 Hello, A.I.N. Sound? That's what I was wondering. I don't know what they're going to do next season because they did some stuff this time. Exactly where I was thinking. Like go somewhere else with that, but don't break your ears, you know what I'm saying? Adorable, right? This father and babbling baby is an illustration of the science of human development in action. And I want to tell you why and how this is so important to the work that we're all doing as applied improvisers. There are millions of scenes just like this taking place all over the world every single day. And you know what happens as a result of this beautiful improvisational performance? Children learn to speak. Not in schools, oh god no. No. The adults and the older children in their lives play, perform and improvise with them. From a scientific point of view, the big and the little people are co-creating a huge transformation, a huge developmental change. By playing and improvising a conversation this way, the dad is relating to the child not only as who he is right now, but who he is not yet, who he is becoming. In the words of Lev Vygotsky, in play the child is able to perform a head taller than they actually are. Who is this guy, Lev Vygotsky? He was a Soviet psychologist who was working in the very early days of the Russian Revolution and there was a brief explosion of ideas in science, in art, technology, education, psychology and culture. Vygotsky, who is referred to as the Mozart of psychology, was working to create a new science of psychology to help people to navigate and create change in a transformed and transforming world. Vygotsky's discoveries underscore what we saw in that little video with the father and the son. Development doesn't happen to us or come from inside of us as individuals. Rather, we human beings, big and little people, create it together. And play provides the richest environment for changes in consciousness. Now, fast forward, the last few decades of research and practice have shown that Vygotsky's work is not just relevant for childhood development. It's for us big people, too. Because improv in everyday life, what we're all working on, is re-initiating adult growth and development, just like it initiates it for children. This is a revolutionary idea that is challenging traditional education and psychology. And there are thousands of people all over the world who are working on this challenge. Here are just some of them. And you know what? All of us at AIN, we are challenging traditional psychology and education, too. We may not think about it that way, and this is why I wanted to give this talk. Many of us, understandably, see our work in applied improvisation as an important and valuable set of ideas and practices, and they are. And many of us, perhaps defensively, want to make it a little more palatable, easier to understand, easier to sell, make it fit within the traditional frameworks. But it doesn't have to. It doesn't have to. Applied improvisation is helping to create a new science, a new human development science, a psychology, back to the little boy, a psychology of becoming. And that science, in turn, can help us understand and further develop our work. This is Dr. Lois Halsman. She is one of the foremost scholars of Bogotsky's work. She's the director of the Eastside Institute, a postmodern training center for performance activism. Many of her colleagues are here at the conference this weekend. Take a look at this chart that she created. Who and what are people? Well, we are shaped by our environments, but we're also shapers of our environments. We are users of tools, but we also create. We make tools. We adapt to culture. We create culture. We are members of identity and geographical communities. We build all kinds of different communities. We behave and we perform. We are who we are and we are who we are other than who we are, who we are becoming. What is, what is becoming? I want to unpack this. Traditional psychology and education and the behavioral sciences are concerned with the left side of the chart. They study and analyze and report on human life as it is. You see this in behavioral economics. You see it in much of neuroscience. And you see this in all of the psychological and education testing, the measurement tools that so many of us are familiar with. Holtzmann made this chart to point out what traditional psychology and education are missing. Namely, they're focusing on only half of who human beings are. I'm not a scientist, but that sounds like bad science to me. I am a human being. And like you, I work with human beings. I and we should be understood and related to as all of who we are. This is where applied improvisation and a new psychology of becoming is crucial. Because here we are studying, exploring, understanding and supporting the whole human being. The science of becoming and improvisation are very clear to see in this chart. We can enter scenes and we can initiate new scenes. We play games. We create new games on the spot. We play by the rules and the roles of a Harold or a Maestro. But we also create new rules, new roles, new worlds instantaneously and on and on and on. So yes, when we improvise and when we help others to improvise, we're creating a performance of our whole humaneness. That includes our brains, our bodies, our emotions, our intelligence, our personalities, our histories, our relationships and on and on. When I spent a bunch of time studying Holtzman's chart, it got me thinking, an improviser, what about how damn funny improv is? Where does that, where does that fit in? So, um, I'm sorry the state didn't go better. Well, it's not over. It feels like it's over. Sometimes the best part of the day is, you know, when you go home. Are you guys ready to order? I'll give you a few minutes. We just met, I mean. I know we just sat down, but it just feels over. You know what I mean? I haven't even told you about my job, which is kind of interesting. I got some jokes. Okay, go ahead. All right, well, I, uh, I work, I work at Greenpeace. It's kind of interesting. No. We're trying to save the Wells right now. It was so nice to meet you. Are you dating someone else? I just, I'm not trying to be rude. It might have been the way I got up and greeted you when you walked in the restaurant. I mean, that was awkward. It seems downhill since then. Cut to that moment. Are you Matt? Yeah, how are you doing? Nice to see you. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too. I think we're sitting over here. Great. These brilliant improvisers are performing both sides of the chart. They're showing us the way things are in a way that helps us challenge the way things are. They're showing our absurd rules and roles and playing with them. And if we can play with our stuckness, with our humiliation, with our stupidity, with our absurdity, with our anger, if we can play with it, then we can change it. That's what we as applied improvisers are doing. We're helping people to perform our entire humanness. We're helping people to be who they are and who they are becoming. Not just adapt to break rules and to make up new ones. In our society, in our relationships, in our communities. And this science of becoming, which we are all creating, might just change the world. Thank you.