Improvathon wrap! Or give us money so we can give it to someone else

OWEN COREY PLAYING MY BOYFRIEND WHILE MY FORMER BOYFRIEND ERIC WALKER WALKS AWAY, DEJECTED.

A performing arts group spends a couple of months preparing for a big fundraiser. It’s the biggest event they do all year. The Executive Director involves the board and the staff in various levels of preparation. There is a venue acquired specifically for the event, and a multi-week promotional campaign is launched six weeks out. The organization spends it’s own money on food & drink for the fundraiser, and on the the day of the event most members of the organization are on site to help set up and execute the fundraiser. The gimmick? They will perform nonstop until the make their goal. Obviously, this is a standard yearly gala the organization puts on to raise money for itself, right?

L - R: AIMEE GOLDSTEIN, OWEN COREY, SPECIAL GUEST RALPH ANDRACCHIO AND KIERSTEN ADAMS IN HOUR FIVE OF THE IMPROVATHON

Wrong. The organization in question - Bright Invention - isn’t asking for money for itself. It is asking asking for money for a different nonprofit, one selected by the ensemble of artists performing in it. We call this event the Improvathon, and we do one every year as part of Theatre Philadelphia’s Philly Theatre Week. Crazy? We think not . . .

But we don’t mind if you think it’s crazy. Because then, you might peer in a little further to ask, just what kind of nonprofit would work this hard on a fundraising event in which it loses money? The answer is, a nonprofit which doesn’t rely on donated income for the majority of its income. This is the new nonprofit paradigm Bright Invention is . . . well, inventing! It’s a paradigm that monetizes the powerful creativity of our ensemble to solve problems in the world, and frees us to donate our creativity to those in need.

Our business model depends on the success of our Creative Corporate Training (CCT) program, which employs an innovative, scenario-based approach to team-building, customer service and workplace culture enhancement. We use structured improvisations we design specifically for each client, which embody issues or themes the client wants their team to examine. This work lies squarely within Bright Invention’s mission: to use improvisation to empower people and organizations to unlock their potential.

SPECIAL GUEST JACK PRESBY WITH ENSEMBLE MEMBER SHEA SONSKY IN HOUR ONE

We have been offering CCT since 2016 and it has grown an average of 30% compared to the previous year. We have worked with large multinational companies like GlaxoSmithKline and Merck Pharmaceuticals, and small nonprofits like The West Philadelphia Skills Initiative - the recipient of the $1,000 raised in this year’s Improvathon. We scale up our fees for the larger companies serve, earning significant income for Bright Invention and our ensemble members participating in the workshops, while remaining competitive in the learning and development consulting marketplace.

Eventually, this income will subsidize a substantial part of the expenses of our Ability In Action program, which has been serving people with disabilities and other marginalized populations since 2014. Imagine being able to go to a worthy if impoverished nonprofit, serving (for example) homeless youth transitioning to independence, or adults with disabilities training to enter the workforce, and be able to say, “we’d like to bring you an eight week program in creative dramatics and structured improvisation and all we need from you is a space to offer it in and a group to receive it.” Imagine not having to wait for a grant to come through to bring the transformative power of performance creativity to teenagers recovering from trauma (as we did last summer). Imagine the sense of meaning, empowerment and joy experienced by the actors in our ensemble, who are gaining professional skills doing this important work while they earn $50 - $100 per hour.

And yes, we still raise money through individual donations, and we still rely on philanthropic support. Indeed, we wouldn’t exist if it weren't for the Wyncote Foundation, who has taken a keen interest in our development of this new paradigm since 2013. But our fundraising lacks the beggarly, anxiety-filled desperation felt within so many nonprofits. We still have to meet our goals, we still need to cultivate and engage our donor base, we still need to be strategic and organized in our grant applications. But our goals are more modest, and our attention is more on the ways these activities grow and strengthen our community as a whole. We ask our board members to cultivate connections and leads for CCT, as opposed to meeting fundraising goals by asking their friends for money (although we don’t mind if they do that too!)

