Client and Student Interviews
Hoopla facilitator and teacher Liam Brennan interviewed a diverse range of Hoopla clients and students to ask how they’ve applied improv into their work life and businesses. Here’s what they had to say.
Richy K. Chandler: Writer, Illustrator, Comic Creator
Liam: How has Hoopla impacted you in your professional life?
Richy: Firstly, just the nature of improv encouraging you to focus on listening and responding to your stage partners is a smart way to force yourself to be in the present, giving a little mental break from the stresses of work and life. In my more mindful moments outside of Hoopla workshops I remind myself to focus on the present, which can solve so many issues with the future.
Secondly, very early on in improv training (in my case it was with the amazing Maria Peters), we were encouraged to not worry about mistakes and even to embrace them.
In my day job as a comic creator and illustrator, from time to time I post some of my better work online. Around the same time as starting Hoopla classes in the Autumn of 2017, I was taking part in an online illustration event called Inktober, where creators post a new ink drawing online every day. Rather than carefully mapping the drawings out in pencil first, and making sure they were worthy of public viewing, I decided to just dive in to each ink drawing with no planning and no pencil layouts first. If I made a mistake, then I’d have to adjust the drawing to accommodate it. Some of these ended up being my stronger drawings. Just like in improv, the work which other people would turn out to like wasn’t obvious to me in advance.
