|
 |
| |
Improvisation, Storytelling and Theater-based
Organizational Programs for Leaps in Thinking, Being and Innovating
We are pioneers in the field of Applied Improvisation. Since
the late nineties, we have been using Improv-based Principles and Practices with business organizations, non-profits, business
leaders and professional development groups. CEO Michelle James is a member of the international Applied Improvisation Network
and also performs full-length improvised plays with Precipice Improv in the Washington, DC area. Go to our Media page for
recent interviews with Federal News Radio and da Innovise Guys.
We customize programs
based upon your learning objectives and business goals in areas such as:
|
• Team and Community Building • Creative Thinking • Innovation
• Product Development
|
• New Solution Finding • Change Management • Idea Generation •
Vision & Strategy Development
|
• Jumpstarting Inspiration • Risk Taking • Innovative Culture • Organizational
Storytelling
|
Why Improv?
|
Improv and Inspiration
• Raises energy, alertness and positive feelings • Engages & integrates
different parts of the brain & body • Unleashes an aliveness only found in the moment • Increases
self awareness and expands self concept • Becomes self motivating because it’s fun • Awakens &
focuses previously dormant creative potential • Generates edge-of-your-seat excitement
|
Improv and Ideation
• Creates new neural pathways
and releases endorphins • Fosters the ability to think on your feet & under pressure • Develops confidence
in navigating the unknown • Generate more novel ideas in a shorter amount of time • Develops flexible
thinking • Activates the imagination in new and surprising ways • Expands the "playing field"
of the mind
|
|
Improv and Innovation
• Enables more risk taking
and spontaneous behaviors • Shakes people out of traditional ways of doing things • Increases ability
to add to other’s ideas in inventive ways • Challenges assumptions • Breaks habitual patterns of
thinking, being, and doing • Fosters experimentation without fear of failure • Allows new patterns, directions
& prototypes to emerge
|
Improv and the Creative Team/Culture
• Instantly
equalizes every member of the group • Breaks down barriers quickly and non-threateningly • Sets the stage
for ongoing generative co-creation • Increases trust between team/group/org. members • Fosters thinking
in terms of OURS. “Look what WE did!” • Enhances the skill of supporting; giving and receiving •
Engages the whole person & whole team
|
Once people feel comfortable, there is no end to what they
can accomplish. Improv-based learning helps people feel comfortable with their creativity: putting ideas out there, taking
more risks, making mistakes and accepting others.
Workshops and Programs
We customize
our improv-based workshop or program for you. Topics have included improv for leaders, innovation and implementation, inspiration, team building, creative thinking, thinking on your feet, the act of discovery,
creative culture and the principles and practices in action
among others. Our workshops run anywhere from a half-day
in-house to a 5-day off-site retreat, and we have ongoing programs with coaching as well.
Performances
and Live Industrials
Quantum Leap Theater uses scripted live performances as a tool for creativity, innovation,
and team building/group co-creating. From live industrials to interactive performances to part scripted/part improvised learning
performances, we use theater and storytelling in whatever way best suits your organizational development needs.
Improv Train-the-Trainer
We offer a program called Creative Facilitation Using Improv for anyone who leads or trains groups. We come into your organization or do an off-site retreat and train your facilitators
and trainers to use easy-to-apply improv techniques with your staff. This is also one of our public workshops.
Improviganza! Events Office parties, holiday soirees, awards ceremonies, executive retreats...you
name it. If you have an event, we can design an improv-based program to bring it to life! Who needs to hire outside
entertainment when you've got the creative goods right there within your organization's people?! Your collective creativity
IS the entertainment. We just create the context for that to happen in fun, safe and easy ways - and ways that make people
feel good about themselves and each other. It will be the talk of the water cooler...
How We Work
Call us for a free consultation and tell
us your issue. We'll discuss options and recommendations, and how we would approach the issue. It may be just one person
coming it to facilitate, or it may be a team of performers. It depends on your needs and choices.
Our Pioneering Clients
Organizations
who have used our improv-based programs include Microsoft, GEICO Insurance, World Bank, Kaiser Permanente, National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Invest Northern Ireland, National Institutes of Health, Center for Nonprofit Advancement,
Create Express and Service Employees International Union among others.
Michelle's Improv Story
I have studied
and practiced improv for ten years. I’ve experienced experience in short form, long form, and "tornado" form
improv and currently perform full-length, completely improvised plays with Precipice Improv. Each week, a unique and different play emerges from our group of four. When it works, it looks like magic. People say, "That
HAD to be scripted." It wasn’t. But when it doesn't, they say, "That looked hard." It was.
I became fascinated by what makes it work. What creates peak level creativity in our group and others? What allows a coherent,
sense-making structure to emerge from nothing but a location? Why did it work sometimes and not as well at others? I discovered
it was all about being present, committing to the good of the whole and adhering to the improv principles and "ways of
being" (i.e., Make everyone else look good and Yes And).
If the improvisers adhered to certain ways of being,
creativity would skyrocket. And so would the coherence of the play. The brain is naturally a meaning making system, and I
observed a self-organized logic that would show up in the better plays that was lacking in the others. The more in-the-moment
the performers would stay (in other words, getting out of our own way), and the more supportive of their team, the more coherent
and organized the play would be.
I became a serious student of improv theory - reading the seminal books in the
field and observing the patterns in my group and other groups. I soon recognized the connections between adhering to the principles
of improvisational theater in a performance and being able to adapt, create and improvise effectively in the work place. The
same principles that allow a performing group to create a 90-minute play out of nothing but a location are the same principles
that allow groups, teams, and organizations to solve problems in new ways and reach peak levels of creativity and innovative
thinking, and become a more cohesive team. The principles are the container that allow individuals to innovate and the self-organizing
creativity of a group to get to the next level.
I recently teamed up with other like-minded souls who do similar
work and established Quantum Leap Business Improv.
|
|
|
|