 which way does it go which one here we go I want to talk to you about my work with improv with veterans he said I really didn't want to come today I was so depressed but I'm so glad I did that was what Jimmy said two weeks ago after our class I've taught Greek tragedy for 40 years at the University of Florida and became interested in the idea of tragedy and war through Brian Dory's project theater of war which I brought to Gainesville and directed I also have been doing improv playback theater at our local hospital for about 12 years I'm a pacifist I'm against war and especially the current wars but I felt that the veterans who were going to these wars and fighting were getting a bad deal when they came back we all know they're more suicides from this war than any other so I was very interested when our local VA started a new program which was going to bring in formally homeless and addicted veterans and let give them a chance to be rehabilitated to be brought back into the following members of society so I signed up and I went out there and I was going to do playback but they didn't want to tell me any stories I thought I'd do some comedy and they said huh and the director said no so I said okay we've got to do something useful here and so I developed a program and I'm going to just run these pictures but pictures by to get to the final conclusions here my colleague Charlie Mitchell who teaches improv at University of Florida and the director of the honors domicile where the veterans live Ali Karp each week we come there and we do start off with a series of warm-up games familiar to all of you if our veterans are mobile and able to stand we might do zip-zap-zum or hocus-on or something of that sort we'll move on then to pass it on for instance we'll do a lot of what are you doing good mental game so our opening of advantage games are to bring them to a sense of community bring them to a sense of being relaxed being in a sense of able to work as a team being homeless is very lonely very isolated they're working out of their addictions but that's a different kind of step so we're trying to get them to be working together to build teamwork after we have them with various warm-up games and so on we do mirroring for instance we do lots of name games we're having a party adjective and name and that sort of thing we move on to what we consider the meat of the program and that is applying these improv games to useful things so sometimes we'll do job interviews because these people are going to apply for jobs and look at their records they've been homeless they've been addicted they've been incarcerated how are they going to best present themselves we do a lot of do-overs where they act out Charlie and I act out possibilities that have happened we have to be careful sometimes others get edgy about the situation but we acted out and then they realize their alternatives to the way they had originally done their deed and carried out the situation so we try and we have games that are applying for how to deal with bullying situations for instance how to resist temptation because it's right out there and these are very people very close to the edge and so we try them to do try different ways of doing things I wanted to at the end of each session then we will close it up if we've had stories we might do once there was we try I learned from you last year frontman hype man I was stunned when some young girl said no one ever asked me a quality before she had been so in her own world I wanted to especially put up here the takeaways at the end of every session the director asked for takeaways and these are some of the things the veterans say they have learned Charlie and I think we're doing improv and this is what they come always good to laugh yes I like the spontaneity I enjoyed working on listening skills we did a lot of that we did silent communication for instance I'm not so different from others it helped me prepare for an interview it shows me how important it is to know how you're saying something we do that one sentence three ways exercise it was helpful to be able to be comfortable in a small group we had someone who said she never spoke up because she was always told she was stupid so now she had a chance to speak up because there were no wrong answers in the military that's not always a possibility I learned how a bully operates I learned there are alternative choices in every situation they don't have to go to violence every time rimprop look there's much more to improv than I ever would have imagined I'm using my mind I'm using my imagination we do lots of take on the story for instance for lots of things there and at the end they will always say they had fun it's their best class the one they've had the most fun is because they had a sense of community they work together they build a team and they laughed together that's what I've been doing for the past two years thank you