AIMEE GOLDSTEIN AND KIERSTEN ADAMS WITH SPECIAL GUEST MARY CARPENTER.

The priority for us is earning money by demonstrating this value proposition: that applied improvisation can transform workplaces, teach emotional intelligence, strengthen sensitive communication, improve customer service, and navigate challenging interpersonal management relationships. All of our work is based on the following priority sequence:

1. Our work has to be safe.

2. Then, it has to be fun.

3. Then, it can be meaningful.

The greatest joy for me participating in this year’s Improvathon wasn’t meeting our goal (which we did with minutes to spare in the final hour!) - although that’s a close second. My greatest joy was the way our ensemble of extraordinary actor-improvisers threw themselves into this madcap experience, with grace, with joy, with enthusiasm from start to finish. Special shout outs to Owen Corey, who I believe is the only member who performed in all eight hours of the Improvathon; Kiersten Adams, who performed in seven of the eight hours, and then got up the next morning to teach our class for people with disabilities; Shea Sonsky who performed while sick; and Francine Brocious, my assistant who took endless short videos and pics of the event and posted them to social media.

L - R: KIERSTEN ADAMS, BENJAMIN LLOYD, OWEN COREY, AIMEE GOLDSTEIN, SHANNON HILL AND SUZANNE ANDERSON PERFORMING “TELEPHONE”, A GAME BETWEEN ACTS OF OUR LONG FORM CALLED A HAROLD.

Why were they so upbeat, getting up early on a Saturday to perform for free so a different organization could make some money? I think it’s because that, in the midst of the sometimes vacuous and chaotic life of the professional performer, they were grateful to participate in something meaningful with people they love. In the words of Victor Frankl, “being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself--be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself--by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love--the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. “

What a great quote for improvisors, who spend their creative energy actualizing themselves by focusing on the other person. What a great event. Please join us when we give it away again, at our March show!

HAPPY AND EXHAUSTED “INVENTORS” AT THE TRADITIONAL DIM SUM MEAL POST IMPROVATHON. L - R SHEA SONSKY, FRANCINE BROCIOUS, AIMEE GOLDSTEIN, OWEN COREY, BENJAMIN LLOYD.

Ben Notes: what improv offers the differently abled

BRIGHT INVENTION TEACHER KIERSTEN ADAMS ADDRESS THE ACTING OUT! ENSEMBLE

It was March or April 2014. With the help of my brother I had just opened a small performing arts studio in my hometown of Elkins Park, PA. As I was standing on the sidewalk outside, I was approached by a woman and her teenage daughter. I noticed that her daughter hid behind her mom while her mom spoke to me. This caught my attention.

“This is so great!” her mom said of my little studio. “Will you be offering classes for young people with disabilities?” I told her that was something I was personally interested in but I didn’t want to misrepresent us. I explained that we - the ensemble and I - weren’t trained in working with that population. She introduced herself and her daughter to me. Her daughter is on the autism spectrum.

Two weeks later she emailed me and offered me this: she would pay to have me and as many of our ensemble as were interested trained by a woman who had been offering theater classes to kids with disabilities for years. I was moved and excited - and said yes! In the fall of 2014, we offered our first class for young people with disabilities and we named it Acting Out! This fall we celebrate five continuous years of offering this class.

TEACHERS KIERSTEN AND SHEA SONSKY TAPE DOWN THE FLOOR FOR THE FINAL SHARE WHILE FOUNDING MEMBERS ISABEL, CARLEY, ELIAS AND ERIC HELP.

Of all the various constituents Bright Invention serves and has served - from summer campers to corporate entities- our community of families in the disability community have been the most steadfast and loyal. Of that original group in 2014, four students have been in every class since, and we have begun to call them the “Acting Out! Ensemble”, and have begun thinking of ways to raise the bar in terms of their performance and visibility.

