Our Freedom Lies In How We Take Care Of Each Other — and other gifts of improv training for teens

There is an improvisation exercise called Emotional Squares, used to explore the range of feelings a person can have about the same situation. Four distinct emotional states — happy, sad, fearful, angry — are written on pieces of paper and placed in a square on the floor. A player is given a situation that involves a turning point in life, e.g. graduation, starting a new job, moving to a bigger place. The player’s partner chooses one of the emotions as a starting point, and the player improvises a monologue about the situation from that emotional perspective until the partner calls “change” at which point the player moves clock-wise to the next emotion. The monologue shifts to this new emotional state — keeping the same flow of ideas going — until the partner calls “change” again. After making the rounds to each emotional state in clock-wise fashion, the partner begins to call out “change” to specific emotions- e.g. “change, fear” followed by “change, happy” — in a collaborative way that expands the flow of ideas even more.

Martha Kahan, a social worker specializing in Social-Emotional Learning with teens for over 25 years found this exercise “an opportunity to ‘try on’ a variety of feelings using different perspectives.” The exercise is highly interactive, and depends upon…