 Hello, improvisers. I'm Mary Tiskevich and I'm going to show you how to use your improv superhero skills for good and create heroic communities where you are. Fort Mason is a historical place of embarkation. Isn't that a great place to launch heroes? So many things have been launched here, drama, adventure, ships. So why not heroes? And heroes need to start with the journey. So I just am so grateful to be here today. So I've been thinking about heroic improvisation for a long time, so I see it everywhere. So I'm going to give you an example of a story of something that I saw a year ago on a YouTube video that went viral. Maybe some of you saw it. It was a Logan, Utah, a traffic accident. There was a motorcyclist who got hit by a BMW. And this was all taken on amateur video. So you get to watch the whole thing. So you see it's smoking, the BMW is smoking. You can see that the cycles underneath. And a bunch of construction workers show up. And a bunch of college students show up. And they decide to lift the car. That's ultimately what happens. And you'll see this in a video in a minute and 30 seconds. And I have a website, heroic-improved.com. And I'm going to put the link up to that. There was clearly no time to wait for any help. I mean, it was smoking. And I watched how these people were solving the problem. So the construction workers were figuring out the physics, the petite college-aged woman was scouting, she was getting down on the ground and looking and giving a report back of where the guy actually was. And so the first, in the short video, you see the whole thing. The first attempt with a dozen people doesn't work. Not enough. So then a dozen more people show up. And they move it. And then as soon as it's safe, someone goes underneath and grabs this guy and pulls him to safety. And the car continues to burn. I mean, it's really super cool to see. And I find this story inspiring. And people moved up to make something happen, even though there was danger. I saw a group of people responding powerfully to catastrophe together. And these are people who never worked together before. They never practiced this particular scenario in real life or in their imaginations. But together, in that moment, they responded in a way that was unexpected but effective. In this story, I say you see the new hero. So the new hero is one who collaborates and helps all of us to be a heroic group together. The new hero is someone who can build a team quickly. The new hero listens, perceives, and focuses the action of the fast-moving situation. The new hero understands fear and uses it as a jumping off point instead of a barrier to action. So what happened in Logan, Utah, I want to happen all over the United States. I want many, many people, citizens, emergency professionals, and elected officials to have the opportunity to practice responding to catastrophe in a group together. I have a PhD in public administration, and I'm fascinated about how government works. So how government works in a crisis is even more interesting. So I've been studying in the last 10 years. I just went right into American emergency management. I wanted to really understand it. And a core concern of emergency managers are, how do you get people to practice disaster and not wait for an actual disaster? How do you do that? And it's not ideal for someone to respond to a catastrophe without any practice. But unfortunately, that's what happens often, especially for elected officials and citizens. For many elected officials, the first time they're learning about disaster response is when they are in charge during an actual disaster. But don't get me wrong, American emergency professionals are really well trained. They have plans, and they exercise them often. Emergency. But even for these three groups, there's a gap in practicing what happens in the very first moments of a catastrophe. In the first moments of a catastrophe, there's a lot of chaos, there's a lot of confusion. Usually in a catastrophic situation, a single person cannot make a large positive impact. It must be a group. So heroic improvisation practices the group effort of people working together to listen and observe what's going on, to choose to trust the group and pick a focus, and then move into action, despite the uncertainty, chaos, and maybe danger. So as a researcher, I've been focusing on how to prepare elected officials better for disaster. And I was working with a collaborator at the Arizona State University's Decision Theater in creating different types of disaster exercises. Our hypothesis was, hey, if we get a lot of modeling and simulation, and put the elected officials in a room with all that data, they'd make better choices. So we had the opportunity to run that exercise. So we put them in a very information rich environment. It's exactly how you would imagine. You know, it's an emergency center, and there's all these screens behind them, the disaster unfolding data feeds, all kinds of stuff. And this particular exercise was about pandemic influenza. So the question of the exercise is, when do we close the K through 12 schools? It's an important choice that has profound implications for pandemic influenza, because the schools are very related for how a pandemic would go through a community. We did this exercise in Phoenix in February 2009. The officials really got into the plan during the exercise. They understood through discussion that there were vulnerabilities and assumptions in the plan that weren't clear. There was a lot of different jurisdictions in the room. There were the medical officers, there was the governor's representative, there were school officials. In the exercise, the officials worked out who made the voices, who communicates those choices. And it wasn't clear in the plans or in the law as written. So they had to work it out and they worked it out in advance during the exercise. Again, this happened in February 2009. Only researchers would be excited about this. But two months later, pandemic influenza shows up in Phoenix, Arizona. And I'm really excited about it. Yeah, disaster research. Oh my gosh. But because of the exercise and the real practice that the elected officials and emergency managers did together, they were confident in their response to put pandemic influenza. One of the assumptions they practiced