 I'm David Gathro. I'm here with with my friend and colleague Tiagi and this is take number four or five because one of the things that makes this recording unusable to other people is when it's not actually being recorded. So I guess it doesn't actually make it recording. So the topic was going to be had you been able to be here in person Tiagi was improv. Is it the meaning of life or does it put meaning into life? So for some who may not know you, I've known you for over 40 years and I know you to be a brilliant game designer and instructional designer, performance enhancer, professor and and a fine chef. So with all that as a background, what's your connection to improv? How did you come to that as something that that you find interesting, fascinating and important in life? David, I'm a flake, which is another way of saying I'm an improv person. It took me a long time 75 years before I realized I am an improv person and that shapes that defines my life. So given that I have never planned to do anything. I don't plan what I want to do. For example, I anytime I plan, God gets me. I planned to come to AIN conference and I started planning in detail soon. An important person in my life died and I have to go get some important inheritance claiming of an important inheritance. So anytime you plan, life teaches you a lesson by making sure that plan is useless, unnecessary, cannot be done. Okay and what is my connection with the improv? All my life I have four important principles. Life is an improv exercise and life is an oxymoron. There is no such thing as this is correct, this is incorrect. Life, anything you do in life is something you do spontaneously in an improv fashion, but more importantly everything you do in life is an important thing which helps you go to the next stage and the other important thing in life is life is a metaphor. Another important thing in life is you keep repeating things again and again. The important thing you got to remember life repeats itself and you repeat everything. So even all of these you put meaning into life, life puts meaning into you, all of which you will not understand what I'm talking about until it is two months from now. So so Chiangyi how do you get, some people spend an incredible amount of time planning because they've been trained that way or found it that way and how do you get people to be comfortable letting go of having to have everything programmed for the minute because some people do it quite naturally. A lot of folks coming at this conference totally get that, but there's others that that do not and you know what does it take for them to be able to let go and actually trust that that they can work with whatever happens to them? Just to give you straight and upper delusion most people who come to the conference most improv friends I have are among the most upright, uptight, detailed planning okay so what time going to do when people don't get my joke should I be explaining it when they explain it should I explain it in a patronizing fashion or in a serious fashion. So just because somebody says I'm an improviser doesn't necessarily mean that person is an improviser it's a personality trait you are an improviser not because you plan to be an improviser but because you were born that way and I'm making all of these things up okay so people don't believe in living spontaneously and to me if you're a trainer you've got to be spontaneous because when you got a group of participants in front of you they got so much experience so much information so much knowledge so much wisdom for you not being able to seize upon it and take the first step of androgogy and say people who come to any training session any learning session bring a lot of things with and your job is to bring it out make use of it things of that nature and it is not only for adults you know what children know more than you do and so on and so forth. So yeah when we a lot of people think about improv they think of performance improv and this conference about implied improv so what are some of your top tips for applying improv outside the realm of being on stage with it because the focus is on on applying it I think some people get locked into I have to be a performer how do you okay yeah rule number 18 about life life is a performance you perform through life you don't do things you do things assuming somebody's looking at you assuming you're in the midst of a performance you got a mask you are in a performance that is what is happening to you David so don't think performance is different from life life is a performance okay I keep repeating things because but I think you mean that life repeats itself so you know you're doing what life is doing so it's okay yes and it is very very important for you to keep repeating some things because when you repeat things people think that is profound it must be an important thing otherwise you will not be repeating it and if you don't get the significant meaning about that then there is something wrong with you so you try hard to make meaning out of it and that is what life is all about and the people who say hey I'm going to use more of improv therefore I must be a performer I'm going to tell you wrong that's not how we should think you should live and that is what improv is all about do what you want to do so I'm going to take a different angle on this now because I mean one of the you are taking an anger before it's more of a curve this is an angle it's a little sharper diversion from our currently scheduled interview good you know I'm a friend and colleague Amy Emerson has written a lot about psychological safety and things like that and how might you overcome because I think that's sometimes a challenge when deciding to improv how do you you know overcome people's concern about maintaining psychological safety when you're doing improv because a lot of times I use the word improv and people start they start sweating and I haven't even said anything other than the word so you know how do you balance sort of the unpredictability of improv with a concern for allowing people to feel psychologically safe I know it's kind of a philosophical question but it's Thursday yep Thursdays are important days and how do you maintain psychological safety how do you provide psychological safety to other people the secret is simple don't have any goal don't have any objective don't have any plan if you don't have a goal you're not going to fail you fail only if you have a goal you fail more gloriously epic failure you not only have a goal but you believe in the goal and you are going to achieve the goal come hell or high water if you don't have a goal if you don't believe in a goal let whatever is going to happen happen by the way that is philosophical religious spiritual but don't have any religious or spiritual goals either