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Our credo

We believe that every individual is innately creative, inventive and entertaining - and can be so in their own unique way. Improvisation-based comedy is an extremely powerful approach to this, which anyone can use for enhanced self expression, moving energy, creating positive change - and having fun!

We specialise in creating an environment where people can develop their individuality, transcend their usual limits, transform themselves and move forward on personal issues - and meanwhile have fun.

Participants can experiment with such comedy methods as improvisation, stand-up, monologue, double-act, story-telling, sketches and sitcom. The workshops also help develop life-skills such as confidence, creativity, communication, teamwork and overcoming fears.

 

 

How Positive Comedy training works

Positive Comedy's work is about:
- the power of being ourselves and living in the present moment…
- being funny without particularly trying…
- and thus developing other qualities such as confidence, creativity, positivity, spontaneity, playfulness, self-presentation and communication skills, co-operation and teamwork ability, individual sense of humour - and fun!

As a child I hated being laughed at. But after a while I began to discover that making people laugh was a powerful and influential pursuit - and even enjoyable.

Eventually I realised that comedy was a life-changing tool that I could make available to other people too. And that's how Positive Comedy Training was born - now offering comedy and improvisation based learning and development for businesses, organisations, groups and individuals.

Practising improvisational comedy, I've discovered, enables people to develop attributes that are extremely valuable in professional life: such matters as creativity, confidence, presentation and communication skills, team-building, leadership and customer care. Improvisation - making stuff up on the spur of the moment - works through supporting you in fully using your individuality, accessing instinctive capabilities, overcoming habits of blocking off the fund of imagination you have within, learning to enjoy and make the most of unexpected turns of event rather than panicking - in short: being yourself, and being in the present moment.

Comedy is approached as something that happens naturally and organically rather than by trying very hard to do it. So now I create tailor-made programmes based on the needs of client organisations, ranging from chief executives to frustrated social workers in urban ghettoes. I also run 'open' workshops so that freelancers, consultants and other creative professionals can attend. Over the years I've developed a whole repertoire of improvisational training activities. Many of these are modelled on the fundamental comedy genres of stand-up, double-act and sketches, which correspond to our three basic modes of communication in the professional world - solo presentation, interaction with another individual, and functioning in a group.

My methods are constantly evolving, and I'm always learning in response to whatever comes up as training session progress; in other words, I'm improvising too. That was one of the first things I learned in this work - you can't come along to a session such as this with a cast-iron plan that you must stick to at all costs; the work is highly responsive to participants' needs and issues, as they arise. The participants also play a big part in giving each other feedback, extracting the learning from the activities, and identifying how they can put what is learnt into practice when they go back to work. It's highly interactive.

People find the concepts of comedy and improvisation scary, but also exciting. When they find they can do it themselves, this really opens up possibilities for them. And the sessions are also fun, though centred around practically valuable outcomes - I think what's happening is that people connect back into transformative state akin to that which is the key to childhood learning about life, based on creative play-acting. These early learning experiences are probably more profoundly influential than anything we do later in life, and I'm showing that we can still do this as adults. Let's go for it!

- Gerry Maguire Thompson

For further info in UK call 01273 463611 or 07986 561860

Email: info@positivecomedy.com

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