Devoted & Disgruntled at the GII Symposium 2019

 

What are we going to do about Improvisation?

A 2-day D&D Open Space on all things improvisatory, hosted by Middlesex university and the Global Improvisation Initiative as part of the GII conference 2019. You can book for all four days of the conference, or just for the 2 days of D&D. If you would like to know more about the GII conference, please see conference details over on the Improbable website.

Invitation by Phelim McDermott, Co-Artistic Director of Improbable

Thirty five years ago I read a book called Impro. It had been given to me by John Wright, one of my lecturers at Middlesex Polytechnic. It was a book that I devoured, I read it in bed and stayed up late into the night finishing it.

Life was never the same again.

The paradigm and skills that I was introduced to all those years ago have stayed with me ever since and inform everything I do when I’m performing, when I’m making theatre with people and sometimes, when I’m courageous, how I live my life. Working on not knowing what happens next has been the most reliable thing in my career. 

It is my belief that the sharing of the many aspects of improvisation and the ways it may help us navigate this chaotic world are still untapped. Improvisation demands that we develop a relationship with awareness. It engenders in those who practice and explore it a relationship to life which is more creative than mere rationality and is more exciting than certainty. 

I am still learning how to do it, how to use it, and what its true gifts are for theatre, and beyond that into other areas of life.  It’s an ongoing research project into how the world could be a more generous, creative place.  In these testing times, when groundlessness seems to be the norm, improvisation may be the only way out of the woods, even if its big lesson might be that we have to go deeper in to find a way through. 

The sharing and study of the many aspects of improvisation and the way it may help us navigate this fast-changing, chaotic world is essential for our future. So on May 17 & 18 we’re holding a Devoted & Disgruntled Open Space as part of our “International Institute of Improvisation” partnership with the Global Improvisation Initiative and Middlesex Uni. The Second Global Improvisation Initiative is an international gathering of all those interested in Improv and all its manifestations and applications. On May 15 & 16 there’s a conference with a pre-set agenda – but the D&D days are yours to do the work you want to do, in the way you want to do it; with all your passion, questions, experience and awareness of what needs doing.

Global Improvisation Initiative Access Information