One of the things that sets our class apart from others like it is that we make no distinctions of either ability or disability. Many creativity classes are focused on particular disability or disability spectrum: autism, cerebral palsy, Down’s syndrome, etc. We essentially throw our doors open and say, if you think this is the class for you you are welcome. This affirms our commitment to radical inclusivity, and it comes with some challenges. Our teachers need to create an eight-week experience that serves everyone in the class, some of whom read, some who don’t, some who can jump around, others can’t, some who are very verbal, others who are very quiet. We have experimented with many approaches, and at first were using a variety of scripted formats to create theater, everything from original plays written by teachers from student ideas, to short Shakespeare scenes. But the scripts were challenging and had the unfortunate effect of dividing our group in to two basic groups: those who could read and memorize, and those who couldn’t.

Around this time I was developing an approach to organizational development, team building and leadership training which has come to be called Creative Corporate Training. These workshops use a “scenario-based” approach in which we design tailor-made scenarios we perform for our clients, which enact themes or challenges they want to explore. Then through a feedback sequence, the client group watches a problematic scenario improve as our actors replay the scenario making adjustments based on client observations and ideas. We create these scenarios using “structured improvisation” in which we design a simple three-act story based on our client’s needs, and our actors rehearse and perform it like it’s a little play. Except it isn’t. Because there’s no script. You see where this is going?

Please help Bright Invention deliver creative dramatics and structured improv to communities in need!

A HAPPY COMMUNITY AFTER A SUCCESSFUL FINAL SHARE!

Since 2017, this three-act, structured improvisation technique has been at the center of our work with people with disabilities. With this technique, everyone in the class can participate to their full potential. Everyone in the class is co-creating a three-act play, with assigned roles, a repeatable and rehearsable structure, and no limit on anyone’s creativity and imagination. All of the benefits of creative dramatics are engaged in this process. Our students are gaining confidence, developing verbal skills, acquiring emotional intelligence, and learning basic narrative structure: beginning, middle, end. Because our students are theatre people, our classes also include a rehearsed and performed show tune, which is now woven into the three-act play they create. We are really lucky to have talented and committed teachers who know how to lead structured improv, and can also choreograph a kick-ass show stopper. And we are expanding. This year, we brought our technique to a new community to us: teenage girls recovering from trauma.

Over the years, through my deepening relationship to these families I have learned a lot about what matters to them. I can write all I want about (see paragraph above) but here’s what the families tell me. Having a safe and reliable communal experience, in which their loved ones are having a fun and creative experience together is what matters. Because for their loved ones in this class, there aren’t a lot of places that offer that safe, creative space. I keep trying to innovate and they tell me, sure, okay, but just keep doing this, because this is essential for us.

That shy girl I met behind her mom on the sidewalk in 2014 is Isabel, and she is a core member of the Acting Out! Ensemble. She has been in every class since. She has performed for us and for her school, where I saw her play a leading role in their production of Hairspray. Here is a short interview I did with her before the Acting Out! final share last weekend:

I can no longer think of her and her classmates as “disabled”. She and they are just this bunch of amazing young people we get to play with year after year, and stand amazed as they bring their gifts, creativity and love to each other, us and the world.

Happy Thanksgiving. There is much to be grateful for.

The Total Artist

Lee Breuer

When I was in my second year at The Yale School of Drama, our acting class had an intensive with avant gard stage director and creator, Lee Breuer. He was the stage celebrity of the moment, having made ripples around the the world with his production of Gospel at Colonus, and was working then on his musical The Warrior Ant. He had the kind of restless, rebel energy I related to, appearing before us with a shaved head and dressed in blue jeans with paint on them and an old white t-shirt. He looked like he was taking a break from renovating the basement of the building we were in. Plus, he shared an artistic lineage with my mother, the dancer, choreographer and teacher Barbara Dilley. So I felt especially close to him.

“What is an actor?” he asked this group of 16 actors, bent on fame and fortune, convinced the world was their oyster, brimming with world-class conservatory training. We were stumped. “Come on people!”, he bellowed, “what is an actor?!”

