The Canadian Improv Games Oath
We Have Come Together
In The Spirit Of Loving Competition
To Celebrate The Canadian Improv Games
We Promise To Uphold The Ideals Of Improvisation
To Co-Operate With One Another
To Learn From Each Other
To Commit Ourselves To The Moment
And, Above All,
To Have A Good Time!
The Canadian Improv Games Background
The Improv Games is the largest and most geographically dispersed theatre festival in Canada. The prototype for the Games was developed, tested and successfully implemented in the Ottawa-Carleton region between 1978 and 1987. In 1987, Canada‘s National Arts Centre began its continuing association with the Games and our national expansion began.
We are in our 30th year as an extracurricular drama program designed to enable teachers to teach the skills of improvisational theatre to high school students for the purpose of loving competition on a local and national level. Our programming in improvisation teaches life skills beyond what students would receive in high school alone: teamwork, active listening, adaptive logic, organic problem solving, acceptance, leadership, value in one's own perspective, understanding, and commitment. As arts and drama funding dwindles, the Canadian Improv Games gives youth an opportunity to truly discover and engage in their greatness. We believe in confidence building and a positive outlook within a world filled with a negative image of youth.
The Canadian Improv Games assists with training of improvisation skills for young people by providing resources to teacher coaches who administer our extracurricular programming. This instruction is done on a volunteer basis outside of the school's regular curriculum. Teacher coaches spend between 40 and 100 hours of volunteer time coaching each team.
The mission of the Improv Games is to develop in its participants the skills they need to thrive in the ever-increasing pace and complexity of today’s world – namely, the ability to respond with initiative and teamwork to a myriad of difficult and challenging situations in an intuitive, innovative, creative, energetic, and timely manner.
The Canadian Improv Games values:
1. Learning environments that are both challenging and fun.
2. Dramatic arts education for students.
3. Teenagers and showcasing them in a positive light.
4. Teachers “who care”.
5. Fostering of an appreciation for the performing arts, in both players and their peers, that extends far beyond the Games.
6. Volunteerism (as evidenced by community members, and former players who become involved in the lives of current students through continued participation in the Games.)
As one newspaper reviewer commented, “The lessons of teamwork, co-operation, sportsmanship and ingenuity that characterize the Improv Games will stick with these talented kids no matter what occupation they pursue.” The Games has also won the hearts of parents. One father’s comment is typical, “I wish those people who say there’s something wrong with our high schools, something wrong with our students, and something wrong with our teachers, could have been here tonight.” Most importantly, students love the Improv Games; they thrill in the excitement and the energy, and thereafter draw upon their newly acquired talents and self-confidence. As one of our players said:
“This is the best thing ever to happen to happen to high school." Cari Leslie, Johnson Heart Spirit Award Winner 2007