Why everybody should play improvisational theatre | Stefan Scherbaum | TEDxDresden

In improvisational theatre, stories develop spontaneously out of the live interaction of actors on stage. Each actor adapts to the scene and moves the story forward by flexibly integrating his ideas with the ideas of his co-actors. In this fascinating and funny talk, Stefan Scherbaum argues that this setting on the stage of theatre is pretty much the same as on the stage of our everday lifes. Thus, by playing improvisational theatre, we do not just have a lot of fun, but we can train our abilities to cope with an unknown and increasingly complex future. Stefan Scherbaum is Junior Professor for Psychological Research Methods and Computational Cognitive Modelling at Technische Universität Dresden.
In his research, Stefan aims to use complex systems theory to study social interaction processes, decision making, and cognitive control processes. Concerning cognitive control, he is interested in the balance between focusing and letting loose attention while solving cognitive tasks. Concerning decision making, he investigates intertemporal decision making - how we choose between immediate but small and delayed but large gains - using computer game-like virtual environments. Concerning social interaction, he studies how decisions change when we decide together and how we coordinate our actions, e.g. when playing simple games from improvisational theatre. He develops and applies dynamical methods and dynamical computational models to study these topics.
Beyond his research, Stefan plays and teaches improvisational theatre in his group Freie Spielkultur. As a systemic therapist, he investigates together with his wife, Maja Dshemuchadse, how aspects of improvisational theatre can cross-fertilize with therapeutic interventions and inspire a flexible, empathic, and congruent therapeutic attitude. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx