Yes!  Improv is a superb tool for developing new characters, improving your listening and interactive skills, increasing your creativity, and trusting yourself. Here are just a few of the many benefits of improv:

 

1. Self-Confidence. Improv provides a fun, encouraging, risk-taking environment. While some scenes work and others don't, there is no failure. This is an accepting and supportive place to take chances.  By accepting and always saying YES, you learn to be a winner!

 

2. Creativity. It's a natural by-product of the activity and encourages new ways of thinking.  Through the speed of response (go with that first thought!) and the complexity of response (the justification of two conflicting ideas) in a constantly morphing environment, you open up your mind to endless possibilities.

 

3. Problem-Solving. Life is a continuous exercise in finding solutions to problems. Improv games employ the students' powers of observation, examination, inference, justification and analogy in a safe haven.  Where else can you employ all these choices without suffering "permanent" consequences?

 

4. Active Listening:  Rather than tuning others out so you can plan and deliver the perfect response, you learn to be present, listen and respond appropriately.  This takes you from the predictable and boring to new, interesting, sometimes strange, yet logical, new developments in the scene.

 

5. Fun. According to research, information "sticks" better when the learning is fun. Improv games are chocked full of laughter and poignancy as you learn to think outside the box.

So, join in the games!  Sunday night at 5:30pm.  In your VO and acting classes.  And most of all, in your work.