Living on GOOD: I hold the secret to the fastest, widest ranging, longest lasting, and certainly most fun path to positive, global social change: Everyone in the world should take an improv class. I have never been more serious about anything in my life. If more people improvised, there would be no war.
Improvisation is the art of making it up. Winging it. Often used in theatre, it is the creation of a scene or tiny play that arises from a suggestion from the audience, a tiny play for which the script is made up on the spot. If all you can think about right now is “Whose Line Is It Anyway?,” then please allow me to elaborate.
9 comments:
Sure! Why not! Global change might be a bit of a stretch, but improve does get people's attention. Why? Because if you're good at it its FUNNY! And people respond to humor. There's certain groups of people who get and about all of the political memes floating around the internet right now, for example. Saying that these don't help solve the more serious issues. Well, maybe not, but that's how people learn about the issues in the first place. Especially with our ever-shortening attention spans, it's much easier to sit in front of "Whose Line is it Anyway" with a huge bag of chips, or flip through some photos of Lucille Bluth with Mitt Romney quotes pasted on them, than it is to watch the news for an hour. Sad, possibly. True, for sure.
YES! Thank goodness. I like this article. I agree with Kassondra definitely that Improv brings world issues to people's attention all the time, but the best social change it makes is, just making us better people! Totally! I never thought of it, but all the points argued make complete sense. A lot of our problems in the world happen with misunderstandings. And people trying to act cooler, bigger, better than what they seem. It's tough to be embarrassed, do something wrong, do something new and on the edge but then fail, in front of lots of people. Being okay with all of those things, and learning to move on from them is such a valuable thing that we, I even need to learn! The point of Improv is to make you think on your feet and be okay if the tides change. I think it would be a great thing to take on. Shoot- it would probably be great to try!
I thought this article would be about seeing improv shows and I was ready to disagree to an extent. I do agree with the article, although I think improv could just be replaced with better theater education in schools. Most of the arguments made in this article apply directly to drama education in elementary, middle, and high schools. Improv has the ability to force people to fail and get over it, make a fool out of themselves and see that that's ok, be creative, work with other people, to present themselves better, and improve their communication skills. Theater in schools teaches kids those same things.
I really like what the article had to say! Yes improv does teach alot of the things mentioned, like failing, trying again, and listening. It also teaches you to keep in tune with those around you and with whomever you are trying to captivate, which is the audience in improv. Perhaps not on a global scale, but certainly a more local scale, improv could do alot of good. I agree with Abigail about theatre education and exercises teaching many of the same things. Theatre really just teaches us about humankind as a whole, so why not teach more of it? Anyway, I agree that improv certainly has alot of lessons that could do the world good, if put into a broader perspective of course.
I believe that is it true that people should absolutely learn that failing is hugely important to our development as people, and until people can accept that failure is a normal, expected, and helpful part of life, they will continue struggling through life more than they would have needed to. Improv could be a great way for people to reach this conclusion. Whether or not improv is what makes people come to the conclusions this article outlines, I hope that schools can figure out a way to teach these lessons to students, whether through improv or other theatre activities, or anything else that would get these points across!
Improv certainly is wonderful. almost everyone I've met who does improv is pretty laid back, and happy almost all of the time. I don't think it would stop all war if everyone did improv, but it definitely wouldn't hurt. I was required to take improv in high school (it was a weird very artsy school) and I had the time of life. It is loads of fun and it certainly helps people develop skills to use in social situations. However I don't think it would help anyone forced to do it with anything else though. I think the relaxation that comes with it is something that only comes when you accept the failure aspect of improv. I think it stems from being able to completely disgrace yourself in front of a lot of people. And I think that only comes with people who actually want to be doing improv.
I never thought of Improv this way but now that I do it is a wonderful to look at how humans interact with each other. I have tried improv before and I was terrible at it. I always tried to deliver the punch and get all the laughs. It never worked. You have to be a part of a group to do improv you can't do it alone. And you couldn't be selfish with it either sometimes you do do get the moments where you get to make everybody laugh but most of the time you are dragged along for a ride. Which is a really interesting experience, you get to learn how the other people think more than just asking them. This way of learning truth in a fake reality is a great thing that theatre does and so I totally agree with this author.
I think failure is an important part of life. It doesn't necessarily have to be your failure it can be those around you. It's important to learn why something failed, so that you dont make the same mistakes.
I like what the author said about improv and how you have let go of preconceptions, get along, and work well together. The thing is, not everyone will adapt to those rules. There are greedy, bad people in the world who don't care about anyone else. They stretched it a lot when they said it could prevent wars and bring about global social change.
I've been thinking for a while now that pretty much everything you learn about and do in the theater is applicable to outside, real-life experiences, and this experience is a perfect example of that. I did quite a bit of improv in high school and yes, I definitely agree that it teaches you SO much about how to work with others, quick response, failure, etc. It'd be interesting to see what happened if our whole class had to do improv together one day. Ha, totally not suggesting it, someone would probably get hurt. But anyways, while I don't know if, like the title suggests, improv will solve all of the world's problems, it's a wonderful disciplines that also translates over really well to non-performance fields.
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