Engage: Improvisational Rhetoric
PERFORMANCE LITERACY-BASED TRAINING FOR EFFECTIVE DISCOURSE, DEBATE, AND DE-ESCALATION
A project developed out of the Artist’s Working Groups by Tarik Davis and Chris Griswold, this unique curriculum leverages the special literacies of the improv performer to train non-performers how to respond, react, and engage productively in discourse, debate, or de-escalation.
Useful for political activists forced off-script, journalists or politicians preparing for television debates, law enforcement needing to defuse tension, or simply individuals needing to better express themselves in asymmetrical power dynamics, the Engage project is applied-performance research at work.
In a historically divisive social context, Engage abandons the rigidity of scripted responses or echo-chamber positioning, and replaces it with highly tuned dynamic exchange that is designed to bring people back together in spite of stark differences. The Engage Project aims to become a nationally-available training program, and to build out a training-for-trainers to scale the curriculum and adapt it to diverse local needs.
ARTIST’S LITERACY: Interpersonal Dynamics
Research Based on Dynamic Performative Knowledge
A major part of Artist’s Literacy Research is applying it to the world beyond the creation of art products. Training artists (and those who put them to work) to think of their skills beyond the production of art or theatrical experience is crucial to elevating these powerful forms of knowledge to an equal position in the STEAM research apparatus.
Artist’s sensitivities are tuned even when not ‘at work.’ Using this ability to extract unique datatypes in un- conventional contexts is a big part of expanding beyond traditional art venues and maximizing the in uence of artist’s sensibilities.