I have just finished reading Confessions of a Public Speaker by Scott Berkun. It is a great read and I recommend it. He makes the following insight about improvisation:

"Paying attention makes things funny. If I have any secret to being entertaining, it's that I studied improvisation theatre. There I learned how to see and how to listen. Humour and insight come from paying attention, not from special talents. After I studied improv, my speaking skills improved dramatically and my attitude about life changed. I can't recommend taking an improv theater class strongly enough".

Pie Charts ARE evil!!

I am so very proud of our Glen Bell, here he is telling a Sydney audience about the evil of Pie Charts.

You too can see that the world is being mislead.

Ludic's not just a pretty face, we do real business things too!

Start playing or risk becoming a zombie

I have just finished reading 'Play' by Stuart Brown. Brown makes the case that play is important to humans throughout their lives and the concept that adults should not play is plain wrong. While there can be a dark side to play, such as when people become addicted to computer games, the beneficial effects of play outweigh the risks.

It is not just humans that need to play - it is important for other living things. My favourite story from the book is about the sea squirt. It is a lower order animal with a spinal cord and a very basic brain. The brain helps the sea squirt avoid danger and find food. Once the sea squirt grows to be an adult it attaches itself permanently to a rock or boat hull. It becomes passive and no longer needs it brain, simply absorbing passing nutrients. Given that the brain is now surplus to its needs the sea squirt then digests it own brain! Brown points out that "all work and no play make sea squirt a brain eating zombie". This is the ultimate example of use it or lose it.

Technology and storytelling

I stumbled upon an Internet site called 'We Tell Stories' which you can find here. It uses Google map technology to enable the reader to see where the story's characters are physically located. Intriguing.

Storytelling on the rise as entertainment

Check out this article from the Edinburgh festival 2009 chronicling the rise in story telling for adults. It's not quite stand up, it's a single person on stage taking you on a journey!!

What improvisers can learn from confabulation

An article about confabulation by Tom Stafford, a lecturer in psychology at the University of Sheffield, has just been reprinted in the Australian Financial Review. Confabulation is a rare disorder caused by severe brain damage. Confabulators cannot distinguish between their memories and things that just come into their minds. They then create elaborate stories to make sense of their situation. For example a 50 year old woman claimed to be only 20 years old; when challenge why her face was so old she explained that her brother had pushed her into a ditch and she landed on her face.

Confabulation suffers demonstrate that all humans need to make sense of their situation and this sense-making releases creativity. Improvisation is an example of creativity being released as the improvisers need to justify their situation. The human need to make sense of our surroundings can lead to very entertaining performances. Improvisers are also taught not to overload a scene otherwise the new information will be dropped as it becomes too difficult to justify all the new material. When information is dropped the audience finds the performance less satisfying.

Confabulation suffers will do obvious things that are completely inappropriate. An experiment in the 1980s involved a doctor placing a syringe on a table in front of a confabulation suffer. The doctor then turned around and dropped his pants. Without hesitation the patient injected the doctor in the buttocks. Improvisors are also taught to do the obvious and it often results in funny performances.

So if you want to release your inner creativity try a course in improvisation - it is much more fun than the alternative.

I have just finished reading The Rise Of The Creative Class by Richard Florida. A little long but still interesting. The basic message is that a city will be more economically successful if it has more 'creative' people (the definition of creative is broad and includes engineers and scientists rather than just actors and authors). Florida believes that creatives are attracted to cities that have rich diversity with different population characteristics such as different races and sexual orientations.

The part that got my attention from a Ludic Creative perspective was this quote from page 32:

Yet creativity is not the province of a few select geniuses who can get away with breaking the mold because they possess superhuman talents. It is a capacity inherent to varying degrees in virtually all people. According to Boden, who sums up a wealth of research: "Creativity draws crucially on our ordinary abilities. Noticing, remembering, seeing, speaking, hearing, understanding language, and recognising analogies: all these talents of Everyman are important".

The list of  'ordinary abilities' are the key skills taught to improvisers. So if you want to become a genius start with a course in improvisation.