Improv Is No Joke

Improv Is No Joke
Author: Peter A. Margaritis
Publisher: Advantage Media Group
Total Pages: 142
Release: 2015-04-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1599325411

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Improve your life, where everything’s not made up and the points do matter. Drew Carey’s show Whose Line Is It Anyway? has turned improvisational comedy into a pop culture phenomenon. But improv is more than just laughs—it’s a valuable training tool that will make you a more effective business professional. Inside, you will discover how to: Š Replace negative phrases like “Yes, but...” with successful terms like “Yes, and...” Š Park your agenda and really hear your client out. By listening to understand, you can adapt to their ideas and produce a more positive outcome. Š Grow your client relationships beyond the numbers to build rapport, comfort, and trust. Improv is no Joke is must-read for accountants, bankers, and other financial professionals to sharpen the invaluable leadership and communication skills you need to successfully relate to clients and communicate complex information in a user-friendly way. “Peter is the first CPA speaker who actually made me laugh. Who knew accountants could be funny AND inspiring? Now, if I could just get my taxes to not be a joke!” —Judy Carter, author of The Comedy Bible and The Message of You

Truth in Comedy

Truth in Comedy
Author: Charna Halpern
Publisher: Meriwether Publishing
Total Pages: 164
Release: 1994
Genre: Improvisation (Acting)
ISBN: 9781566080033

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The 'Harold', an innovative improvisational tool, helped many actors on the road to TV and film stardom, including George Wendt (Norm on Cheers). Now it is described fully in this new book for would-be actors and comics. The 'Harold' is a form of competitive improv involving 6 or 7 players. They take a theme suggestion from the audience and 'free associate' on the theme into a series of rapid-fire one-liners that build into totally unpredictable skits with hilarious results. The 'Harold' is a fun way to 'loosen up' and learn to think quickly, build continuity, develop characterisations and sharpen humour.

So You Think You're Funny?

So You Think You're Funny?
Author: Immediate Gratification Players (Comedy troupe)
Publisher: Meriwether Publishing
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2010
Genre: Improvisation (Acting)
ISBN: 9781566081733

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Anyone can do improvisational comedy -- all you need is a sense of humor and a touch of fearlessness. The Immediate Gratification Players have been improvising at Harvard University since 1986, and in this book, they show you how to do it, too.

The Improv

The Improv
Author: Budd Friedman
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017-09-19
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1942952430

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Featured in the New York Times 2017 "Holiday Gift Guide for Hardcover Fans" Get an insider's oral history of the World's most iconic comedy club, featuring exclusive interviews with today's most hilarious stars recalling their time on stage (and off) at the Improv. In 1963, 30-year-old Budd Friedman—who had recently quit his job as a Boston advertising executive and returned to New York to become a theatrical producer—opened a coffee house for Broadway performers called the Improvisation. Later shortened to the Improv, its first seedy West 44th Street location initially attracted the likes of Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, Albert Finney, and Jason Robards, as well as a couple of then-unknowns named Dustin Hoffman and Bette Midler. While it drew near-capacity crowds almost from day one, it wasn't until comedians began dropping by to try out new material that the Improv truly hit its stride. The club became the first venue to present live stand-up in a continuous format, and in the process reinvented the art form and created the template for all other comedy clubs that followed. From the microphone to the iconic brick wall, the Improv has been the launching pad for practically every major name in American comedy over the last five-plus decades. Now, in The Improv, Friedman, along with a Who's Who of his most famous alumni—including Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, Jimmy Fallon, Larry David, Billy Crystal, Lily Tomlin, Judd Apatow, Al Franken, Paul Reiser, Howie Mandel, Bob Saget, Drew Carey, and many more—tell it like it was in the first-ever oral history of how this game-changing comedy club came to be. The Improv gives readers an exclusive look at what really happened onstage and off-mic at one of America's most venerable institutions.

Improv Wisdom

Improv Wisdom
Author: Patricia Ryan Madson
Publisher: Harmony
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2010-03-24
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 0307531848

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In an irresistible invitation to lighten up, look around, and live an unscripted life, a master of the art of improvisation explains how to adopt the attitudes and techniques used by generations of musicians and actors. Let’s face it: Life is something we all make up as we go along. No matter how carefully we formulate a “script,” it is bound to change when we interact with people with scripts of their own. Improv Wisdom shows how to apply the maxims of improvisational theater to real-life challenges—whether it’s dealing with a demanding boss, a tired child, or one of life’s never-ending surprises. Patricia Madson distills thirty years of experience into thirteen simple strategies, including “Say Yes,” “Start Anywhere,” “Face the Facts,” and “Make Mistakes, Please,” helping readers to loosen up, think on their feet, and take on everything life has to offer with skill, chutzpah, and a sense of humor.

Theatrical Improvisation

Theatrical Improvisation
Author: J. Leep
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2008-07-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0230612555

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Theatrical Improvisation provides an in-depth analysis of short form, long form, and sketch-based improv - tracing the development of each form and the principles that define and connect the styles of performance. Brimming with original interviews from leaders in the field such as Ron West, Charna Halpern, John Sweeny and Margaret Edwartowski, Theatrical Improvisation presents straightforward improvisational theory, history, and trends. Includes easy-to-follow resources on teaching improvisation, with assessment tools, exercises, games, and classroom assignments to enable instructors to incorporate and assess improv in the classroom. Leep offers a practical, essential, and engaging guide for anyone who wants to better understand the art, teach, or perform improvisation.