THE GOSPEL AT COLONUS

Someone, I forget who, it might have been me, but maybe not, ventured . . . “Um, someone who . . . who interprets dramatic text, under the direction of . . . of . . . a director?”

“NO!” he nearly screamed. “An actor is a total artist who has something to say!” And I felt a gentle dagger land inside me, warming me, killing something old and useless, planting something new and terrifying, changing me forever.

ME IN A DREAMER EXAMINES HIS PILLOW AT YALE, AROUND THE TIME I MET LEE.

Over the next 30 years, the implication of those words have guided nearly everything I have done as a theater artist. In my brief, six-year stint as a struggling New York actor, I designed a theater group called The Total Artist Group (or TAG - nifty, right?). It was based on the empowerment of actors to be more authoritative in their creativity as they worked together in an ensemble over time. TAG was to be a company which partnered with clothing shops and furniture stores to advertise their products in our productions. Even then, I was thinking of innovative ways to solve the age-old money problem. But TAG never left the page, and just after I had finished writing it all down, I left New York.

In my life as an acting teacher, my bottom line has been to give my students the tools and the support to make their own creative choices, within the boundaries described by the script and in partnership with a director. And it is this concept of the actor as the total artist which has led to the creation of Bright Invention, and my commitment to long form improvisation.

After years of performing scripts and working with directors, I finally found scripted acting limiting and repetitive. The actor in a play is asked to repeat a performance again and again over the life of the run. Deviations from the rehearsed performance are not allowed; indeed, they can be catastrophic, since a well directed play is a well-oiled machine with many parts depending on all the others to work the same way each night. I came to understand that there is no greater version of the actor as total artist than actor as improviser. The actor/improviser is both author and actor. In my teaching I have named the four virtues of the actor, and no one needs them more than the actor/improviser: Courage, Empathy, Creativity and Faith.

WITH TIM MOYER IN INTERACT’S PRODUCTION OF THREE IN THE BACK, TWO IN THE HEAD

I also came to understand that my commitment to the actor as total artist was threatening to some in the theatre community, in which actors are expected (generally) to be compliant, agreeable, and to have no other priorities personally or professionally that supersede the production they have been cast in. It began to feel to me that theatres felt they were doing me a favor I should be grateful for by casting me in a play. I am sure I lost two significant jobs in part because of my stubborn refusal to be the kind of actor I was expected to be (People’s Light & Theatre) , and to pass along the requisite expectations of compliant acting to my students (Villanova University). You see, being a total artist means you get to be “difficult” when your spirit is offended by activities in the room, or you know you need to explore in a certain way, even if the authority in the room resists it.

The truth is, this paradigm of the compliant actor is driven more by capitalism, and less by any ill will anyone has for actors. I learned that plays are products sold to audiences, and that the priority for the producing entity is to keep production costs down. Total artists are expensive. They ask you to slow down. They meander off in unexpected ways to see what’s out there. They engage in challenging discussions and they demand to be heard. Total artists are have been known to say “no” occasionally - a heresy in the professional theatre. Compliant actors are efficient. They do what they are told, are easy to work with, don’t ask too many questions and say “yes” nearly automatically.

IMPROVISING WITH JOSHUA BODEN IN THE DEEP END, OUR TWO-HANDER.

Ironically, the kind of acting I am invested in now requires saying “yes” - all the time, and to everything. What makes that “yes” so easy to come by is that it allows for the creation of an original performance, co-created by the improvisers on stage in that moment, emanating from the totality of who they are. That “yes” creates the most authentic performative expression of me that I have ever experienced, and paradoxically, I must share it utterly with my stage partner.

During the time Lee Breuer was in residence with us at Yale, I was working on a solo clown multi-media performance piece called The Birth of Benjamin Lloyd. I was dressed in a giant diaper and (as I recall - the memory is bit dim now) I did a kind of stand up routine mixed in with some movement and dance. It finished with a video of my mother (who Lee knew well) and I playing together on a stage in New York City when I was six or so, accompanied by Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On? and me doing some wordless movement. I was very nervous about the piece, as it represented the first time I had ever performed in anything I had created, and it dealt with some vulnerable territory.

