Training to Imagine ─ Practical Improvisational Theatre Techniques for Trainers and Managers to Enhance Creativity, Teamwork, Leadership, and Learning

As an improv performer, Kat Koppett has a strong resume including time with BATS Improv. She currently wears two hats: the Mop and Bucket Company, a general improv group that does public and for-hire shows, and Koppett+Company, which teaches improv skills for corporate clients. This book should boost her profile, as well as give improv and comedy performers a good guide to working with corporate clients, explain the value of improvisation to people who spend their days in cubicles, and help sell the idea of improv to business, a world that often seeks innovation but punishes spontaneity. This book cannot compare with seminal guides to improvisation such as Viola Spolin, Keith Johnstone, and Augusto Boal, but it is not trying to. Spolin's style and philosophy was easily adapted by K-12 teachers, Johnstone's by barroom rebels, and Boal's by social justice advocates, all areas unlikely to be welcome in the board room. However, working performers in improv and non-literary theatre generally find the only way to make a living in the US is in corporate work. So Koppett's business-friendly improv guide fills a needed niche. She divides the book into two sections: an explanation of the principles of improvisation, and a long section of improv games (called "activities" here). The principles are: trust, spontaneity, accepting offers, listening and awareness, storytelling, and performing with presence. She explains them clearly and literally, in language that will be familiar to anyone who has read an inspirational business book. Experienced improvisers may find nothing new in either the principles or the games, but Koppett never takes credit for them; she is offering how to use them in the corporate world. Each game in the book, for instance, has a header giving the important skills built by doing the activity, and a list of suggested "Debrief questions" afterward (many are cringe-inducing for Johnstone or Boal fans, but may be a selling point for social workers and office managers). One appendix gives a spreadsheet listing each activity in the book with checkoffs for which principles it demonstrates; another suggests training uses for the activities. The author clearly knows her audience. The book includes endnotes, a bibliography, and an index. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)