All Joking Aside

All Joking Aside
Author: Rebecca Krefting
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2014-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1421414295

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A professor of American Studies—and stand-up comic—examines sharply focused comedy and its cultural utility in contemporary society. Outstanding Academic Title, Choice In this examination of stand-up comedy, Rebecca Krefting establishes a new genre of comedic production, “charged humor,” and charts its pathways from production to consumption. Some jokes are tears in the fabric of our beliefs—they challenge myths about how fair and democratic our society is and the behaviors and practices we enact to maintain those fictions. Jokes loaded with vitriol and delivered with verve, charged humor compels audiences to action, artfully summoning political critique. Since the institutionalization of stand-up comedy as a distinct cultural form, stand-up comics have leveraged charged humor to reveal social, political, and economic stratifications. All Joking Aside offers a history of charged comedy from the mid-twentieth century to the early aughts, highlighting dozens of talented comics from Dick Gregory and Robin Tyler to Micia Mosely and Hari Kondabolu. The popularity of charged humor has waxed and waned over the past sixty years. Indeed, the history of charged humor is a tale of intrigue and subversion featuring dive bars, public remonstrations, fickle audiences, movie stars turned politicians, commercial airlines, emergent technologies, neoliberal mind-sets, and a cavalcade of comic misfits with an ax to grind. Along the way, Krefting explores the fault lines in the modern economy of humor, why men are perceived to be funnier than women, the perplexing popularity of modern-day minstrelsy, and the way identities are packaged and sold in the marketplace. Appealing to anyone interested in the politics of humor and generating implications for the study of any form of popular entertainment, this history reflects on why we make the choices we do and the collective power of our consumptive practices. Readers will be delighted by the broad array of comic talent spotlighted in this book, and for those interested in comedy with substance, it will offer an alternative punchline.

Taking the Numb Out of Numbers

Taking the Numb Out of Numbers
Author: Peter A. Margaritis
Publisher: Silver Tree Publishing
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2018-07-28
Genre:
ISBN: 9781948238014

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In his game-changing new book, Taking the Numb Out of Numbers: Explaining and Presenting Financial Information with Confidence and Clarity, Peter A. Margaritis, CPA, offers a refreshing new approach for connecting with audiences of any size -- with one valued client on the other side of your desk or with 1,000 adoring fans. Learn how to ...- Control Your Anxieties -- Calm your nerves and increase your confidence- Craft Your Story -- Learn the art of powerful storytelling to share complex information- Connect with Your Audience -- Engage people and create interactive conversationsIf you're like most financial professionals, you are "cursed with knowledge" and a comfort with numbers, spreadsheets, financial reports, tax codes, and investment models that collectively add up to a virtual foreign language to others who don't possess a similar knowledge base. Because of this, you may have a hard time connecting with the very people who need your help the most -- with your clients or your colleagues. It's a challenge you must overcome, an impasse you cannot simply shrug off. You need to talk to your stakeholders about the numbers; you need for them to understand.You can't change the numbers themselves; they are true and vital and, to a financial professional like you, beautiful and reassuring. What you can do is change your delivery when presenting financial information and bring those numbers to life!Margaritis makes a compelling case that the secret to such audience connection can be found in the art of storytelling and improvisation. Through a book that's equal parts practical guidebook, motivational support, and relatable examples, he helps readers construct their own storytelling methods and styles while learning a tried-and-true recipe for success in ensuring meaningful connection.Learn the key differences between data storytelling and data visualization, and discover how to become amazing and engaging by getting past your fears, then thoughtfully developing, preparing for, and delivering your presentation.The principles explored in this book, while tailored to financial professionals, are applicable to anyone who presents technical information -- like engineers, scientists, lawyers, doctors, or technologists.

Contingent Encounters

Contingent Encounters
Author: Dan DiPiero
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2022-08-31
Genre: Music
ISBN: 047290311X

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Contingent Encounters offers a sustained comparative study of improvisation as it appears between music and everyday life. Drawing on work in musicology, cultural studies, and critical improvisation studies, as well as his own performing experience, Dan DiPiero argues that comparing improvisation across domains calls into question how improvisation is typically recognized. By comparing the music of Eric Dolphy, Norwegian free improvisers, Mr. K, and the Ingrid Laubrock/Kris Davis duo with improvised activities in everyday life (such as walking, baking, working, and listening), DiPiero concludes that improvisation appears as a function of any encounter between subjects, objects, and environments. Bringing contingency into conversation with the utopian strain of critical improvisation studies, DiPiero shows how particular social investments cause improvisation to be associated with relative freedom, risk-taking, and unpredictability in both scholarship and public discourse. Taking seriously the claim that improvisation is the same thing as living, Contingent Encounters overturns long-standing assumptions about the aesthetic and political implications of this notoriously slippery term.

God at the Improv

God at the Improv
Author: Anthony J. Petrotta
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2020-12-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1532690835

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Asking if there is humor in any religious text might seem blasphemous to many readers. Religious texts are there to instruct us, not entertain us. Religious texts are serious works, not frivolous. However, if part of being human entails having a sense of humor, then it would be more surprising indeed for Scripture not to have humor. Humor instructs us as much as it entertains us. God at the Improv seeks to show that being religious and being humorous are not opposites, but actually work in tandem to enhance and enliven our faith and practice.