so is that when you're talking about that it's from the perspective of a person who is who's guiding the conversation or for that person to not have a goal are you talking about for the people in the in the class or whatever not setting up a goal for them if I'm supposed to be guiding something I don't have a goal if you come to my session expecting words of wisdom I say give up the goal let it flow go with the flow wow I land it in California so those are important things I don't think you should go with the goal when you're interacting with somebody I don't think the person interacting with you should have a goal and you tell me but I'm hired to train people on nuclear physics they pay me for doing that and how do I do that I say go ahead do it what do you know about nuclear physics and you ask people what do you already know about nuclear physics and most people will may say nothing you say that's great let us create nuclear physics and let us figure out what it is all about and does somebody know anything about nuclear physics before you know it somebody's going to say ah a nucleus consists of protons and electrons I say how do you know it and they say I read it someplace how do you know whatever you read is true and so on and so forth and the people compare what they know you may be trying to teach nuclear physics but they learn the meaning of life it doesn't really matter so I have maybe just two more maybe two or three more questions and one of them I know you've worked a lot internationally what are some of your cross cultural observations on the use of improv as a learning methodology one of the universal phenomena around the world everybody is uptight and they don't know how to realize they don't know how to let go and the most uptight people as I try to sneak this thought into or the improvisers the most uptight people or people who say you should live every moment in your life you should have spiritual values and things of that nature so people whether they believe in improvising or not believe in improvising doesn't matter whether you are in a majority group in Australia or you are in Vancouver it doesn't really matter you stop from time to time and ask yourself what should I be doing now that is something very very important people think that they are missing out on important things in life because they are not planning they don't have a goal and things of that nature this is something a universal phenomena there are groups of people to whom the most important thing in life is not to have any important thing in life they defeat themselves by saying I want to be spontaneous and the Buddha said it is very very important you should let go of all the desires in life and some idiot kid who says aha if you let go of all desires in life is that not a desire when you say I should let go of my desires in life or in not disobeying your Nirvana things of that nature that is so true that's a very interesting powerful way of looking at it to intentionally not be intentional so I'm going to let go of my list of questions and so what's one question about improv that you think you wish I had asked you but I actually didn't so another is what would you like to say how good how do you define improv if you have to define something it's no longer improv so you don't define it and what do you recommend if I were to recommend a book to you there are two books I would recommend one is I forgot the name of the book but that doesn't stop me from coming in with the name I think it is training to imagine okay that's Kat Coppett's book hey I was going to climb it is my book oh sorry sorry I'll just edit that part out oh tell me more about that book who wrote it um Kat Coppett wrote it and it is a great wonderful book the interesting thing about training to imagine is Kat does not say improvise improvise implied in it is you improvise with a purpose which is a dangerous thought for you to have if you have a purpose you cannot improvise and the other book is improv wisdom by Patricia Madsen Ryan my god my memory is coming back I was told if you get old your memory is the second thing to go but it is coming back so these are people who practice what they preach and what they practice is improv should have a purpose and the purpose could be improv should not have a purpose good you know I never expect to get a straight answer to anything I mean a singular answer right because as you said earlier there's two you know whatever is true is also not true right and whatever's false is also true in some respect so um just uh just to close this off any tips if you're going to have because I know that everything can be a two by two matrix or there's four this that the other thing but if there were two or three tips you said you know if you just really embrace these you can't help but be successful as an improviser uh applied improviser who's actually not trying to be an applied improviser good tip number one forget about being an improviser or not being an improviser live your life be a child assume that you have no responsibilities assume next to me just for the fun of it you're not going to pay your mortgage I'm I'm imagining that I may actually may not have to imagine that good keep organizing and they will soon reach that stage and other important thing is spend a lot of time with children and with dogs they don't plan they just do what they want to do and now rule number three anything you do today this evening ask yourself where did they do that and what would have happened if I did not do that and what did they learn from that and when will they do it again and when they do the same thing again how would they do it differently is that such a thing as doing the same thing again you know I just one last thing I remember many years ago you recommended a book to me by James Karsey called finite infinite games and that the purpose of the infinite game is to keep the play going and which is kind of like what you want life to do to keep it going and it seems like I didn't think about that the context of improv but it seems to be in the dial I got it from you now now I will use it in every one of my presentations make people think I have been living by that James Karsey rule all my life and things of that nature well I feel very grateful that I could provide you with that good and and again Chagi thank you so much for your time today I'm so sorry I won't be seeing you at the conference I know that you do have other important things you're you and your family you're going to be making money to pay my mortgage and if it's too much you're worried about what to do with it now that you got me thinking about paying my mortgage feel free interact I mean I accept all kinds of things and again thank you very much thank you David you're one of the greatest improvisers and you learned it from Daisy