 Thank you. Thank you very much The United States are number one when it comes to many Instances for example, they were number one this year at the woman's soccer championship very nice But they're also number one and incarcerating their own people currently They're over 2.2 million people incarcerated in prisons and jails throughout the country and One of these prisons is San Quentin State Prison and the beautiful Bay of San Francisco It was founded in 1852 in the Gold Rush area and currently hosts over 4,000 prisoners, which is quite a lot. So it's overpopulated by a hundred and forty percent Back in the days the reputation of San Quentin was quite bad in the 60s and 70s. There was a lot of Violence going on in San Quentin nowadays in Quentin State Prison is the place You actually want to be as a prisoner in California because there are a hundred voluntary programs Which you can run through such as the Prison University project That's a project if you're enrolled in that you can get an associate of arts degree and you have on-site It's not online. It's on-site education classes like math Spanish English Chemistry whatever it is and Eleanor and I we got engaged with this program by starting to teach German And that was a phenomenal experience by itself We also soon realized that these students would actually much more benefit by the principles of improv so we successfully lobbied to teach improv as a class of the college education and We called this class improv for life and eventually we built community behind bars Well, how did this look like so we had 17 students in our class and none of them dropped out which is a rarity We had two teachers and Martin I co-taught the class and we invited guests like Rebecca Peretzky from bats and Jacob Blaster German filmmaker who's using improv to make movies We met over the course of 12 weeks and we met twice a week for two to three times each and Inspired by Diane Rachel's performance lab structure. We included performance in our teaching So we had a class performance in the middle and a performance at the end of our class The principles underlying our class were supporting each other being generous and celebrating risk and As it is a college degree class. We had to grade our students now You might think grading and improv. How can those two get together and yes? It was challenging at the beginning, but we found a way to combine playing games speaking about the experiences playing the games and also debriefing how we can apply our takeaways to the real world beyond the stage and reading and written assignments to make this class gradable 12 weeks 12 topics ranging from spontaneity vulnerability status and trust Yes, trust was the more or less Overlying or underlying theme for the entire class and Cat Coppett in her book has this beautiful equation trust equals Credibility times intimacy divided by risk now risk. I mean prisons are being regarded as high-risk environments and it is true I mean their guard towers their correctional officers There's a shooting range next to Saint Quentin where they practice their rifles There's a no hostage policy so we could go on and on yet We soon realized whenever we taught in Saint Quentin we felt extremely safe as voluntary teachers This doesn't apply for our students So just three words for our improvisers in the audience is like circles of probabilities when we hear all hear the sound of Squeaking sneakers on the floor. We would probably think oh, maybe there's a basketball game going on You know, it's a positive thing You know when they hear that sound when our students hear that sound they think Trouble they go into their fight or flight mode because someone is running and maybe there someone is getting beat up Or even worse stabbed so it's a completely different set of acoustics perceptions of acoustics And so we had to work on that quite a bit on the other hand we worked on credibility a lot in terms of just Building Competence doing the basic improv things supporting each other don't throw your partner under the bus You know just the basics make each other look good on the other hand intimacy There's a lot of people in this place a hundred and forty percent. You would think that's pretty intimate But most of them don't know each other they self-segregate and aren't being segregated by race So they don't know each other so we played a very simple game at the beginning. It's something like come over here So it's like come over here if you like pizza, okay? So then the people come over here who like pizza They started this game by playing it and said come over here if you are a lifer which means you're in prison for life Okay, that's 15 years. We didn't coach them to do that They choose that to do them some themselves and then 80% of the class came over here So we had a rough understanding because one other point important point is we didn't look up their criminal records because they would compromise our teacher-student relationship One of our students favorite game was Scooby-Doo and works like this So imagine you're with a bunch of friend in an evening hour It's getting dark and you're in front of this abandoned amusement park And of course you want to get in and explore this amazing place, right? But the only way to move or speak is by being directed by somebody else and you can also direct others Only one direction at a time. So for example, Martin runs up to the gate and says wow, this looks absolutely Amazing. Wow. This looks absolutely the amazing Lnf follows and says I got the keys to this place. I Got the keys to this place Martin grabs the keys and says yeah jackpot Yeah jackpot. Well, okay. I think you get how it works, right? Normally. It's not nearly as flawless and of course we knew what we were gonna get with this It's more about the struggle like actually many improv games are right. It's not about excelling at the game It's about the struggle and our students struggle just as much or little as everyone else playing this game does outside of a prison So by playing Scooby-Doo, we actually were able to increase our students awareness Like when are you leading? When are you following? Also, everyone is responsible for everybody, right? If you make a direction like Martin panics and screams and nobody says Martin stop screaming He's just gonna keep on screaming, right? So you have to take care of each other Martin stop screaming And you have to train imagination in order to explore this amazing place You have to see it so you have to make it visible. You have to make your partners see the space and explore it together One topic we came back to back again during that class was status And so we played a lot of games status cards But also had written homework assignments like we said before to make it greatable and one of these was how do you Experience status in your life and one of our students beautifully wrote in his assignment I guess being in prison with its various different segregated systems I experienced the extreme fluctuation of status every day all day. I would have never thought About how one status changes in just one conversation let alone throughout the day when I wake up in the morning I experienced the status changes between me and my cellmate when we greet each other or not So these people they live together these students they live in cells five times eight feet two of them very confined spaces There is a little toilet there a little wash sink. So there is no privacy Okay, the student of this picture is not the student recurrent currently quoting He then went on to say this assignment has first of all ruined my TV watch and experience So if they can't afford it, they have a little television in their in their cell instead of watching the two or three programs I like I'm now watching for status changes. Thank you very much But seriously this assignment has me paying closer attention to my actions when engaging others I have developed a new found respect for gestures looks and body movements and how they convey so much more than I thought So as you can see ours our class had quite some impact and actually much more than we are expected So our students told us that that being taking this class It helped them to like redefine failure like pivoting from feeling a societal failure to like Realizing like you can fair good naturedly and also failure as part of the human experience it also helped to break down racial boundaries and The best example for that is that as Martin said prisoners a pretty racially segregated place One of our students who was white invited his white friends to our last performance And they asked him how many white folks are in this class and he said well I guess about 50% then he showed up to the performance and realized he was the only white guy in the whole class It also fosters resilience. It's an arbitrary place the prison and having the skills to deal with that It's just very valuable This quote by Mark Twain summarized it beautifully against the assault of laughter nothing can stand and you bet We laughed quite a lot in this class, but that wasn't it like the impact went beyond Bars and our students told us that their families noticed micro changes in their behavior And so they were able to better reconnect with their families It also equips them to rehabilitate to get out eventually in this vastly changed world and these programs cut recidivism So if you want to find out more about our work at San Quentin use go to the San Quentin news page and Read the article about it improv gave me a chance to practice everything. I've learned in self-help groups So that's a very strong statement to leverage to use the leveraging power of improv Just briefly wrapping up what comes next a lot of things we want to repeat this class We want to evaluate it. We had a lot of post-survey qualitative analysis we want to quantify that and expand it to Correctional officers victims Eventually mixed classes along the lines of restorative justice And we also want you all to take the lead at your local prison or jail because they're 2.2 million Americans or American residents incarcerated currently and throughout the world even more people so take a lead at your local prison and Go out teach improv for life to build community behind bars and beyond. Thank you