I learned of Peter Brook's passing on July 2 while sitting at the airport waiting for my flight to London. It has taken me a few days to process. Brook, one of the greatest and most influential theatre directors of our time, changed my life. He was the main reason I decided to pursue a doctorate in theatre. I really didn't know much about Brook until my master’s program when I read several of his books (The Empty Space, The Open Door, The Shifting Point, Threads of Time), watched Marat/Sade, The Mahabharata, and whatever else I could find, and facilitated a lecture/discussion on him in my The ..read more

Theatre Art Life interviewed Theresa and her wonderful colleague, Joel Veenstra, about the Global Improvisation Initiative (GII), the project they co-launched in 2016. Theresa and Joel talked about how each discovered impro and/or how impro discovered them, applying impro to stage management (Joel's field of expertise!), to life, and more! Click on the image below to take you directly to the podcast page and to Theatre Art Life's wonderful platform of resources for professionals in the live entertainment and theatre industry ..read more

Theresa and her fabulous co-editor, Caitlin McClure, joined Kat Koppett and Livia Walker on their DARE TO BE HUMAN podcast to discuss risk, leaning into discomfort, the power of being average (Thank you, Keith Johnstone!), status, and, of course, the newly released book of applied impro case studies, The Applied Improvisation Mindset: Tools for Transforming Organizations and Communities (Methuen Drama 2021). It was a joyous, heartfelt conversation about being human and the power of impro ..read more

Article I co-wrote with the creative and inspiring David Zinger on improvisation & mindfulness published recently in The Toronto Manager. David (founder of the Employee Engagement Network) and I met in Keith Johnstone's 10-Day Calgary workshop in 2008! And we will be co-facilitating a course on Engagement, Improvisation, and Mindfulness in early 2021. Stay tuned ..read more

After my interview with UAB's online magazine came out, CBS 42 Birmingham reached out to do a segment on my virtual impro teaching and the segment aired twice last Tuesday! The piece was put together by the lovely Michelle Logan. Click the image to watch the segment ..read more

Just released today! My episode on "Beautiful Work" podcast! Host Dan Krikorian, a successful musician, songwriter, assistant men's basketball coach at Chapman University, and a former impro student of mine, interviewed me for this wonderful podcast series that includes award-winning authors, musicians, athletes, coaches, artists, education professionals, and more. When Dan was working on his master's degree at Chapman, he took my Impro for Leadership course. During and between classes, Dan and I would often discuss how impro and an impro mindset connected to basketball and coaching. We talk ..read more

“To be a child and yet to be able to escape all the punishments, all the dreary learning experiences, inherent in that condition is to be in a state of regressive bliss” ~ Film critic, Richard Schickel, on Charlie Chaplin In the quote above, Schickel is referring to Charlie Chaplin, as the Tramp, living out a child’s version of paradise on the big screen. As my U.S. Scholar Fulbright experience in Brazil nears its end and I take time to reflect, it is apparent that I, too, have been living out my version of paradise. My learning experiences have been far from dreary. I have been able to teach ..read more

“I used to enjoy physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it…. So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out and I’ll never accomplish anything, I’m going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever. Within a week I was in the cafeteria and some guy, fooling around, throws a plate in the air…. I had nothing to do, so I start figuring out the motion of the rotating plate…. It was effortless. It was easy to play with these things. It was like uncorking a bottle: Everything flowed out effortlessly. I almost tried to resist it! There wa ..read more

Meu fotógrafo (“my photographer”), cozinheiro (“cook”), and assassino de mosquitos (“mosquito killer!”)…Dale…traveled back home today because his U.S. passport only allowed for a three-month stay. I will miss him terribly, but my last month here in Brazil will be very busy—wrapping up classes, editing a book, co-writing an article with Mariana Muniz, and ending my Fulbright adventure with a celebratory trip to tropical Bahia in December. It is quieter now in my little São José cottage/guest house and I am overdue for a blog post, so here it goes... After Dale and I returned to Belo Horizonte ..read more

“Only one capable in the language common to the clown and to children, a language distanced from sense, would understand the clown himself, in whom fleeing Nature bids a shocked adieu…. Nature, so pitilessly suppressed by the process of becoming an adult, is, like that language, irrecoverable by adults” ~ Theodor W. Adorno (“Chaplin Times Two” in The Essential Chaplin, 2006) Last week in Belo Horizonte, Dale and I saw the movie Joker (titled “Coringa” in Brazil) on the day before it premiered in the U.S., which is extremely unusual because most U.S. films don’t premier here until at least 3 we ..read more