Dan Starkey is an actor appearing in television series such as Doctor Who, inside No.9 and Class Dismissed on CBBC. He's performed with many improv groups and done improv marathons.

I'm a massive Doctor Who fan, and seeing Dan improvise some online shorts for Doctor Who, a big TV production,  made want to delve into how that came about and find out more about Dan's work.

Bullet Points

• improv, Keith Johnstone
• Spontaneity shop, Tom  Salinsky, Debra Francis-White
• Bristol Old Vic
• Be generous to your audience and don't stare at the floor
• Start the scene with silence, creating character
• Getting a reaction - Improvised comedy and Christmas carols
• On the set of Doctor Who, Sleep no More, Bethany Black and Mark Gatiss.
• David Tennant, Peter Capaldi and Russell T. Davis ..and me.
• London improvathon, Lord of thrones
• Liverpool improvathon, Impropriety
• Die Nasty Theatre, Soap-a-thon
• How long can we sustain being present?
• Buskin the magic cobbler
• Class Dismissed.
• Attribution of improvised lines in a scripted piece
• Big Finish Audio

Links: Dan on Twitter | Dan on IMDB

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Adam is a customer experience consultant with a background in stand up comedy and psychology.

"We are going to break your ideas". Adam uses improv theatre techniques to drive design and innovation and is the co-initiator of the world's largest service innovation event, the 48 hour Global Service Jam.

In this interview we discuss how Adam brings his skills in theatre, marketing and design together with improvisation. Using the 'yes and' in service design,  showing client's how to embrace uncertainty, understand the world they sell to and deliver a better product and service. We touch on the subjects of conformation bias,  big ideas versus cheap experiments and allowing flexibility within structure.

Bullet Points

• The handicraft of emotion
• Treating design prototypes as offers
• The iterative stages of innovation & customer centric innovation
• Removing risk in product design
• Using improv to generate ideas, break them and get better questions
• "We've got this idea, how do we sell it?" - understand the world you're selling to.
• Confirmation bias. Defending our own ideas and getting precious about them...
• ideas generated by a group are my readily accepted.
• Get up and try stuff, get your hands dirty and enjoy the uncertainty
• Micheal Schrage, The Innovators Hypothesis - "You don't need big ideas, you need cheap experiments"
• Service design & design thinking - moving away from a linear approach
• How do you lead a non-linear, improvised approach to design?
• A brief word on agile design & scrum
• What works for you might not work for me; Allowing the flexibility for a great performance.
• Tom Peters - If it's rock and roll you can smell it.
• Global service Jam

Links:
www.workplayexperience.com | Adam on Twitter

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