Drawing on a combined expertise in improvisational theatre and
psychiatry, author team Dan O'Connor and Dr. Jeff Katzman show readers
how improv skills are the perfect antidote to loneliness and
isolation.
I know what you're thinking: Hold on...improv? Like getting on a stage
in front of an audience? What if that's not my thing?
Don't worry: this isn't a book about becoming an improv theater expert,
and it's not really a book about performing. It's a book about
loneliness--about our feelings of disconnection and isolation, ones that
we may have been experiencing since long before the pandemic. More
importantly, it's a book about becoming unlonely--by borrowing from
the collaborative and creative tools of improv.
Authors of Life Unscripted Jeff Katzman, a professor of psychiatry at
the University of New Mexico, and Dan O'Connor, multifaceted actor,
writer, and director, have created a process they call Ensembling that
helps us build an ensemble of relationships in our lives and more deeply
enjoy the groups we already belong to. This is a process of becoming a
little vulnerable with each other, and of embracing the moment in which
we find ourselves. Drawing on concepts from narrative improvisational
theatre and depth psychology, the authors present us with the skills we
need to connect with each other more actively and meaningfully. To
ensemble or not to ensemble--that is not a question. With the rise of
loneliness and isolation in an increasingly virtually connected society,
we must find ways to come together. We must ensemble!