Lee came and saw it. Afterwards he bounded up on stage and was unexpectedly over the top effusive in his praise for it. Like, he couldn’t get the words out for how excited he was by it. He saw something it would take me many more years to see. He saw my total artist.

What Improv Teaches us about Community

BRIGHT INVENTION ENSEMBLE MEMBERS SHEA SONSKY AND KIERSTEN ADAMS AT THE STEEL CITY IMPROV THEATER GETTING READY FOR THE POST-SHOW JAM WITH AMAZING PITTSBURGH IMPROVISORS!

OFF WE GO

It’s Saturday morning and I’m recovering from driving 10 hours over the past 24. Members of my ensemble Bright Invention and I went to perform at the Steel City Improv Festival in Pittsburgh PA. The four of us tumbled into my cranky Subaru Outback Thursday bright and early and enjoyed the middle of the Keystone State as we passed through farmland, exits to the state capital, and finally, five hours later, the rolling hills approaching Pittsburgh. We napped (well, some did - I was driving), told stories and bad jokes, played I Spy and Would You Rather. We stopped at a couple of the fine rest stops along the way and indulged in bad food.

Our hotel was a corporate behemoth in the middle of downtown Pittsburgh - an art deco relic that had once been a Federal Reserve branch. In the basement, next to the fitness center, giant safes with lapped plates of thick steel stood open and empty. Our rooms were bland but we felt like Important People. We were staying in hotel! And - the festival organizers had left us bags of SWAG at the front desk! The Steel City Improv Festival is a CLASS ACT.

KIERSTEN AND SHEA CHILLIN’ PRE-SHOW.

At six on Thursday we Ubered to the Steel City Improv Theatre, and each of us fell in love with Pittsburgh a little. The gorgeous pre-fall weather helped, and the slanting warm sunlight. But I was captivated by the swelling hills on all sides and the blend of mid-century rust belt grandeur with multi-cultural hipness. At the theatre we were met by shiny, happy Pittburghians in Steel City Improv yellow tees, who showed us around the very cool, funky yet well-appointed theater and green room where there was - yes - more SWAG. We hung out in the green room, took selfies, warmed up a bit, felt giddy, tried to calm down, met other improvisers, drank soda and water, ate more bad food, watched the theater fill up, and - before we knew it, the act before us was coming off stage.

Our set was a 30 minute '“mono scene”, which means we picked a location from an audience suggestion and the the entire scene occurred in that location in near continuous time, with the the same characters coming and going, and new ones popping up now and then. We used “pop-out monologues” to introduce new characters by speaking in character directly to the audience then entering. The word our audience gave us was “haberdashery”, so our set took place . . . in a haberdashery. There were two generations of hat makers, new ideas competing with old ideas, visitors from Minnesota, neighbors from the Caribbean, and laughter and enjoyment from the audience. It was that particular improv blend of thrilling and terrifying. Afterward, we had a group hug and agreed that we had done well.

Over the course of the next 2 - 3 hours, we went and got some good food, were interviewed by a local journalist, watched the other teams perform, and then, in what might have been the coolest part of the evening, we hung out with improvisers from Pittsburgh and Detroit, ate pizza, drink libations and participated in an improv jam with them in which this cheerful group of 47 (we counted) were divided into three teams, and each team took a turn delighting the others with 20 minutes of montage improv.

THE GREEN ROOM WAS ACTUALLY . . . GREEN!

During this heady time people we didn’t know came up to us and told us how much they liked our set. We sat with improvisers from Pittsburgh and chatted, laughed, and connected. We discovered that we do indeed know what we’re doing, that we’re actually good at it, and that we are part of a tribe much bigger than our little ensemble, filled with others who also good at it, who love to share, say yes, and build stories together.

