Do you believe in Murphy's Law?

Do you believe in Murphy's Law?

Have you heard this phrase?  “Everything that can go wrong will go wrong!”

True enough, in any presentation setting, things can go wrong; eg microphone’s not working, the projector is down, the presenter slips on the staircase while walking up the stage and many other possibilities.

So how do we then overcome this?  Improvisational skill is the answer.  Improvisation helps us to think on the feet and come up with solution almost instantly.  This is especially useful when we face with unexpected situations. 

One of the easy improvisation exercises that you can practise is the One-Word game.
Find a few friends that can help you with this.  So how the game starts, firstly, is to decide on a theme.  Say for this example, the theme is “chocolate.”  Each person contribute one word at a time and when join together, it should form sentences. 
 
An example:
 
Person A: One..
Person B: day...
Person C: there ...
Person D: was ...
Person E: a...
A: boy...
B: who ..
C: likes...
D: to ...
E: eat...
A: chocolates!
 
The idea is to say out the first word that comes to mind.  Most people initially find it a struggle.  This is because they are thinking of so many words in the head, and and don’t know which one to choose.  The point is, they are not allowed to think, just say out the first word that comes to mind.

Of course, you need to keep practising to hone the skills, just like any new skills that we learnt.  Actors learn improvisation as part of their actors training. 


Yours creatively,

Hazriq Idrus
Founding Director
The Speaking Factory Pte Ltd
www.thespeakingfactory.com