Cathy Salit is CEO of Performance of a Lifetime. She has delivered hundreds of keynote speeches on how using performance in everyday life helps with growth and productivity.

She's the author of Performance Breakthrough' A radical approach to success at work.

In conversation with Cathy we chat about her work at POAL, and how treating life as a great performance can be a strong catalyst for growth and change. How her company has developed over time using performance, improvisation and psychology  to create a safe 'playground' and lead to a diverse range of projects including working with inner city 'cops and kids' to to improving the doctor/patient relationship.

Direct Link (MP3 file)

Links: Performance of a lifetime | Cathy on Linkedin |  Performance Breakthrough

Bullet Points;

• The human side of business strategy
• Performative psychology
• Who we are becoming; tapping into the natural ability to perform from childhood
• Choose to Grown blog
• Cathy the Jazz singer
• The All Stars Project - Cops and kids finding common ground
• Elisabeth Cleaners street school
• Art and business building together
• Form of life -  Ludwig Wittgenstein
• David Nackman, Fred Newman
• Your life story in one minute
• Devising improv for medical residents - improving  the doctor patient relationship.
• Using improv to create a 'playground' to approach emotionally difficult. conversations such as doctor patient DNR (do not resusitate).
• Stephen Nachmanovitch, Free play.
• Emotinal intelligence...why the need to prefix "intelligence"?
• "The Sales Whisperer" - Daniel Pink, author of To Sell is human.
• Bringing performance to the sales pitch.
• Our ability to change is a performance choice.
• We need weird! Doing something new to find change.
• The art of selling, networking and other schmoozy things.
• Don't worry about the sale.

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

Direct Link