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Improv Games
Skills that make us good improvisers are those that make us good partners, friends, parents, and colleagues - listening, mutual support and trust, willingness to take risks, ability to collaborate, capacity to both lead and follow, and a sense of spontaneity and fun. These skills are the foundation.
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❉ Download all 10 featured Improv Games by Lisa Kays
Individual Games:
❉ A/B Thank You: Pose-matching in pairs builds group support and trust
❉ Calvinball: Unstructured free play reveals anxieties around control
❉ Collaborative Drawing: Silent partner drawing explores power dynamics and control
❉ Copy Cat: Retelling each other's stories deepens listening and connection
❉ Crazy Eights: Counting down while shaking limbs clears stress and anxiety
❉ Good to the Last Drop: Starting each line with the last word practiced full presence
❉ Sound in Motion: Passing sound and motion around a circle builds group connection
❉ Yes, Move: Name-calling circle swap trains impulse control and attention
❉ Zen Count: Silently counting to 21 as a group builds frustration tolerance
❉ 7-Line Stories: Collaborative sentence-by-sentence storytelling practices "yes, and" -
For many years, I taught improvisation to students at Washington Improv Theater and incorporated improvisation into continuing education workshops and training for therapists, pastors, and other helpers and healers.
As part of my teaching, I adapted traditional improvisational games into tools that could be used for team building and personal self-reflection to explore, understand and transform topics and aspects of the human experience ranging from social anxiety to perfectionism to cultural beliefs stemming from colonialism and white supremacy culture. Given the value groups and individuals have gotten from playing those games, many of which are open source--as is much of improv culture--I wanted to make my methods and adaptations available to improv teachers, clinicians, and educators who may benefit from them for their classes, groups and clients.
Please feel free to print or reproduce these in any way that you'd like, I would only ask if replicated in whole or part, particularly in written form, that I be given credit in any materials that are distributed or provided verbally.
Media: Read & Listen
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Shift Happens Collective on Substack
News and information about the private practice of Lisa Kays, The Shift Happens Collective. The Shift Happens Collective serves clients and social work supervisees in DC, VA, MD, and OR.
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Listen to the Podcast
The “What If Nothing’s Wrong With You?” podcast is a co-creation between two psychotherapists and colleagues, Lisa Kays and Paula D. Atkinson. Listen on your favorite podcast platform.
Recommended Resources
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