Applied Improv Workshops For Adults With Disabilities

Reviewing A Series Of Workshops 

Recently The Radical Agreement Project had the great honor of being asked to provide a series of applied improv workshops for adults with disabilities. The workshops were commissioned by SPARC, a northern Virginia nonprofit that works with adults with disabilities. As is often the case when it comes to applied improv workshops, the goals were twofold:

The workshops were intended to delight attendees, their personal assistants, and SPARC location staff. A type of gift to the larger SPARC community. The workshops also had a goal of honing communication skills and building confidence.

One of Murphy's improv workshops at SPARC.

Murphy McHugh, the accomplished DC based improviser, headed all eight of the workshops. What follows is a free ranging conversation between Radical Agreement (RA) founder Terry Withers and Murphy McHugh which was intended to be centered on the workshops’ effectiveness, challenges and takeaways, but instead became a more general exploration of the magic that unfolds unexpectedly when doing improv.

TERRY

So Murf, you had the opportunity recently to teach eight workshops for SPARC, a nonprofit located in Northern Virginia that serves adults with disabilities. And this was a pretty big challenge for RA in terms of the number of workshops for one client and leading the workshops for adults with varied ways of participating. I wonder, how did it go?

MURPHY

Uh….. (pause) That's all correct! I thought that the workshops went pretty well. This wasn't a specific workshop set that I had done before.

You and I talked and game planned, and built out exercises that would challenge participants the way improv workshops always do, while also accommodating the needs of as many people as we could. 

We found ways to bend exercises on the side of inclusion and I think that everyone who came and participated had a good time. I don't know what else you can ask for beyond that. 

TERRY

I'm curious, I think that there's probably different stages to your experience. Like I'm curious to know what did this project seem like to you before you started going to the different SPARC locations and working with the people there, because you were doing it for three weeks. If you separated your experience into the simple rubric of before, during and after the workshops, is the way you think about the project different depending on where you are in that timeline? 

MURPHY

 I think that's fair to say. Like any applied improv gig, I didn't know exactly what it would be. You come in with a plan, but you plan for more. You bring more exercises than you need. 

TERRY

Uh huh. 

MURPHY

And plan on being able to pivot as the room needs it. I went to each location twice, two weeks apart, and each time the four different locations had some people who were there before and some people who were brand new.

I wanted to bring exercises that would be fun and inclusive and engage everyone as much as I could. In the first week I refined a few things, but I was able to bring a consistent product, a workshop structure similar but still flexible to each of those locations. 

Then in the next week which was a week off, a kind of prolonged break between week one and two, I knew I wanted to shift some things. I had wanted to give some opportunities for movement based exercises. But all the all the workshops happened seated in a circle

while a third to a half of the improv games that we teach are classically taught standing and with substantial movement. So I wanted to find ways that we could engage folks with activities designed for seated participation. During week two I began using a digital whiteboard. 

TERRY 

And you, you're doing like one line at a time drawings and character creation?

MURPHY

Yeah, a classic improv exercise, line at a time drawing, just like one word story. The class loved that exercise. It was a way to make the exercises more dynamic without requiring every stand up and move. 

We did some storytelling work week one focusing on communication, and we resumed the storytelling work week two with a new focus, confidence. Have you ever done postcards or letters, like line at a time, letters or postcards as a one word story variation? 

TERRY

Yeah, uh, yeah, I've done, uh I've done a lot of emails that way. 

MURPHY

Great. One line at a time emails?

TERRY

That’s right.

MURPHY

For a postcard, you start with a scene painting of something that's on the back of it. Of the picture on the postcard and then you “flip” it over and write a message a line or a word at a time. 

TERRY

Oh, so you that's what you were doing on the board, drawing the postcard first. 

MURPHY

We were, we did some of that with the board and then uh I got us into just drawing a line at a time drawing. So instead of full concepts being drawn one piece at a time, it was line at a time into a shape or a series of shapes. Then the group would decide what they thought it was which would lead to us doing a scene with that. 

So we were doing these Yes And scenes off of the drawings that were made. 

TERRY

Sure. Oh, so you were doing scenes from it? 

MURPHY

We did scenic improv in every single one of them. 

TERRY

Wow, that's an interesting idea. So you draw the postcard and then what do you do to get into the scene? Do you say, now jump into this postcard scene or is it more of using the postcard for loose inspiration for a scene?  

MURPHY

Basically yeah, I would ask each person what they saw when they looked at it. And so there was some consensus around like, oh, this is clearly a drawing of this or that. And then in other cases, it was way open to interpretation.

For these particular scenes, it seemed easiest to decide on a little bit of base reality beforehand, who the characters were or where they were from. 

There was a young woman in the Monday group who, her assistan was her father. She used a wheelchair with her father providing physical support so she could participate in the conversation. 

And, you know, it was beautiful during the workshop to see her dad helping her and her being able to participate in Yes And scenes as a result. We get to the drawing part, one line at a time and she says she wants to start with a heart. So her dad draws a heart and then adds a shape of his own.

And it goes all the way around our circle. Someone puts some bolts on it and some electric things and a line down the middle and at the end I ask everyone what they see? And she says she sees a Frankenstein heart.

