Each year Endeavour Harmony Chorus holds a residential retreat. The whole chorus spends the weekend together with the goal of improving musically and building a stronger team.
This year we organised John Knowles and Marko Mustac from Improv Australia to run a Theatre / Sports / Improv session with the whole chorus as part of our Retreat activities on Sat 18th February, 2023.
It was a hugely enjoyable 1.5 hours. The benefits might not seem that obvious but we found the following was true:
being better listeners
being more present / in the moment
thinking on our feet
tapping into our natural creativity & spontaneity
(re)connecting with and embracing play
silencing our inner critic(s)
not letting unrealistic expectations of “perfection" get in the way of achieving at a high level,
supporting each other’s ideas / letting go of being "in control"
and, most importantly, it was a lot of fun!
In this video groups of members in 'trains' navigate the room with the end person in control of the direction and speed, via hand signals passed through to the first person.
The result was a fusion of our technical skills with more of the joy of storytelling, and that's got to be a good thing! We highly recommend building some Improv / Theatre Sports activities into rehearsals!