Looking for ways to make conferences more interactive? Try improv

This speaker interview was conducted by a rockstar Event Camp Twin Cities Attendee Jenise Fryatt.

(Photo by House of Sims)

Improv changed my life. I don’t say this lightly. The skills I’ve learned from more than 5 years of study have made me:

* more creative

* better at expressing myself

* more confident

* more supportive of myself and others

* better able to contribute when working with a group

* more comfortable with risk

* able to appreciate the value of failure

and the list goes on. So when I found out that Butch Roy would be bringing improv to Event Camp Twin Cities, which I will be attending Sept. 8 & 9, I was excited. When he tweeted an invitation to me to participate in his group’s improv show there, well, I just had to connect with him via Skype to talk more.

I was pleased to find a kindred spirit who shares all of my enthusiasm for the life-enhancing skills that improv can teach. Butch has developed and produced improv shows and festivals in Minneapolis for years and is currently Executive Director of Huge Theater, which is fundraising to create a permanent stage dedicated to longform improv and unscripted theater of all types.

Butch agreed to answer a few questions about the value of improv for conferences and his group’s upcoming performance at ECTC.

Jenise: Butch, I’m very excited to talk to you about improv and the events industry. It seems that people are beginning to notice the many ways in which the skills taught in improv can be applied to business. What’s been your experience with this?

Butch: I think that’s certainly the case – I think people have been looking for ways to teach the skills that businesses are looking for everywhere in the creative world and many people have started to notice that improv teaches many of them, as well as a more open approach to working in general, that really accomplishes what a lot of businesses are looking for in their people.

Jenise: What is Huge Theater and what is the corporate training/event component of it?

Butch: HUGE Theater is an improv theater company in the Twin Cities that focuses on long-form, cinematic unscripted theater.

The training/event component is incredibly flexible and customizable for each scenario but for Event Camp we’re very excited to present our “Overheard” component – It is a form that takes suggestions in the form of snippets of text or dialogue overheard at the event or taken from the Twitter stream and uses them to create a series of entertaining scenes and characters.

Overheard can also feature an interactive session component, since the content is already based on the input we get from the attendees it makes a terrific opportunity to have a loose, energetic conversation about the topics of the day and even the event itself.

Jenise: Improv is well known for helping to improve the skills of performing artists, but has it helped you personally in other areas of your life?

Butch: Absolutely – improv is one of those wonderful discoveries that affects how you see and approach everything for the better.

It’s too narrow to think of it as “learning a performing skill” since improv depends on relearning a pretty fundamental set of habits around how your brain relates to both new ideas and fear. Once you start practicing meeting inspiration and challenges fearlessly in one area of your life it’s almost impossible to keep it contained.

Jenise: What improv skills do you think are most useful to business executives?

Butch: That’s a tougher question – having worked in corporate communications I know executives specifically are often limited in what they can say or do in ways that really prevent them from taking full advantage of things improv can teach us about authenticity, being open and honest, etc – it’s just not realistic to think that executive teams will be communicating in the same way.

But on the flip side I think some of the most valuable skills that improv teaches are not what comes out but what gets in and that is where we can really make a difference with leadership – listening and being on the receiving side of the communication equation.

Jenise: What kinds of workshops/performances do you offer for events?

Butch: As mentioned, Overheard is a signature show that can be either strictly entertainment or a combination of entertainment and facilitated discussion that we’re incredibly proud of – we also offer the more familiar improv games for entertainment and workshops in communication and Jill Bernard’s training session on “Better work through play.”

We also offer a unique training product that evolved from my background in Audience Response Systems technology – years of working in ARS made it clear that a truly interactive session needs a facilitator with a comfort level on stage and a background in improv communication to really facilitate a flowing conversation that still gets key messages and training points across. It wasn’t enough to just put a couple polling slides in a powerpoint presentation and expect a new level of results.

So we utilize ARS to engage the audience, keep the energy high and the session moving but unlike traditional, one-way sessions we can provide data afterward to show the effectiveness of our product in the testing numbers of the attendees. We can get your messages across in a clear, fast-paced and fun way and follow up with post event data.

Jenise: How did you get involved with Event Camp?

I actually worked with (ECTC organizer) Ray Hansen in Audience Response and he and I have been working together to bring improv and what it can do to the events/training arena for a long time – he recognized the potential early on and we’ve enjoyed a number of very open discussions and when he got involved with Event Camp it was a natural progression to that working relationship.

I was thrilled that HUGE was invited to participate. I think it’s such a natural fit for the Event Camp experience and I look forward to growing the relationship from here.

Jenise: What can attendees expect from your group at Event Camp?

Butch: Energy. Ideas. Inspiration. Hopefully we can demonstrate how the tools that we use on stage aren’t limited to just entertainment and having a few laughs, I would love to really start exploring the potential of what can happen once you start connecting these things with your existing approach or training/event ideas.

Jenise: Thanks for inviting me to play with you all at Event Camp. I’m looking forward to it. Do you have any advice for someone just joining your group?

Butch: Have fun – that all-important safety net of improv is fairly universal – we all have your back and know that you’ve got ours and that it’s the best way to get the best results. But even if everything goes off the rails the worst and best thing that will happen is they will laugh.

Jenise Fryatt’s blog Sound n’ Sight covers events industry thoughts and features with an audio visual and social media bent. Jenise is also co-owner/marketing director of Icon Presentations Audio Visual for Events located in Southern California. She describes herself as an “events industry cheerleader” who is also a yoga and improv devotee trying to stay in the present.