by Keith Johnstone
ISBN: 9780878301171
Buy on Amazon
Found in 9 comments on Hacker News
tj-teej · 2024-03-29 · Original thread
Not a golden way of improving your EQ, but Impro by Keith Johnstone was illuminating to me (specifically the chapter on Status). If you feel you struggle with understanding how to communicate I can't recommend it enough.

https://www.amazon.com/Impro-Improvisation-Theatre-Keith-Joh...

tj-teej · 2023-09-18 · Original thread
The book Impro - it's a fantastic book written by an Improv coach, the first chapter on Status was one of those lightbulb moments for me, so many interactions I had everyday made so much more sense. Reading the first chapter is a better use of an hour than anything I can think of off-hand.

https://www.amazon.com/Impro-Improvisation-Theatre-Keith-Joh...

bmitc · 2023-06-04 · Original thread
The book I was referring to is Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre by Keith Johnstone: https://www.amazon.com/Impro-Improvisation-Theatre-Keith-Joh...
makebelieve · 2015-02-22 · Original thread
ground hog day / kill yourself. literally, kill yourself, but do it FOR something. what would you kill yourself to achieve? Think big. If you wouldn't kill yourself to achieve that thing, you are not thinking big enough. you'll know what it is, when you can say with a smile on your face: "Yeah, I would kill myself for THAT!" And that IS what you should do...because you are going to die no matter what.

the variation on this is groundhog day. So, you killed yourself and magically were transported back to your body the moment before dying. no one knew, only you. you are free, absolutely free from any sort of obligation to humanity or to live a certain way. basically, you get a true do over, but you are starting where you are. you can do anything. What are you going to do?

the reality is, every day is a do-over. There are no rules in life. everything about life comes from the inside out. things interact, but all those interactions are choices and coincidences that add up to what? No one, and I mean no person ever really knows what's going on, because all the action is happening down at the level of molecules. magically, your ideas can cause your molecules to do things.

there are no "rules" in the universe. there are just atoms and molecules interacting according to how they interact. It may look like there are some rules, but that's people just telling stories to describe what they think they see molecules doing. but it's all just stories. The secret is your ideas affect your molecules. how you connect and think about your ideas affects what your molecules do. that is real magic. ideas and "feelings" have nothing to do with molecules, with the molecules in our cells, in your brain, in the toe of the President. Molecules do what molecules do: atoms interacting with other atoms via their electron shells. yet somehow our ideas can make molecules do things. it's truly weird, wonderful, and amoral.

I would ask you to do 2 things before you shift your molecule dissolution date forward. 1) Practice meditation. simple attentive breathing, or using a mantra like "rom" for 20 minutes where you keep bringing your attention back to your breath, or to repeating the mantra. It is difficult to do and takes practice. As you get distracted from your breath or repeating the word, gently let go of those distracting thoughts and return your attention back to your breath or to the word. Try it for 2 weeks, everyday... it can't hurt you or anyone else by trying it. 2) pickup a copy of the book "Impro: Improvisation and the theatre" [ http://www.amazon.com/Impro-Improvisation-Theatre-Keith-John... ] and try the various exercises described in the book. It's a book you can start reading on any page. Improvisation and perception exercises show how make believe our experience actually is. People have made everything up. I'll happily send you a copy if you like.

walterbell · 2015-01-07 · Original thread
Find a couple of friends to be a sympathetic audience, then give your 90-second speech as a description of the emotions and reactions that are running through your head. Describe them in real time, use the emotions as fuel instead of reasoning with them.

From "Impro", http://www.amazon.com/Impro-Improvisation-Theatre-Keith-John...

"... Once you learn to accept offers, then accidents can no longer interrupt the action. When someone's chair collapsed, Stanislavsky berated him for not continuing, for not apologising to the character whose house he was in. This attitude makes for something really amazing in the theatre. The actor who will accept anything that happens seems supernatural; it's the most marvellous thing about improvisation: you are suddently in contact with people who are unbounded, whose imagination seems to function without limit."

spython · 2014-12-08 · Original thread
"Impro" by Keith Johnstone. It may seem like a book on improvisational theater, but is more a collection of notes on interaction between people. Quite eye-opening and empowering. Would recommend to anyone. http://www.amazon.com/Impro-Improvisation-Theatre-Keith-John...
walterbell · 2014-08-02 · Original thread
There's a great improv book that helps with inter-universe clock sync and emotional reactions to resync operations :) http://www.amazon.com/Impro-Improvisation-Theatre-Keith-John...
thirdtruck · 2013-05-01 · Original thread
Seconding sohamsankaran and natrius on this. Joining an improv club easily counts as one of my best decisions.

Let me recommend the book Impro (http://www.amazon.com/Impro-Improvisation-Theatre-Keith-John...), in particular.

reeses · 2013-04-18 · Original thread
Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre (http://www.amazon.com/Impro-Improvisation-Theatre-Keith-John...) has a great section on communicating status through body language and movement.

It describes a number of exercises where one actor takes the role of a superior and the other an inferior. The techniques are quite effective for the intended audience.

I would quote from it but I had a paper copy and it's really only worth running through once a decade for a non-actor interesting in the physical aspect of acting.