Josie Whittlesey’s amazing improv coaching workshop!

Three Cheers for Josie!!!!

What a fun workshop we had yesterday, February 19th. Doing things on Zoom is tough, and making them super fun is really tough. Josie is a master of getting deep and keeping it fun.

Some of you were unable to make it, which is totally fine of course - but we had a lot of fun.

One of the highlights was a short improv that Bey, Robert and Wole did together. The game was called “I Love It!” — the idea being that each person presents an idea, and the others have to shout gleefully “I love it!” - and then extend the idea a little.

Bey selected the theme “Escaping from Prison”! :) (I knew he would choose that one)

Wole started it off with this: “Guys, guys, I have a great idea! This porridge we have been getting is really acidic, so if we put some on the wall, it will create a hole in the wall and we can escape!” Robert and Bey jumped up and down, saying “I love it! I love it!” — and then Bey extended the idea and said “while you two work on the hole, I’ll distract the guards by doing a Cha-Cha-Cha dance!" - and up he stood, doing his Brazilian Cha-Cha-Cha. And Robert and Wole screamed “I love it!”

It was quite hysterical.

Afterward, Josie filled us in on the brain science -telling us that studies have shown that when you work with traumatized young people (which is essentially 100% of them) something wonderful happens in their brains when they express positive energy like “I love it!”

Anyway, the point of the workshop was for us to learn about leading these kinds of improv sessions so we have a group of people to call on in future workshops.

Just in case anyone was wondering — this is NOT the whole workshop. No. The acting/improv/monologue section will last about 30 minutes of the 2-hour workshop. After that, we will get down to more serious conversations about the film, about education, about Shakespeare, manhood, honor, racism, mass incarceration, or where we decide to lead the group each day.

Steve