And I was like that makes a lot of sense. I asked her if she wants to do a scene. Sure. She says yes. 

So she's paired with uh one of the employees, one of the staff folks for SPARC and they do a scene and I ask what she wants the scene to be and she says, “Frankenstein and a doctor”. 

I say, "Great. And who do you want to be?" She says, "Frankenstein." Okay.

So she's Frankenstein talking to the doctor and she says, "Doctor, help me. My heart's broken." The doctor says, "YES, I see it's broken, AND what if I put some tape on it?" She says, "YES, you could do tape, AND I don't think the tape is going to work."

And so these are very much YES AND leading scenes, right? But we go through tape, through glue, through staples until finally she says, "You know what? That will work, go ahead and fix my heart.” And the doctor fixes it and the scene could have ended there." 

I said, "This is great. Doctor, how do you feel about Frankenstein's heart being fixed?" And the doctor said, "You know, Frankenstein, I'm worried about you getting your heart hurt again." 

She responds, "You fixed my heart, now you have to let me use it.” 

What a move, right?

TERRY

Yeah. 

MURPHY

And the doctor's like, "But if you go out and use it and you get hurt, I'm scared. I don't want you to get hurt." 

And she's like, "Um, I have to go out into the world and use my heart. Without you, I have to learn to do it.”

I look around the circle and it’s not just me, a bunch of us are emotional. She's someone who is physically supported by her Dad, who's her assistant, who's right next to her, and advocating for herself. 

But I was like, God, that is a powerful little moment.

TERRY 

I think improv has a way of bringing us moments like that, you know, oftentimes from people who haven’t been studying it, novices. Great moments that you immediately are like, that could be a great book or movie. It feels like an instant great work of art.

MURPHY

It's the sort of thing where like that moment didn't happen for each location each day, right? But there were good moments in each location. And I'd say every time one of the groups and I worked together there was something like that. 

So you know, improv isn't a a stamp it out product where you can guarantee something like that every time you do it, but there are these moments of magic that you get to create that are just that for the room you are in.

TERRY

Speak for yourself. 

MURPHY

Okay. 

(pause)

People could participate in some exercises more than others. I tried to find some way for everyone to get in however they could. There was a woman in one of the sections who, you know, the first day I was there, she was there for both days. 

The first day I was there, I don't think she really wanted to join the circle and her aide joined and participated and tried to get her to participate, but no go. She engaged non-verbally in most activities. And we were doing, you know that warm-up thing where you associate an action and a sound with a name? Her aide was advocating for her and doing her movements and encouraging her to participate without forcing her to. That was our first session together.

And then the second time I was there, same thing, not a lot of participation until we get to Bunny Bunny. We do the bunny bunny passing exercise where you point to yourself and

gesture, then point to another person and gesture. And she raised her hands at herself and tossed her hands towards somebody else. And it wasn't a fully articulated classic bunny bunny and there were no words that went with it. 

But the entire circle was like, "Oh, that's amazing. Great job." It was week over week growth and passionately supported and encouraged by the larger group. Pretty cool. 

TERRY

It's so interesting to me that she participated that way and the whole circle was supportive of it. You know, one of the most common experiences that I have when I run an applied improv workshops is the group correcting each other. I'll get started with something like Yes And Point or Badada and invariably someone will make a mistake and then someone else in the group will feel the need to correct that mistake, you know, and point out that the person's done it wrong. 

And that’s the antithesis of improv. And I always feel like I'm not sure should I say something about it that early in a workshop. You know what I mean? Like I don't want to be like, “It’s wrong to say someone is wrong in improv.” Because then I’d be guilty of the same thing!  So I normally just let them correct each other. Feels like a weird oxymoron. 

MURPHY

So I love doing that with Zip Zap Zop as a as a game, because Zip Zap Zop is a fairly simple game. I first learned Zip Zap Zop as a competitive thing with my college group and when you screwed up you were out and then the next people came in.

But much later, once I became a famous professional improviser, I started teaching Zip Zap Zop with an a “AHA” moment when something went wrong. The whole group would do it.

Well, why does it matter if someone says Zop instead of Zip? It matters that it throws it off. And really I think Zip Zap Zop is about teaching us listening and recognizing the unusual thing which is, in this instance, breaking that Zip Zap Zop pattern and then reacting to it. 

And so what I teach with it, and we didn't do a lot of this for these workshops, but what I teach with it in corporate workshops is when something happens that is not Zip Zap Zop in the order that we're looking for, we go, "Oh." And the whole group claps in a circle. We're applauding it. 

And I talk about it and I'm like, the reason we're doing that isn't to tell someone that they're wrong. It's to listen as a group so that we're all paying attention for the unusual thing when it happens and recognizing it. And when that happens, we'll go, "Oh." And then we'll reset and start it again.

TERRY

I love that. I love that, Murf. I'm going to steal that and put it in one of the exercises on the website someplace. That's great. It's great. Up ‘til now, when I teach Zip Zap Zop, let me tell you what I do when I teach Zip Zap Zop. I'm like, play Zip Zap Zop.  It's something to do. That’s it. You actually have a valuable lesson in there.