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……

Winging It: Improv’s Power & Peril in the Time of Trump In Winging It, literary scholar and cultural polymath Randy Fertel returns to the interrogation of improvisation he began with his earlier work Taste for Chaos (2015). In this new volume, Fertel explores the wider landscapes of popular culture and public affairs, ranging deftly from the unmediated experience in hook-up culture, psychedelic trips, Fred Astaire’s tap dancing, Frans Hals’s brush strokes, social media, and Hamilton‘s hip-hop to—last, though alas not least—the performative and demagogic posturing of Donald Trump. The gesture all improvisations share—I will create this on the fly, or as Trump has it, my gut knows more than many brains—defies rationality and elevates embodied emotions, instinct, and intuition, challenging our assumption that everything of value depends upon long study, tradition, and hard work. Claiming to be free of serious purpose, improvisation only pursues pleasure. Or so it says.

Life and faith are improvisational theater, and finding meaning is a work in progress. From first breath to the first day of school, from first dates to last rites, most of us struggle with the overwhelming desire to find meaning. How do we love well, stay authentic, build community, enjoy life, and live justly all at the same time? No one knows. God may have a plan, but God never gave us the script. This book will teach strategies to escape the oppressive voice of self-doubt, foster compassionate creativity, transform Christian faith into a meaningful life practice, and organize communities of faith based on the the principles of improvisational theater. Each chapter will focus on a skill or practice of improv, made relevant through autobiographical stories of and grounded in the Christian tradition. The end of each chapter will include brain exercises the average reader can do to strengthen the creative neural pathways required to master the improv skill for living.

Improv at Work: What the Business World Can Learn from Improvisational Comedy Improv at Work is an inspirational guide, designed to transform the stressed and struggling workplace into one of creativity, empowerment, and fun, similar to the environment surrounding improvisational comedy (aka, improv). Professionals with only a few years of work experience to the most competent leaders will draw inspiration from this book to optimize workplace communication, collaboration, and innovation. In today’s workplace, technology shortcuts and overscheduled calendars are hindering our ability to grow the crucial interpersonal skills necessary for high-performing and thriving businesses. If we want to realize the full potential of what’s possible in the workplace, we must avoid neglecting our own interpersonal skill development. This is where improv fits into the picture. Improv at Work will: Here’s what the workplace had to say about experiencing workshops based on Improv at Work: “Fantastic session — relevant, engaging, and fun!” “I think the muscles you helped us train are critical for success… The agenda, activities, and examples were well designed and executed.” “I found multiple ways to learn more about my colleagues and clients and have fun at the same time. I also found the Improv workshop to be an excellent way to be more…

This hybrid engineering manual and improv manual gives practical tips on how to boost design skills and design thinking with improv exercises. It pushes designers to trust their teams, take initiative, focus on the customer, and better transform abstract ideas into reality. Engineers, artists, makers, software developers, and entrepreneurs will find the most benefit from this guide, especially if they work in teams and strive to innovate. Teachers and trainers can also use this guide to supplement their lessons in design. First the guide details a number of selected engineering methods and skills that are both key to the design process and related to improv principles. These methods and skills all relate to the themes of teamwork, creativity and ideation, handling failure, empathy, and design representation. Then the guide details how to play over twenty-five fun and challenging games from the improv and art worlds that have direct applications to design skills. The connection between each game and a design skill is explicitly explained. Questions are also provided to give readers a chance to self-reflect on how a game might apply to them. The author draws on his own experience in engineering education and improv to compile this handy design…

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.