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Improv Class 5 – Make up your own story

Story was the focus of this week’s class. We started the class with an exercise from Imago Relationship Therapy. In this exercise each participant gets the opportunity to say in a few sentences what they need to say to be fully present. One of the others must then mirror that persons exact words back to them. The exercise is not so much about saying what you need to say to be present, but being listened to fully without judgement. When we listen to people like this we help them to become fully present. In essence what we are doing is accepting them and showing them that they are welcome and worth being listened to.

The next exercise was a game call Todododo in which we had to make word associations keeping a rhythm. This illustrates how much easier it is to come up with ideas if you stop trying so hard. This is why in Improv we say “be average”. If you stop trying to be perfect and get everything right , it helps to lower anxiety and your brain can relax and function better so that your creativity can surface. After that we played another word association game in which we just made associations around the circle. This game illustrated how our minds automatically make links between random words. In the next game everyone paired up with one other person. The one had to come up with 4 unrelated sentences that the other had to connect together to create a story. Relating random events together is what makes a story. At first it sounds like a difficult task but as I mentioned earlier the brain does it automatically. Our brains are wired that way. Relating events together and making up stories is how we make sense of the world.

Then we played Automatic Story. In this game one player has to ask yes/no questions about the storyline of an unknown story that the other player has in mind. What the questioning player doesn’t know is that the person answering the questions is only saying yes to questions starting with a vowel and no to questions starting with a consonant. The person asking the questions is therefore making up the story without knowing it. This game illustrates how easy it is to make up our own stories. Isn’t it interesting how in life we also often think that someone else is in control of our tale, while we are actually the authors of our own life stories?

The next game that we played was What happens next? In this game one player stands in the middle of the circle and acts out a story that the rest of the group make up one sentence at a time. After each sentence the player asks “What happens next?” To improvise a good story in a group there are 4 important guidelines-

• Free association: Free associated ideas create the material from which a story can be constructed.

• Reincorporation: Reincorporation is the recycling or re-using of ideas or situations from earlier in the story. By reincorporating ideas and situations you make sense of the random ideas generated by free association.

• Platform: The who, what and where of a scene. Success of a scene often depends on a solid and clear platform.

• Breaking routine: A good story that will engage an audience is a series of routines that are broken creating new routines.

I believe that if we want our lives to be good stories we must become aware of routines that are limiting us and break them and create new routines. And when the new routine starts to limit us we must break it again. Routines can be anything from a mindset, to a hab it to a physical space. The harder it is to break the routine, the higher the risk and the better the potential for a really good story.

As a footnote: Sandra Lee Schubert co – facilitated a writing program for 10 years where participants would weekly share immensely personal pieces of some aspects of their lives. In a conversation, her co-facilitators asked why they had to be so personal. She asked, “ Why not? “There is a deep, deep desire to be heard. People want to stake their claim in the landscape of story. Intimacies are shared because we want to take the power back. Why should someone else define your story?

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Improvisation class 3 – Make your partner look good.

We started the class with a relaxation exercise to help us become aware of our bodies. Becoming aware of your body is a great way to get out of your head and become present. Next we played a series of mirroring exercises. First just one person creating a sound and a move which is mirrored by another player, then everyone mirror’s the person. Finally everyone is mirroring everyone. It takes a lot of awareness of the other players to adapt to whatever they are doing. Mirroring your partner is a great way to make your partner look good. Check out this Ted Talks Video about how a crazy nut is turned into the leader of a movement by someone else who made him look good by mirroring his moves.

Luci commented about how it was easier to just follow the men in the group than the woman. Is this because the men made louder noises and bigger movements? Or is it because of social conditioning? A good improviser is aware of everyone in the group and can pick up subtle offers. A good improviser is also aware in every moment, knowing when he/she needs to take control and take initiative and when he/she needs to give over control and allow someone else to take focus.

