Tag Archives: collaboration

Oct 20

Active Listening & Collaboration

I’ve developed an Active Listening & Collaboration workshop that has proven engaging.

I’ve run this session for a ton of high school students and for multiple cohorts of college programs’ Entrepreneurs and Healthcare Execs in Training. I’ve run almost fifty sessions with accountants and insurance professionals. I’ve even run it in a communal house and with a fresh crop of McKinsey consultants – two very different experiences.

I just yesterday – thanks to my wife and her network – run one for Virginia’s Legal Aid Program.

It was awesome! (Oh, and donate to Legal Aid – they MATTER!)

What follows is my preamble to that session which I offer here as a little didactic on why we should care about Active Listening & Collaboration, and learning those skills and more through improvisation can make us, well, better people.

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Sep 4

Return of the Pattern

It’s been a while since I posted. Got a new job. Got busy. Got so busy I had to miss Student Showcases, my most favorite of nights.

But I made it to the last Patterns & Games class showcase. Almost nothing in this world makes me happier than a good Patterns & Games class showcase.

And this one was good. And it was recorded.

And so… you get a new post! One with video examples and some thoughts on the lessons IAIDB’s rubric games teach. Enjoy!

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Mar 16

Black Box Beats warm-up

Lights come up on black-clad high school students standing on and around wooden boxes of varying heights.

You know what’s coming next.

Staccato sophomoric pretension. A wonder to laugh at, if you’re not in the actual audience and/or have to drive a performer home afterward.

Like with The Invocation, a structure of that kind of high-falutin performance can help us practice the different types of contributions we have available in service of Group Games.

Statements. Words. Sounds – emotional, mechanical, animalistic, etc. Callbacks, Call-and-Response, and Choruses. Each are available to us. Why not utilize the full suite?

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Dec 1

Zoom In On Help Desk

With its focus on characters interacting, Help Desk games are perhaps the rubric most conducive to Zoom.

As such, I found myself hewing much more closely to my typical Help Desk curriculum this class.

The biggest hurdle came in navigating Pivots and Split Screens. Appearing on a Zoom screen it’s certainly not easy to “tag out” another player. But as you’ll see, the class had fun figuring that out.

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Dec 1

Zoom In On Organic Games

Students were taught the 4 Key Lessons for building collaborative improv games on Day One. In subsequent weeks focused one of 4 rubric group games designed to explore the power of each of those key lessons.

At the end of the day – which really is the class showcase – the audience isn’t looking to see a perfectly executed To The Ether game. They don’t know what the hell that is. The rubrics are tools for teaching the players’ tools. All the audience cares about is watching players collaborate in-the-moment to build something together. Players need to follow the ensemble’s moves wherever they go; this is about an ensemble playing their games, not mine.

So now it’s time to put all that’s been learned together in service of Organic Group Games.

Any questions?

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Nov 25

Zoom In On Patterns & Games

I taught my first Patterns & Games class through Zoom.

I had been nervous going into it assuming I’d have to tweak my teaching materials significantly to work within this new world. But as I learned when approaching Silent Games, the mechanics of collaborative pattern play are applicable however Group Games are attempted.

Need proof? Check out the class’ showcase –

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Nov 25

Zoom In On 4 Key Lessons

When I teach Patterns & Games in-person the first class is always Kick The Duck, Red Rover. I love this game. When I say “Go,” the class is to align behind a gibberish group game.

It’s always a mess to start, and then I begin laying in the lessons and with each iteration the group gels that much more. It never fails; by the end the group has built something cohesive out-of-nothing together as an ensemble – and have enjoyed themselves along the way.

The Zoom environment is not conducive to Kick The Duck, Red Rover, but I felt it critical to still have this first class expose students to the 4 Key Lessons that form the backbone of group game work as improv does best.

  1. Seek Symmetries
  2. Empower Asymmetries
  3. Establish Rules of Cause and Effect
  4. Restart and Repeat

So this is what I did…

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Nov 25

Zoom In On One Person Scenes

Agreement is awesome. Don’t you think.

In class number two, we focus on that first of our 4 Key Lessons: Seek Symmetries.

Bringing characters into group games brings new opportunities for chaos. 

Simplifying character-based group scenes with balanced stage pictures and shared emotional perspectives can help a team confidently navigate the chaos. 

Here’s how we did that…

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