Improv, Learning, Healthcare and I AM A ZEBRA
Improv and Teaching/Learning
The improv methods that IAMAZEBRA employs is Spolin inspired. Neva Boyd, a sociologist and educator, understanding that humans learn by playing, originally designed this method as a teaching/learning strategy to support the creation of communication strategies, relationships and social skills amongst an extremely disparate group of people in a new space – 19th century immigrants who shared no language, history, culture or experience. 'Learners' became 'players'. understanding that to meet their objective - successfully playing the game - they had to know each other on some level and collaborate. Boyd's mentee, Viola Spolin further developed the strategic games to teach theater skills. Via her son, Paul Sills, improv eventually became both a performance art in its own right; and is routinely used to create other kinds of performance work (e.g. sketch and situation comedy)
Improv and Business
The skills of the improvisational actor, their ability to listen, be in the moment, understand their own and the characters of others and support each other within the context in which they simply find themselves, has been recognized as such an important skill set that it is used widely across business and industry. Improvisors are engaged by businesses to facilitate communication, collaboration, idea generation, creativity and to ease the imposition of corporate change.
Improv and Healthcare
The humanities overall have been shown to help medical and healthcare practitioners to gain perspective and empathy in their work. In that vein, improv is used within medical and healthcare professional education to support learners in demonstrating skills related to communication and inter-professional collaboration as well as resilience.
Improv is also used as a supporting strategy for individuals with anxiety, dementia, neuro-atypical cognition. and embracing aging Exploration is emerging in improv's use in supporting individuals with various health conditions, both in the psycho-emotional and the logistical aspects of health and illness.
Improv and I AM A ZEBRA
Just as Boyd and her progressive era fellow educators understood that playing is essential to, if not equated with. learning., twenty-first century teaching/learning theory and neuroscience has readily come to support this concept. IAMAZEBRA therefore sees ourselves and our participants as much 'players', as 'learners'.
Players in IAMAZEBRA events learn to apply basic skills of improv to enhance their navigation skills across and amongst the various complex, and often fraught, relationships that exist across stakeholders in healthcare...Stakeholders not unlike Boyd and Spolin's 19th century immigrants, people in a vulnerable state who share little language, history, culture or experience. Remembering that even those who appear to be on the stronger side of the power differentials (medical professionals, administrators), simply find themselves vulnerable in different ways than the more more conspicuously vulnerable (patients, families). In all their encounters, each stakeholder needs scene partners willing to 'have their back.' so that all the characters (stakeholders) can meet their individual and collective goals.
Within any IAMAZEBRA event - workshops, performance pieces, improv socials or presentations- players move from learning the skills to creatively designing and demonstrating how these techniques can be applied within their own healthcare space - a space occupied by patients, providers, the myriad of people who support them and any or all of them together!
Improv, Performance and I AM A ZEBRA
Theatrical writing and performance are used in two ways by IAMAZEBRA:
Within workshops, after consultation with group coordinators, tailored comedic sketches are created and done either live or via produced videos within the workshop.
In creating the performance piece, the instructors learn about the players and the context of their world and are better prepared as facilitators.
The performance pieces reflect the players' experiences back to the players, in a comedic style that sets them at ease, but the performance also provides context. The players feel their concerns voiced and heard, but the collective viewing of the performance demands them to more authentically consider context, including the perspectives of the other characters in their lives.
Players are then primed to be more open-minded, They consequently better absorb the many lessons of the improv games, allowing them to lean into relationships with their fellow players so everyone moves forward, collaboratively.
Debriefing after each improv game supports players in learning to apply these skills in relationships outside the learning session as well
IAMAZEBRA also creates comedic free-standing pieces, to be performed in formal or make shift theaters, for broad audiences in an effort to spark conversation about the many difficult issues, from multiple perspectives, that exist within the world of healthcare. Filmed versions of these shows, as appropriate, can also be made available to groups.