Laugh-Masters Academy is excited to collaborate with Laughter For a Change and look forward to helping bring their excellent program to Australia in the near future. In the meantime, please enjoy this Guest Blog from L4C Founder, Ed Greenberg.

Improv & Diversity

Here’s a recipe for good improvisation: create a space where a group of individuals, working at the top of their intelligence, throw as many diverse ideas into the mix as possible, watching, listening, accepting “mistakes,” while actively participating as a team to build on whatever spontaneously emerges as the most fertile and funny idea.

Good improv is great fun – but it’s not just about finding the funny, it’s a group exploration of what is both unique to the individuals on stage, and relatable to the audience members, so they too feel part of the fun.

Laughter For A Change (L4C), a non-profit based in Los Angeles, uses improvisational theater training, sketch comedy and theater games performance, to help individuals and groups around the world create comedy that playfully explore their own diverse ideas and cultures. Through laughter and fun, come stories that are specific to the players and their local communities, and, in an ever-shrinking world, identifiable to the global community.

L4C has run improv comedy workshops in Rwanda with post-genocide Rwandan youth, in China with actors from CCTV’s #1 TV comedy hit, and with the tech community in the U.K. In L.A. we’ve led improv workshops with war vets struggling with post-traumatic stress, former gang members, and high school students who perform an anti-bullying sketch comedy show for younger students.

We’re thrilled to be exploring the idea of creating a workshop/performance down under. We know that Australia’s unique cultural mix is a perfect place to make interesting and entertaining improv comedy happen. Watch our PSA above, and hope to see you there soon.

– Ed