After the mirroring exercise we played a game called “Gifts”. In this game a player gives another an imaginary gift without having to know what it is. The one receiving the gift must say what it is and accept it like it is the one thing they’ve always wanted. This game illustrates how physical gestures can also be offers. The one receiving the gift accepts the physical offer and builds on it by saying what it is. By accepting the gift with so much enthusiasm he/she also make his/her partner look good.

The last game for the evening was “Blind offers”. In this game one player starts with a physical movement, another player then enters and says something that accepts the first player’s movement and justifies it. The first then replies in a way that builds on the second player’s comment. eg. First player makes a physical movement that looks like someone scrubbing a floor. The second player enters and says, “John the deck better be spotless before we set out on our voyage.” The first replies, “Ai ai Captain!” Antoinette made a very important statement after the class. She commented on how difficult it was for her to come up with a response to the first player’s movement. She realised that the reason for the difficulty was that she thought that she needed to say something funny. She realised however that if she just focused on the other player and tried to make them look good, it’s much easier to come up with something good. Jacques also mentioned that it was much easier to just go on and start making a physical movement because he knew his partner will accept it and build on it.

So how often do we do this in real life? How often are we focused on making our partners look good rather on just making ourselves look good? How often do we block others in an attempt to make ourselves look good?

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Improvisation class 1 Gifts, Acceptance and Gratitude


Last night another group of brave souls embarked on their journey into the “spur of the moment” …the magical world of Improvisation – a world filled with mystery, secure uncertainty and spontaneity. The class got under way with a game called “the story of my name”. In this exercise everyone is afforded a chance to tell the story behind their name. This game introduced some fundamental principles of improvisation , namely 1. ) listening and 2.) Creating a story without planning.

This was followed by a name game in which you have to say someone else’s name in the circle and walk towards them, the named person must then say someone else’s name and walk towards them before the first person reaches them. When people play this game for the first time they are often anxious about making a mistake. This anxiety usually results in a perceived failure. Our fear for failure is often what causes us to fail. In improvisation we do away with failures and mistakes. They simply seize to exist in our world. Everything that happens is seen as an offer that can be used. This is encapsulated in the phrase “make your partner look good”.

To elaborate on this improvisation fundamental we played a game called “Circus Bow”. In the game every participant gets a chance to make a large bow and say anything in the line of “I failed” or “I made a mistake”. The rest of the group then gives a big round of applause…as though this failure was a beautifully constructed success.

For the next exercise everyone paired up with another participant and counted to 3, each time alternating who counts next. After a while the number one is replaced with a sound. Then 2 is replaced with a move and 3 is replaced with a word. After the game Mayah commented that what made it difficult was that you have to listen and remember to speak at the same time. That is very true about improvisation. In improvisation you always need to balance opposites – listening and speaking, being aware of yourself and being aware of others, taking control and giving up control. The only way to do this is by being present and doing whatever is required in the particular moment.

The next exercise called “mirror mirror” built on this idea. Participants paired up again. One participant moved while the other participant mirrored every movement. Then they switch. Whoever was leading now follows and vice versa and in the third round both lead and follow at the same time. The aim of the game is to move exactly at the same time – in sync. The only way to do this is if you are really focused on the other person and aware of yourself at the same time. Pierre also mentioned that you need to be very playful about it. The best part of this exercise is when you don’t know who is leading. It’s as if you are both thinking exactly the same thing. In improvisation we call this a group mind.

The next improvisation fundamental was accepting offers and building on them. In improvisation this is described by the phrase “yes and”. It means that any offer that is presented is accepted and built on. The opposite of this is called “blocking”. The phrase we often use in life to block other peoples’ offers is “yes but”. To practice “yes and” everyone paired up with someone else and planned a vacation. In the first round all had to respond to their partner’s idea with a sentence that started with “yes but” and a reason why the suggestion wasn’t a good idea and then give another idea. After that everyone had the same task but instead of starting the sentence with “yes but”, the participants had to start their sentences with “yes and” – accepting the other player’s idea and building on it. When you accept you bond with your partner, you create wonderful new ideas and you build positive energy. When you block, you get frustrated, nothing creative results and you build negative energy. Why is it that we more often block than except in life? Some reasons that came out of the group are: ego, fear and laziness.

