Zach Ward and DSI Comedy Theater have been offering workshops to corporate clients all across the country for over a decade, introducing comedy concepts to help organizations develop a competitive edge.
In the era of Who Moved My Cheese? 2.0 we are experiencing a ‘Rat Race’ with more and more complicated mazes with much less satisfying payoffs once we stop running… IF we ever even stop running to look around. Do you want to work more effectively and HAVE FUN while you do it?
Who answered ‘No’? — That’s what I thought. Nobody.
Comedy techniques help people think on their feet, create new ideas effortlessly, actively listen to others, and work productively as leaders and team players. Improv and comedy workshops can help you learn to read any audience and coach you to develop professional flexibility, making it easier for you to accomodate clients, customers, satisfy management, support peers, and manage conflicts in the workplace.
Interested? You should be. You need to be. So what can you do?
Contact ZW for custom corporate workshops on-site for your organization.
I’ll travel anywhere. East Coast, West Coast, Worldwide.
For those who want to pursue professional development options outside of the workplace, you can locate improv workshops in most major metropolitan areas. I’m happy to provide theater recommendations. In North Carolina? You can study with my theater in Carrboro. Our next round of public improv classes start on Wednesday Aug 25th and Saturday Sept 11th. Check out standup at DSI for public speaking.
You know the REAL classy summer nights, the nights when you buy a $25 bottle of Sancerre to drink after dinner on the porch swing, when one thing leads to another, you make a joke, laugh, bite down and glass ends up in your mouth, like one big chunk and maybe two or three shards.
We’ve all been there, right?
No? Well, maybe my jokes are just THAT funny.
(Be safe; Watch the ZW clip Grandpa Standup while drinking out of plastic cups)
NOTE: All the shards were accounted for. Except for one.
American creativity scores are falling. And the scores of younger children in America, from kindergarten through sixth grade, are experiencing the “most serious” decline. — Newsweek
The potential consequences are sweeping. The necessity of human ingenuity is undisputed. A recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the No. 1 “leadership competency” of the future. Yet it’s not just about sustaining our nation’s economic growth. All around us are matters of national and international importance that are crying out for creative solutions, from saving the Gulf of Mexico to bringing peace to Afghanistan to delivering health care. Such solutions emerge from a healthy marketplace of ideas, sustained by a populace constantly contributing original ideas and receptive to the ideas of others.
AND RECEPTIVE TO THE IDEAS OF OTHERS …
We’re talking about FUNDAMENTAL IMPROV SKILLS! We need to embrace “unconditional support” and the concept of “Yes And” — We need to foster an environment where creative problem-solving and FAILURE are encouraged. You can train creativity but not when we eliminate funding for Arts education and drill students to operate according to the rules of a society still working to produce disciplined factory employees.
It’s too early to determine conclusively why U.S. creativity scores are declining. In effect, it’s left to the luck of the draw who becomes creative: there’s no concerted effort to nurture the creativity of all children. Overwhelmed by curriculum standards, American teachers warn there’s no room for a creativity class.
WAIT A DAMN MINUTE — A study 50 years in the making (started by Ellis Paul Torrance) leaves us to say it’s the Luck of the draw who becomes creative. No, No, No. Not okay. Do we have time to waste? Absolutely not. How many gallons per minute? How many turtles? How many people? How much time? So what can you do to make sure Creativity IS NURTURED? We can train creativity. I do. Everyday.
I am seething. You should be too. Break the glass. Make it happen.
