Thank You
From OER Commons Wiki
Improv Goals:
- To give participants tools to collaborate during the conference—new ways of being together.
- To help them see that they individually don’t have to have “The Amazing Idea”, that that can be discovered.
- To have them experience “Yes, And…” as a technique to achieve this.
- To build trust within their groups
Tenets of Improv:
- Suspend judgment (Stay present—evaluate later)
- Let go of your agenda/be flexible (Be open, see your partner as brilliant)
- Listen in order to receive (Listen for where you agree or can support)
- Build on what you receive (Connect and move forward WITH your partner)
- Make your partner look brilliant (Focus outward. Build on what they say.)
- Look for connection/what you can accept
- Serve the scene. (Serve the bigger picture)
Improv is NOT about being cleaver, funny, witty or fast. It’s about listening, connecting, and collaborating. It’s a “state of acute cooperation.”
Focus for the facilitator: to have participants experience equality; how a short simple offer engages their partner; suspending judgment to support their partner.
Thank You
- Objective - Support each other in creativity and building on ideas
- Setup - Stand in big circle
- Example - Ask a participant to go into the middle of the circle and make a static pose with their body. Then you enter the circle and connect to their shape with your own pose, any shape, and then pause for a moment with the two shapes/bodies touching. Tell the participant (first one to be in the circle) to then say “thank you” and rejoin the circle leaving you in the middle with your shape for the next person to walk in and connect to you. There are no wrong shapes. When people enter the circle, they are saving the person in the middle; tell them to remember to say “thank you” when they’re saved. Encourage your group to going in with absolutely no idea what they’re going to do. And try to pause a bit, when the next person saves them, before they say “thank you.”
- Activity
- Debrief - How did that feel? Supported? How did it feel to be alone and then joined?
Improv Resource: Life Plays