The last game for the evening was “Yes lets!” In this game any one can make a suggestion like “Lets read a book” or “Let’s sit on a pyramid and howl at the moon”. The others then respond very excitedly with the words “Yes lets!” and mime doing what was suggested with enthusiasm. It’s amazing how much fun this game is if you really commit to it. It is not very often that people accept our ideas with so much enthusiasm and not just say they support it but also do it right away. Antoinette made a comment about what a huge gift it is to have your ideas accepted like that. So this game was like a big Christmas party, everyone just showering each other with gifts. This is absolutely the spirit of improvisation – giving, accepting and gratitude. What a great way to end our first class. Thank you for everyone’s participation and I’m really looking forward to next week.

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Improvisation and Learning: A neuropsychological viewpoint

by Manuela Glasbrenner

Brain
I recently attended one of the Playing Mantis workshops held by Burgert. The concept of improvisation being applied as a tool for learning was totally new to me and I was very curious to see what it was all about.
The workshop was a great success in my opinion. A fresh approach to the practice of personal and team development: Joyful and exciting, but at the same time instructive. The exercises were simple in their execution, yet led directly to reflections and revealed some rather surprising insights. As a psychologist I believed that I already knew quite a bit about some of the topics and ideas touched upon by the workshop. Amazingly, afterwards I found myself continuously reflecting on these exercises and the new thoughts they brought up, even to this day.
This led me to ponder some questions with regards to the underlying neuropsychological processes of learning. What happens in our brain that makes us learn so easily in an improvisational setting and why does it bring about such an outstanding effect? To understand this, I would like to shortly outline some facts about learning as well as some of the findings of current research.


What is learning?

If we talk about learning, we usually refer to the act, process or experience of gaining knowledge or skill. Psychologists often define it as acquiring of modifying patterns of behaviour or cognition, usually after practicing or experiencing something.


How do we learn?

Firstly, we need to know that our brains will experience lifelong physical diversification and development as a result of learning.
A human brain contains about 120 billion neurons (nerve cells) that are interconnected three-dimensionally. One neuron can have a few thousand connections, which means that we command a dense network with a fibre length of about 400 000 kilometers. Every piece of information reaching our brain will be transformed and decoded into electronic patterns. Neurons pass this information to other neurons, to muscles or to gland cells. This information transfer can be optimized through an expansion and modification of the existing network: Learning materializes through changes at the synaptic clefts between neurons or through the creation of new neural conjunctions. At the same time, every process of learning provides a basis for the continuation of learning in the future. In other words, every new connection becomes a stepping stone for further development beyond what has just been learned. The opposite effect takes place as well: Connections which are not being used anymore become degraded. This is for example what happens when we “forget”, which means, we lose access to the knowledge that was saved in the brain. Learning therefore shapes the individual micro-structures of our brains, neuro-scientists call this “plasticity”.

Improvisation and learning

These above mentioned learning processes take place throughout our whole lives, and the brain changes according to its usage. The question then to raise here is: How can we optimize these processes? What can neuroscience tell us about optimal learning and where do improvisational learning techniques fit into these findings?