was, what if pandemic influenza is not virulent? What if it doesn't kill people like the last one did in 1918? What happens then? What if it's more like a seasonal flu event? They practiced this in February 09. So when the pandemic influenza shows up, the elected officials see the data and they're like, Oh, this is really like a seasonal flu event. And we practice this. So they made choices, confident choices, both from a political point of view, and from a public health point of view, to keep the schools open during the pandemic influenza. And it turns out their decision was backed up by the Center for Disease Control, whose own plan was not as well exercised as Phoenix, Arizona's, because they never looked at the option that people wouldn't die. Everyone equated pandemic with a lot of people dying. And that plan was never exercised. But this plan was. So yay, I was very excited about that. So my partner, we really saw that we had a powerful way to get decision makers together. And it turns out that the most difficult hurdle for emergency managers is just to get the elected officials to show up. I mean, it's really a problem. And so this was our exercise was an attractive way to get them to show up, play for real play for four hours, learn things and most importantly become a team. And then when the catastrophe hit, they were ready. So based on this, we found out that yes, modeling and simulation helps. But the most powerful tool to get people ready for catastrophe is to get them together in a room and play for real to get them in a room, and have them play and play for real, like not pretend like you're in a catastrophe right now. And that's what the that was the example of the Phoenix people is that they played for real, they made real political choices, they chose real roles for one another. And then they implemented that when the actual catastrophe showed up. So at the same time, my mother gets back onto the community theater stage in her 70s. I'm a total fangirl for community theater. I'm just like, I'm so amazed by the talent and capability that I saw. A few people are paid, they have a director, they have some technical staff, but everyone else is an amateur. And then they they mount this really credible, entertaining, complex endeavor known as community theater. And it inspired me to think. Why do we need special effects? Why do we need all this virtual reality? Maybe all we really need is people's imagination to be in a situation where the plane for real, and we could use this in disaster exercises. So even though I have a mother who's a performer, I'm a researcher, I couldn't be anything like her. And so making choices. So I've studied decision making. And I'm always about making the perfect choice. So I tried theater improv 20 years ago. And I had such a paralysis by analysis that I dropped out. I was like, This is too hard. I'm too freaked out. I can't do it. So what drew me back to theater improv is that it's practical for this situation. It's disasters are inherently chaotic. A disaster happens uniquely in a local place and demands high stakes political trades to deliver resources. So these circumstances need flexibility, speed and creativity in the moment. The response choices cannot be modeled by a computer. The better analogy was improvisation is demonstrated in jazz music and theater. So I stepped out of my research comfort zone. And I tried theater improv again. And like Delclose advises, I followed my fear and practice fearlessness with my improv partners. So in my two years study of theater improv, I've come to the insight that theater improv in a group is very related to catastrophic decision making. So and here's how first during a disaster, there's a group of people who are in a lot of confusion and chaos. Just like in the beginning of an improv scene, we start in the middle, we're not exactly sure where we're going. Second, during a disaster, people are scrambling, they're using their brains and their senses to understand what may be happening. Just like in the early moves of an improv performance. Third, during an effective disaster response, people form a team that connects, chooses a direction and then moves into action, just like the guidelines for improv performance. So in regular life, the team is only as strong as its weakest player. But the team is as strong as its strongest player. And anybody could be a strong player. And that's the person who chooses boldly and focuses the action. And then that focus shows a common direction that opens up other possibilities for participation. So one of the glaring missions in emergency management training is neither elected officials nor emergency professionals are actually forced to choose together in an urgent situation. They practice in conference rooms and they flip, they literally flip scripts. They still use paper in planning, disaster planning. So one of the things I noticed in my own experience in theater improv in scenes and showcases and performances is right off. You're in chaos, you're in chaos and uncertainty, which is exactly where we want to put all these citizens, emergency professionals, and elected officials. So my improv collaborator and I have come up with a series of exercises that we call heroic improvisation practice. And we decided that everybody who has a role would start with a foundation of theater improv games. And they would first learn to listen, second to choose to trust and find a focus, and third move into action quickly. So after the first level, we would move them into a second level, which would be creating a spontaneous team, just like Utah. And in the third level, we would help people create a team in a plan. In the fourth level, we would test a team in a plan, which is what I told you happened in Phoenix, Arizona. And then in the fifth level, we would really use theater special effects to test a plan and a very experienced team. So what I love about this is everybody can take this practice into an unimagined situation right away, because we're focusing on a process and building a habit. So I want to thank you for all your improvisation that you've done up till now, because I believe it has the potential for heroism. And I hope through this talk, you can see these opportunities move into them and bring your community with you. Thank you very much.