to Stop Winging It and Own It as a Therapist Putting together what you learned in grad school and beyond into a coherent voice that is both personalized and professional. As a new or seasoned therapist, it’s so hard to make transformational moments out of all that’s being thrown at you in sessions. You’re just winging it, but deep down you know there’s a way to make your sessions more dynamic and intentionally responsive. This book shows how to develop a keen ear and sharp eye for the many changes coming your way.        Examples from music, movies, and literature will illustrate how the scientific principles of interpersonal neurobiology can help you claim your artistry as a therapist. This inspiring and informative book will help you find your voice and navigate the complexities and joys of the mysterious relationship that is therapy itself. Supervisors and new clinicians alike will be refreshed by the innovative vision of mental health practice as having a flexible and creative capacity.

Medical Improv: A New Way to Improve Communication Applied improvisors have critical knowledge and skills that are needed in healthcare. Many want to help make our hospitals, doctor’s offices, and clinics safer and more compassionate. AND, the medical/nursing world desperately needs the ‘soft’ skills that applied improv can help us with. In order to most effectively apply improv in healthcare settings, it is important to understand common cultures and human dynamics that persist in the USA and other countries. This special edition will help improvisors be more effective in healthcare as they learn: – How ‘soft’ skills impact critical outcomes such as; patient safety, patient experience, workforce health, and cost-effectiveness.- Barriers to developing ‘soft’ skills such as; blaming or bullying cultures, relentless high-stakes, high-stress work, toxic hierarchies, and emotional risk.- The language we use in describing these problems.- Facilitation, debriefing tips, and dialogue examples that depict improv activities unfolding in a medical and nursing context.The original book was written and continues to sell as a train the trainer resource for healthcare professionals so that they can bring fundamental activities into their organizations. The author hopes this cost-effective edition will answer questions improvisors have and empower them to move this important…

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.

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!

You already know that there’s no script for effective leadership… That’s why Improv Leadership reveals five skills that will help you unleash your own leadership potential on every unexpected challenge and status quo. Anyone can read books and apply lessons, but only the best can develop what they know to bring out the best in any person or circumstance. These natural leaders understand the key principles of connecting, coaching, and communicating and use these ideas to build strong teams. In Improv Leadership, Stan Endicott and David Miller share five leadership competencies that all great, improvisational leaders have: IMPROV leaders apply these five competencies to initiate powerful conversations, create memorable moments with forward momentum, and craft personal coaching strategies that help people, and teams, grow. The five competencies of IMPROV Leadership are not rigid steps to follow. They are fluid and can be applied to any industry of field. You can’t predict every challenge you’ll face. There’s no playbook that covers every decision. But you can cultivate teams of people who love their work (and each other) and who perform at a high level. And you can lead well in any situation.

Improv is an art form in which participants act and respond in the present, trusting that each thoughtful action will lead to a wonderful outcome–even if it isn’t the intended result. In this book, the principles and practices of unscripted theater are applied to non-theatrical circumstances. This book is based on a highly successful business school course, and aids in the development of communication, teamwork, creativity, confidence, emotional intelligence and other abilities. Each chapter assesses a different component of improv–how it connects to stage success and how it can be used in professional, academic and social settings. This is the only text that lays out an entire course on applied improv, providing activities with detailed instructions and descriptions. With roots in higher education, the book is informal, entertaining, and designed to be beneficial for anybody. Behavioral science, philosophy, art and athletics are all used to inform this discussion of improv and its real-world applications.

The Transformative Journey of Divine Play Improv comedy is known as a challenging comedic performance art, which Keli has been teaching, directing and performing for over a quarter of a century. As Keli expanded her world view by traveling to sacred places and training with master spiritual teachers, she came to understand that improv was not just her art and her job, it was her medicine. Not only was it her practice to sooth her own soul, but it was the way in which she, has been able to be a “hollow bone” and let the healing energy of Divine play move through her and transform the lives of her students. This book is her love letter to improv, and to all the brave souls willing to live in the moment, to accept themselves and others as they are, and to co create with the world by saying YES, and……