Either a week or an aeon ago, I wrote a blog about our need for coherence of purpose and how lockdown messes with that. How being at home, furloughed and powerless can leave one with a fragmented sense of self, unsure what tasks to set oneself and having difficulty keeping...
In any book, conversation or talk about happiness, positive psychology or how to live well, you can count down the pages or minutes until the mention of Csikszentmihalyi's book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. A good few decades old now, Flow was a milestone in the study of how...
This is one for the nurds, for the people who first identify as improvisers, those sunk too deep to let a bit of physical distance get in the way. This is one for the folks who always wanted to be part of a movement, a fauve, a surrealist or a...
April is the cruellest month. Easter weekend mocked us with blazing sun and, at least here in North London, fiercely white blossom billowing in whorls off the trees like cartoon snow. One house played the Mexican hat song on repeat for most of Easter Monday and the residents of our...
Last week, sort of by accident, I ended up on a Zoom call with 75% of genre/narrative powerhouse PGraph and the wonderful Vinny Francois of Improv Montreal. As you might expect, we were chatting about online improv and how to make it good. Not just what we do offline thrown...
By any estimation, this is the first major wave of online improv. It has happened before of course, but now the entire community is buying ring lights and clipmics, rigging up greenscreens and sharing Zoom pro accounts. I (like a lot of improvisers) have done a few online shows and...
‘Can it work?’ said every improviser on the internet at the same time. ‘Improvisation online?’ ‘If the point is to connect with people, doesn’t a screen defeat the point?’ But then there was no choice, and all at once, like mushrooms after a storm, pockets of online improvisation popped...
The Nursery and the Maydays are now offering online drop ins! Here are some tips to make sure you get the best experience!...