It was close to 1 AM when we all collapsed in our beds back in the hotel, tired, happy, and full.

When I created the organization now called Bright Invention I knew two things needed to be a part of it: improvisation and ensemble. As much as I loved being a scripted actor, I was keenly sensitive to the way I made these deep bonds with the casts I was in, and then those casts evaporated when the show closed, and I was left feeling bereft and lonely. I have been on a lifetime search for long-term, reliable human connection (aren’t we all, really?) Being in plays was in some ways an exercise in repetitive heartbreak, so I was determined to create an ensemble which was together over time, regardless of the vicissitudes of each person’s professional life, through the personal ups and downs we all navigate. In this way, our commitment to each other went beyond each individual’s “talent” or creative achievement. The economics of our work are irrelevant to our connection to each other. We are invested in each other’s complete wellbeing, and our rehearsals are sometimes group support for one or another’s trouble. In Bright Invention, we have helped each other with mental health resources, housing leads, creative dilemmas with outside projects, relationship woes, parenting challenges, and the list goes on. Some of us refer to us as “family” and mean it. For others, we are dependable group of talented collaborators. Each of us makes the bond to the group that is right for us. We come and go, and the ensemble changes its configuration each year.

WE CALL THIS ONE, TAKEN AT A REST STOP ON THE PA TURNPIKE, THE “ALBUM COVER.”

I believe we come together for live performance for several reasons, but one we don’t talk about enough and lift up for celebration is the mere fact of being in a room together with people we haven’t met before and sharing an experience. Improv capitalizes on this aspect of live performance in that it relies on audience participation and is spontaneously created. Community is created at improv shows through the immediacy of the performance. Knowing we are making it up right in front of you pulls you into the shared present moment more (I submit) than if you were watching us present something we had carefully rehearsed over weeks.

So now I’ll really go out on a limb. I believe that this spontaneous connecting through shared, safe and joyful experience is an essential requirement for our human wellbeing. I believe that if we don’t get it, we get sick. And yes, I mean that literally. And I believe that we now live in The Age of Isolation, making our efforts to create opportunities for this kind of connecting urgent and acute.

Most improv groups exist over time, as ensembles. They are usually called “teams” or “groups” but I like “ensemble”. To me, it emphasizes the togetherness. And not just improv groups. Many young performing artists are forming collectives of various kinds through which they devise all kinds of new and exciting shows. My Advanced Improv class has a core group of students that have been meeting with me to study improv for over two years. They have created their own ensemble and it is vital and important to them. Ensembles recognize that the performing artist seeks compensation in a variety of ways - not just money. We seek the compensation of dependable, safe and creative community. For that, many of us will make the time to connect each week, work on projects, or drive out and back to Pittsburgh for 30 minutes on stage.

HAPPY IMPROVISERS AFTER A GOOD SET . . .

For us, community isn’t a nice abstract concept to cultivate through neighborhood associations and alumni groups. It is at the center of our creative process and a pillar of our emotional and psychological wellbeing. We learn not to take it for granted, and that it only gives as good as it gets. My community shows up for me when I show up for them. The inevitable comings and goings help keep us fresh, welcoming and inclusive. The creative life can be so lonely, and it’s full of rejection, uncertainty, and hardship. But when we share it with each other, indeed, when we create joyfully out of it, our journey through this creative life ceases to be a desperate solo, and instead becomes an extraordinary chorus sung among friends.

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Short videos of Bright Invention members playing in the improv jam post show at the Steel City Improv Festival, including Ben walking a murderous platypus and getting busted, Kiersten and her artist lover, Shea telling her son to stop eating other people’s dandruff, and Eric working on someone’s teeth . . .

Are you a human being? Or a human doing?

I don’t remember who said it. I don’t even remember where I was when I heard it. But I know this. I was in a bad place. I was looking for solace, or maybe a way to understand why I felt so sad, so stressed out.

SOME OF MY CLIENTS PLAYING . . .