1. Improvisation exercises are fun

One of the most significant memories of the improvisation workshop for me, is that it was a lot of fun. Even if Burgert’s description of the upcoming tasks may have sounded weird at first, I got the impression that everybody enjoyed them once they began, leading to many smiles and laughter in the group. What does this tell us about their effects?
Emotions play an essential role in learning and neuroscience helps us to understand why this is the case: There are some areas in the brain which are particularly involved in learning and memory. This is the so called “Limbic System”, which consists of the Hippocampus and the Amygdala in the medial temporal lobes, the basal fore brain as well as the prefrontal cortex and areas of the brain stem.
These structures serve as a kind of operational centre: The Limbic System executes the emotional evaluation and selection of incoming information. It can be seen as a filter, which any information has to pass before it can be further processed and encoded. Emotionally coloured contents, which are perceived as relevant and important to ourselves, pass this filter more easily and will receive preferential treatment during further processing in the brain. This means that they will be encoded more quickly, firmly and deeply. The ability to remember is in the same way strongly dependent on the emotional content of the learning material, as well as on the personal concern, mood and involvement during the learning process.
Emotions are of great importance for learning processes because they allow the personal identification with everything that has to be learned. If we therefore manage to combine a learning experience with positive emotions by means of making it enjoyable, we can be sure that its content will be memorized for a long time. This means that the playfulness that Playing Mantis incorporate into their improvisation techniques, strongly increases their effectiveness.

2. Improvisation exercises induce creativity

The exercises we did in the workshop contained guidelines, but often demanded from the participants to develop ideas, movements and stories for themselves. There was never a sheet of paper or model we were supposed to comprehend and memorize, and the outcome was open to our personal explanation and interpretation. This kind of framework leads to creative learning.
Human creativity is a specific kind of thinking or cognitive process, because it involves making new mental connections rather than analyzing or commenting on existing ones. On the neural level, this commensurates with the build up of novel neural pathways or the reconnection of previously disconnected ones. An FMRI-study, conducted at a university in Bristol in 2005 by Paul Howard-Jones and colleagues, aimed to identify those areas of the brain associated with making up a story creatively. Tasks involving story telling will usually result in increased activity in the left side of the brain, which is associated with language processing. This study however, found that those participants who solved the task creatively, showed an increase in activity in certain prefrontal areas of both hemispheres of the brain.
These results suggest that parts of the right hemisphere are required for creative thinking. An explanation for this, is that creative thinking demands higher cognitive effort: We have to access different areas in the brain and combine the relevant information into a new, creative solution. The additional effort required might have been needed to access contextual memory that was necessary to learn a new insight. This memory might have become inaccessible and eventually even forgotten otherwise.
Self-derived, creative solutions therefore generate a type of learning which manifests across the brain and is thus more successful, while being told what to do merely generates temporary, superficial knowledge.
Additionally, it has been shown that the kind of “Aha! experiences” we get through our own efforts, also activate the brain’s reward system and thus improve learning as explained in the last chapter about emotions.

3. Improvisation exercises encompass comprehensive demands and information

If we talk about the attainment of “knowledge”, we do not only think about cognitive structures, but also include behavioral patterns, which contain diverse impressions. The concepts and behaviours that participants of these workshops are supposed to gain, should also be applicable in complex and dynamic real-life situations.
Playful, spontaneous and practical exercises like improvisation techniques fulfill these requirements and challenge a person in real-time, involving all his senses. Again, this fact promotes successful learning based on neurological principles:
Our brain doesn’t have direct access to the world in order to gain knowledge. Sensory cells will transform every incoming piece of information into signal patterns which will then be distributed to different brain centers, according to their qualities. For example, impressions concerning movement will be processed in other areas than input about the properties of materials or sounds and language. These signals turn into information and obtain meaning only through their concurrent processing in these different brain regions. In the same way, knowledge is not being stored and retained as a whole. When we memorize something, our brain uses particularly notable pieces of information, which are then recombined into one impression.
Therefore, the most successful learning methods are those that cultivate the ability of the brain to link and build networks. Ideally they should stimulate all the senses and activate multimodal skills to thus challenge the brain in different aspects and vice versa enable it to activate the attained knowledge through various triggers. Multi-faceted activities advance the development of the brain throughout a person’s lifetime. Therefore it is playful activities, not passive, uninvolved parroting of knowledge that leads to physical changes of the brain and hence to enduring, applicable learning.

What do we learn from this?

