 So, oh, I'm pretty loud. But I, oh, so, okay, so here I am after I have this microphone, and I am here to talk with you about the history of improvise theater. I'm an actor, and as we know, applied improv is how to apply the exercises from improvise theater into corporate businesses, all kinds of training. So, my job, or what I would like to do is to talk you a little about the history through the ages, where it all comes from. And the basic question is, it's over there, improvise theater or scripted theater. Who was first, the question of the chicken and the egg? Well, it's a very simple thing. Improvise theater was first. So, whenever people ask you, hey, improvise theater, this is real theater, you can say, well, any scripted theater known comes from improvise theater. We were the first. So we just know. So, but let's see, it's not that easy. Had to go with the flow, and improvising is not always fun. As you can see, we have a famous improviser, a Chad Baker, who was a trumpet player. He hated to improvise, but he was very good at it. And it's because he made lots of mistakes, but nobody noticed. If you listen to him talking about his records, he's saying, oh, this note's wrong. Oh, this note's wrong. This note's wrong. But people love it. So if you talk about history of improvisation, for example, lots of things went wrong. For example, people tried different mushrooms and they died. So you have to take some risk. That's what I mean, improvisation is not always fun. Or if you have the stone age, somebody had to make a round wheel or carve a round stone to invent the wheel. Everybody probably of his tribe said, huh, what are you doing? He wasn't sort of saying, hey, I'm going to invent the wheel. Nobody was just improvising, making mistakes, first probably a square wheel, didn't call it wheel. But finally, he discovered this, and so that's sort of, that's how it goes. And it all started with shamanistic rituals. Let's say that's why it's fun to have a shamanistic ritual this evening, because the real improv theater has started over there. We're talking about centuries ago, 3,000 centuries, the old tribes were then doing like all these kings because they were religious rituals. We know it because this picture is recent from a Mongolian tribe. And actually, a shaman is the ideal improviser. You do a warm up. You take some drugs, or you just start shaking until you get in contact with your subconscious. So there's no blocking anyway. And then you have an audience, and then you have a stage. And then this man or woman or this group of people start making music, dancing, telling stories from the God, and there's nothing which blocks them. Because they're in their subconscious. They're just improvising along the way. So that's why the start of improv theater is, let's say, 2,000, 3,000 years ago. And then it went on. These are, this is a picture from Dorian Greeks, Mimes, everybody who sort of knows, hey, Dorian Mime rings, a bell. The whole thing about it, the mask they use, well, they were from leather, so they are sort of gone after 2,000 years. But the stone and the stone masks, which they carved, they are still saved. And we all know that the typical, when you have, when you sort of have a symbol for theater, you have those two masks, actually they are from Dorian Mime. They are, that's where it comes from. Actually the Dorian Mime is very important because people couldn't read, write, and they went really crazy about this theater because it was their way of communicating. It was their way of knowing what is happening. Internet nowadays is very simple. Let's say the improvised actors of the Dorian Mime force the Internet way back. And then, because I have to go quick, we go to the Roman and Greek theater because officially, I've sort of investigated that, officially theater starts with the Roman and Greek place with a rippides, but it's not true. We know this, but the only thing is that improvised plays got more popular and it needed bigger audience and it needed bigger place like this. Because you cannot reach many people on the streets, you need bigger theater, more people. So they started to write it down, a rippides or started to write things down. And if you take, for example, a famous thing like the Elias from Homeres, that's actually a bunch of improvised short stories being put together. So that's what I mean, what comes first, the chicken or the egg, well, improvised theater. I'm just saying, well, my statement is that the whole history would be totally different if people would have listened a little bit more to us implied improviser. Like for example, applied improv with big consequences. For example, imagine you were Maria, you come home to your husband and you're pregnant. And your husband says, you're pregnant. But from who? So the improvisation starts and Maria says, it's from God. Okay. Yeah, lots of things happened, it's a child from God. And so the poor Joseph, he had to deal with it. So that's one thing which improvisation with big consequences. Another thing is, for example, that you have Honeyball. Maybe you know Honeyball, he went with 50 elephants and 25,000 people threw the Alps to conquer Italy. Everybody said, Matt, you're Matt. And he said, no, he didn't had an applied improv training. He said, I stick to my idea. I'm having fun on this stage. And somebody, a colleague improviser is calling, hey, I'm off, I want to join. But he says, no, I've got a great idea, I stick to it. Well, we all know the result. Almost all elephants died. He had 21,000 people died in the Alps. Almost all his horses died. Well, it was a mess. And basically, it's because he didn't have a good training on applied improvisation. He just stuck to my idea. One last example, here you have Montezuma, let's say, that's an old picture. Montezuma was a leader, of course, the director of the Aztecs, a very famous, very well educated and very well civilized group. But he had one problem, in a way, like he was being