Practicing the Possible: An Interdisciplinary Exploration of Improvisation Toward Remedy and Inclusion

Session Type: Working Group Roundtable

Abstract

As artist-scholars, we understand improvisation not only as a set of skills or routines, but as a way of experiencing and interacting in the world that shapes and is shaped by emerging possibility. Framing improvisation as a dynamic practice of identity exploration, formation, and presencing, we emphasize its ability to create spaces where individuals play with existing identity as well as generate potential future ways of being and seeing. These papers describe how engaging in improvisation positions learners to reflect on, invoke, and explore identity, and how improvisation-centered learning environments encourage learners and educators to dwell in possibility and embrace diverse individual and collective contributions. We suggest improvisation can support inclusive contexts that make space for learners’ rich, multitudinal identities.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Arts and Inquiry in the Visual and Performing Arts in Education

Chair

• Kailea Saplan, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Papers

• Embodying Memory, Time, and Space: Improvisation to Explore Personal History in Qualitative Research - Lora Cawelti, University of Southern California

• Surfacing the Musical Self Through Playful Improvisation - Ethan Rubin, University of California - Santa Barbara

• The Things We Make, and the Stories They Tell: Unpacking Ethnogastronomic Repertoire through Autoethnography - Phebe Chew, New York Hall of Science

• “Now, become frat boys”: Embodied Improvisation and Identity Play in Devised Theatre - Lana Cosic, Vanderbilt University

• Yes, and…! Enacting Inclusion By Way of Theatre Improvisation - Kailea Saplan, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• A Portrait of Responsive Structure in Improvisational Choreographic Pedagogy - Lauren Vogelstein, Teachers College, Columbia University