In a nutshell, improvisation can be seen as a distinct type of dynamic, experiential learning, which promotes creative problem solving and innovation through processes that correspond with the operating principles of our brain.
But without trying it out, this knowledge might be of little use 🙂

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Howard-Jones, P.A., Blakemore, S.-J., Samuel, E. A., Summers, I. R., Claxton, G. (2005). Semantic divergence and creative story generation: An fMRI investigation. Cognitive Brain Research, 25, 240 – 250.

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Improv Class 2.6 – Who is the hero in your story?

In his book “A million miles in a thousand years” Don Miller distils the essence of a good story as “a character that wants something and overcomes conflict to get it”. In the previous class we focused on creating a strong character (a character that knows what he/she wants). Now to write this character into a good story he/she needs to overcome some kind of conflict to get what he/she wants. In her article, “A Story structure for change and growth”, (click here to download article) Petro Janse van Vuuren identifies 4 essential characters that make up a good story. The first is the protagonist (hero/main character) of the story – the character that wants something. The second is the antagonist (nemesis/villain). The antagonist is in direct conflict of the protagonist and doesn’t want the protagonist to get what they want. A third character is the mentor (guide/guardian angel). The mentor helps and guides the protagonist to get what they want. The last character is the contagonist (obstacle/ tempter). The role of the contagonist is to distract the protagonist from achieving what he/she really wants. The contagonist is not in direct conflict with the protagonist like the antagonist. The contagonist tests the protagonist, to see if he/she is worthy of getting what he/she wants.

In Monday night’s class we played a new game that I made up based on these 4 characters. I call this game “The 4 roles game”. In the game 4 players are each given one of the 4 different characters. Three scenes are played. The first scene is between the protagonist and the mentor. In this scene what the protagonist wants must be clearly defined. In the next scene the protagonist meets the contagonist, who tries to distract the protagonist from achieving his/her goal. In the last scene the protagonist faces the antagonist and must overcome him/her to get what he/she wants. Here is an example from last night’s class. Ruan played a dancer who wanted to win the Olympic dance medal. Luci played the mentor who taught him to dance from his heart. In the next scene Ruan is distracted by his girlfriend (contagonist) played by Minki who wants him to copy other dance styles in his dancing. In the last scene Ruan is faced with his arch nemesis (antagonist) Juan-Philip, 3 times dance world champion played by Olaf. In order to beat him Ruan remembers the words of his mentor, reminding him to dance from his heart. His own authentic dance style overwhelms Juan-Philip and he wins the Olympic dance medal. WOW, what a beautiful story, made up right there on the spot because everyone knew what role they had to play.

So what role are you playing in your own life? Are you the hero? Or are you your own antagonist, preventing yourself from getting what you really want? Or are you the hero but find yourself lured and occupied by the distractions of a contagonist in your life? Or don’t you know what you really want so you are not really living a good story? Are you experiencing life as a series of random events? (If you want to read more about knowing what you want read my previous blog “what do you really want?”)
You are the author of your own life story and you have the power to cast the other roles in your life. Think of someone who you have cast as an antagonist in your life. Maybe you want to quit your job and start your own business but your father or your husband doesn’t want you to for whatever reason. You can cast them as an antagonist who is preventing you from getting what you want. However you can cast them as a contagonist who is helping you to know if you are ready for this big step. Or you can even cast them as a mentor that is guiding you to make an informed decision. The way you cast them will determine how you will react towards them and the influence they will have on you. In this story the antagonist isn’t really your father or your husband. The real antagonist is being stuck in a job that is not allowing you to live out your passion.

Understanding that all 4 roles are essential for a good story will help you to recognize and accept conflict, temptation and support in your life so that you can be the hero of your own life story and get what you really want out of life.

If you want to know more about how to become the hero of your own life story attend our Personal Success Story workshop.

Click on the following links for a Personal success Story workshop in your area.
Western Cape
Gauteng
KZN

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