Our Philosophy
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.”
At its core, improvision is acting: unscripted acting.
But this doesn’t mean that improvising is just for actors. In fact, it’s the opposite: all humans play many roles throughout their lives off of the stage. Our approach to improvisation embraces this fact. We not only teach classes and workshops geared to stage and screen performance, but we also teach the power and joy of improvisation to children, non-performers, creatives, and corporate clients.
The curriculum, training, and coaching that we offer are based on five, core principles:
Play Is Our Natural State
Every human that’s born knows how to play. It’s true if we’re blind, deaf, or missing limbs. It’s true regardless of our nationality, skin color, social circles, or religious traditions. Play is a part of the human condition. More importantly, it forms the basis for how we learn. Our experienced staff leverage the power of play to help students and participants learn new and more complex skills. And we do it in the most intuitive ways possible.
Working Together Heals Us
Humans don’t live or function alone: we’re always part of one or more teams. Being a part of a system teaches us humility and inclusion. It also balances our desires to either take or hand over control. Many of the exercises we teach in both performance and applied improvisation leverage shared power, shared leadership, and shared responsibility.
Letting Go Invites Transformation
Most of us are attached to the image that we project into the world. When we improvise, our psychology is on full display, revealing both who we want to be and who we actually are. Our facilitation always emphasizes how letting go of knowing what to say, begins the process of letting go of results and of ego.
Silence Is Powerful
Our culture prioritizes communicating with words. Our classes & workshops teach the other three methods of communication: using our faces, vocal tone, and body language. Whether we know it or not, humans use all four methods of communication 100% of the time. We train people how to notice, understand, and harness these additional skills and we do so using exercises where participants play in near or total silence.
Our Bodies Have Wisdom
In Western culture, our minds and intellects are elevated above all else. Unfortunately, this means that our physical, emotional, and psychological bodies are rarely connected. We use improvisation to help these three bodies to overlap and inform one another. The approach is physical and requires a mostly silent collaboration as participants tell a story together. The results are often surprising and lead to powerful and personal insights.