“Ben,” my angel said, “it sounds like you’re a human doing, not a human being.”

And thus began a slow unpacking and examination of how I exist in the world, and why. It’s taken a few therapists and years in the recovery movement but if I could distill it, my ”human-doingness” comes from this: I never felt I was good enough and so had to work extra hard to get the emotional support others seemed to receive effortlessly. And like all of the scars we bear from our origin stories, this one is a paradox, with both positive and negative attributes. On the upside, I became an over-achiever, a leader and maker of events, art, and classes. On the downside, I felt like if I didn’t, I would be a neglected shade plant in the corner, ignored and starving for sustenance.

ABOUT TO PLAY WITH MY IMPROV ENSEMBLE . . .

A “human doing” is a person who lives under the sword of Damocles, constantly responding to the “or else”: I have to do this, or else that will occur. It’s a life lived under continual threat. And since it’s a condition developed in childhood, usually in response to what the child perceives as a survival strategy, as we age we lose awareness of it and it simply becomes our experience of living, as unconscious as the air we breath and every bit as consequential. It leads to codependent relationship problems (“I have to do ______ or else she won’t _______”), tyrannical leadership styles (“Do _______ or else I will make sure _______ happens”), and a generally transactional behavior pattern (“Let’s do this, so that that will happen.”)

Besides the pernicious and exhausting stress of living with the constant “or else”, something more subtle but more problematic happens. When I am a human doing, I am never where I am. I exist in a perpetually self-created anxious future. The thing I am doing I do not for its own value or experience, but in order to manage an event that doesn’t exist because it hasn’t happened yet. And because it doesn’t exist, it is a future event I create in my own anxious imagination. A human doing finds it difficult to enjoy an experience for its own sake, without attempting to know what the consequence will be in the future - a knowledge which is fundamentally unknowable.

I would love to report that I have been entirely cured of my human doingness, and that I now live in a swami-like state of pure presence. Ha. What I can report is that I am deeply aware of my own tendencies in this direction, and I know some warning signs. I can fall in to an anxiety spiral about the future and I know what that feels like. When I feel that way I do some breathing exercises, I go to a recovery meeting or talk to a friend about how I’m feeling. I take some medicine that helps too. And I look for opportunities . . . to play.

PLAYING WITH PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES . . .

Yes, play. What do I mean by play? For me, play is an activity done with others that has no explicit purpose other than the activity itself, and which engenders a shared joyful emotional state. There is a ton of research on play and since I am not a data person or a researcher I will let you go and find it. But I have read a few books and listened to a few podcasts and my takeaway is this: playing is an essential activity in the development of healthy humans, it begins in the year after we are born and continues throughout our childhood. And then for many of us . . . it stops. There are many reasons our playing stops, and it varies from person to person. But one of the most common is that we become “professionals” and enter workplaces driven by projections and outcomes. In other words, workplaces that succeed with a workforce of human doings, who exist to make sure that if they do this, that will happen.

In this light, being a playful person might be seen as an act of rebellion against the demands of professional expectations. But here’s what I know from years of applying improvisation to workplace dilemmas through a program I created called Creative Corporate Training - cultivating a playful mindset in the workplace:

• leads to innovative thinking

• deeper problem-solving

• more productive co-working

• more efficient teams

• happier and healthier workers

• retention of those happier an healthier workers

ABOUT TO PLAY WITH SOME PHARMA WORKERS . . .

Introducing the playful mindset is a gateway to any number of explorations: mindfulness, self-care, conflict management, emotional intelligence, better customer service, and the list goes on. Improvisation is the ideal delivery system for the playful mindset, because in improv all you have is the present moment and the other person. Improv teaches us that we are enough - we have all the wisdom, creativity and courage needed to build joyful connections to others as we work towards common goals.

So take a moment today to just be. Sit quietly somewhere nice and take a few deep breaths. Notice what rises up in your experience - no judgment! If you find yourself obsessively speculating about the next thing, and the next, and the next . . . maybe it’s time to play.