told, because of the region, that Quetzacoatl, I don't know, probably, it's not pronounced right, he was a god and he should return to save his kingdom. That's a belief. That was his conviction. And it was said that this god would return at the year 1519. What happened? A famous Spaniard, Hermon Cortes, came in 1519. He didn't know, he just came at the same age, over the same century. And Montezuma offered him his whole empire, everything he needed, all the gold, everything he needed, because he thought, oh, this is the god. If he would have been an improviser, he would sort of look around, seeing that they were killing all his men and they were slaughtering everybody and they took all his gold and they just say, no, no, take more, because you're a god. And Hermon Cortes sort of said, okay, it's sort of book-like, very weird what this man does, but he had this conviction, I stick to my idea, to my story. So those are a couple of examples through the ages where applied improv really would help. I just go a little bit back, because I don't have much time, there's lots of things happening, but to the Commedia dell'Ate, because probably everybody knows, has heard about it, which is the revival of improv theater, I would say, because after the Greeks and Romans, lots of things happening, but one of the things which was important, the church wanted to do their thing. The Bible, the stories of the Bible have to be told, but they don't go so much into church, so in front of the churches, there were stages and people improvised the Bible, biblical stories, and what made it funny, funny, is there were people with, there were actors, improvising actors, going through the audience with devilish marks, trying to seduce people to do bad things, that was the idea. So they're like, hey, how do you like this? So they were really, and they got very popular, those were the first standard comics who became very popular, and they mingled with the Commedia dell'Ate people. So let's say the Commedia dell'Ate for 200 years was sort of the main type of improvised theater. It's not totally improvised because people depended on it, so they had to be very good, so what happened is they really rehearsed small funny sketches, but the storyline and the text was much of improvised, but lots of the, oops, that's a different thing, lots of the, wait, I'll have to adjust a little bit, this, am I, okay, yes, yes, thank you. Well, that's another 30 seconds and I'm already late, so three minutes, oh, two minutes, no. What happens is this went on for 200 years until, and there it comes again, it need to be controlled, bigger stage, bigger audience, written down, all the kings loved the improvised comedy and they wanted more of it and everybody got scared, written down and that was sort of the downfall of the Commedia dell'Ate. So let's say my warning is don't get too good at it, don't go to bigger stages, don't think, hey, I'm going to play a big city hall because it'll kill the spotlight and kill the adventure, I'll have, in the two minutes I've left, I'll go to the applied improv nowadays. Well, the revolution in art which took place in 1920, as I said, it's an history lecture, because what happened was that people who know Stanislavski, he sort of used improv techniques to train actors. Many acting schools, like what you did, it's a great investigation but it's towards the acting thing. The thing what happened is, one back, that in that period, 1920, there was a French man who totally did the different, his name was Jacques Coupeau, I'm just spreading out the subjectory names, you probably forget it, but anyway, I'm just saying that in 1920, he changed totally the theater and it was actually the first one who, okay, theater out of nothing, we only have an actor. And he stated improvisation, and that's what you said, is an art which has to be learned. So the more you train, the better you get at it. So it's sort of the same thing, but that's already 1920, and he had students and pupils and blah, blah, blah. One of them was Keith Johnstone, which most of you probably know, and Keith Johnstone was a student of, of, of, of, so many exercises which we do nowadays basically are 100 years old because this man Jacques Coupeau, he invented an enormous amount of exercises. So, but he made theater and let's say the next step, this is the next step, AIN, the Applied Improv Network, one step further. Basically it's because I remember I've been teaching lots of students to perform and one of the students came to me and said, hey, this is funny, oh, it's good, I'm learning a lot from your lessons and maybe you can do it with my team. I said, no, I'm training actors to improvise, no, no, no, this is very good, it helps me, so it helped my team. So that was in the sort of 19th, so that's where the applied thing started off. So basically applied improvisation, what I do and what my colleagues do are sort of we have the improv exercises from the theater and we adapt them. So my statement at the end is it's not the exercises, it's the trainer who has the creativity to adapt the exercises to the goal which is necessary. Like the famous one word at a time, improv exercise, you can do it in a performance but you can make a slow version, a focus version, a group version, a take it easy version and it all depends on what kind of team you have. So it's one exercises but many purposes and it's the trainer itself which does the work, he or she has to adapt the exercises to the training. So that's the end of my presentation, sort of 15 seconds. Okay, so I have to stop anyway. So because there's lots of things to tell about the applied part but this is where it all comes from and all the development on the applied part is great because improvisation is life, that's what it is. But now you sort of have an overview on the theater part and if there is any question just come to me or tomorrow I give a workshop about how I apply improv theater in organization and that's it. Thank you.