Transcript: Mornings @ ANC
February 26, 2014
Heroic Improv: Having fun while preparing for disaster in Philippines
The concept of fun is hardly imaginable when calamity strikes. But some believe that it is just the key to make communities more resilient. Following the recent disasters that hit the country, a collaboration was born to apply theater improvisation games to generate action for innovative disaster response.
Now here to tell us more about their shared cause and their chosen medium are Gabe Mercado - founder and artistic director of Silly People's Improv Theater company or SPIT - and he is also a trainer with a decade of experience in human and organizational development. And Dr. Mary Tyszkiewicz - a disaster research professional from Washington DC and founder of the Heroic Improv Process.
Paulo: Good morning
Gabe: Good morning, thanks for having us.
Paulo: The introduction I think really hit the nail on the head for me. I mean -- disasters, being funny, improv -- but they do meet somewhere, don’t they. How do they meet?
Mary: Um the way they meet is.... Disasters often are unimaginable. So how do you get people to be ready for something unimaginable? So we use theater to help citizens, emergency managers and elected officials to practice.
Paulo: Right
Gabe: The key here is really is -- I have had lots of experience doing improvisation. Which is basically, you mount the stage with nothing prepared in advance. Mary - on the other hand - has had decades of experience too working in US government in the US Capital, Homeland Security Institute and FEMA - Federal Emergency Management Agency. And our two lines of experience basically met. And she said, ”In a lot of ways, improvisation and disaster are alike because things that you do not prepare for that you cannot imagine happen right there.” And it is the process by which we adjust to unexpected and unimaginable that we take citizens through.
Paulo: Right, OK. When you explain it that way, it certainly makes a lot of sense. How did you come upon this...how did you figure that out, Mary?
Mary: Inspired by Hurricane Katrina and the poor response, I was inspired to find a better way to get Americans to practice for disaster. And ..um...we did actually did a test with virtual reality and elected officials, and it turned out the secret sauce was getting them together and play for real.
And at the same time, my mother was doing community theater in the US. And community theater is something that starts with hardly any professionals. And two months later, they have a production and it’s beautiful. And so I said: “Wow! Can’t we harness that imagination to get people to prepare for disaster?” And so, I found theater improvisation as a solution to a problem that I was seeking.
Paulo: OK. I mean - your first thought was - yeah - that this may be the way to get people a little more prepared. What -- did you experiment? Who did you experiment on, with? What was their reaction when you said - you know what this is probably one of the best ways to prepare for disaster... let’s makes some jokes about it. Or not necessarily jokes but let’s use improv techniques to prepare.
Mary: As the social scientist of the duo, I was actually surprised about the fun. I actually went to improvisation because I know in the beginning of an improv scene, people don’t know where they are, they don’t know who they are with and they don’t know what is next. And for a non-performer, that feels like a disaster. And as an analyst who is not a performer, I took improv classes for a year to really explore the process. So then when we developed the exercise, the surprise to me is that the participants said it was fun. And it appears that the fun fuels the learning and gets it to stick.
Gabe: Yeah. One example -- actually Paulo -- yesterday we were at the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority. And the SBMA Emergency Response Team last year -- 2013 -- won the award the best emergency response team in the country.
And we ran them through scenarios which were a little bit off.
Paulo: Unusual?
Gabe: Unusual. Because these are members of the fire department and law enforcement. And we start cold with a scenario. And because we knew they were highly drilled and the best in the country, the scenario we started them with was we gave them five minutes to secure the room for a Zombie invasion.
Paulo: It could happen. Laughter
Gabe: And our point was. It they really threw themselves at it and really prepared. It was eerie. There was silence and they were in defense position.
After we processed it out to, how many of our disaster locally were unimaginable to people who were there. Let’s take Haiyan, for example. There was information that there were 10-15 meter high storm surge.
Paulo: But we never experienced that.
Gabe: People couldn’t imagine it. So, perhaps their response was not as adequate, because it was unimaginable.
Paulo: Right, OK. So in terms of actual..... I mean.... you have been in the improv game for a very long time. In terms of the actual exercises that sort of go into this, and how are the learnings distilled and how to make those learnings concrete. What is the process? How does a session like this work?
Gabe: Well, first, we don’t label it as improv. We take out all the jargon as much as possible. And we go through a five-step process.
Mary: Yeah - so the five step process.... um ...the first step is Alert. And basically, that is to recognize there is a crisis. Because many citizens...they freak out, freeze up, they are in denial. So we get them to warm up their bodies and their intuition. And to forget about the past. Forget about the future. Be here right now.
And then the second step is Ready. So we try to get people to practice their awareness. So, what is around them? What could be useful? And I know Filipinos are really good at finding other uses for things.
So that is one of the things, instead of people being freaked out, we want them to be open. And just like, wow I can use this flat screen TV to carry something or you know -- whatever.
And then the third step, is to connect up as a group. That is one of the things we do in the simulation is we have people.... You need to keep the group safe together. Because many times in a disaster people take just care of themselves.
And we know -- I know -- because I seen it in Superstorm Sandy -- that innovative disaster response is done in a group. It is only successfully done as a group.
So the third step is to connect up in a group. And then once those things happen, - Alert, Ready, Connect, - then people will naturally know what the next right step is together, even though they never experienced this before.
Gabe: We also take them through the fourth step - which is giving and taking focus. Because a key component of this is fluid leadership. We have situations here where we do not move because the barangay captain did not tell us anything or the mayor did not tell us anything.
And we take citizens through the experience of taking and giving leadership in a fluid manner. And that you do not have to wait for another person to order you around, to take the moment.
And then the last step of the five steps is moving quickly towards a solution. And the whole thing -- in our experience in our simulations -- can sometimes take less than two minutes. All those steps and it just goes over and over again. It is a spiral.
Mary: Yes. It is a spiral.
Paulo: How to do you measure how the effective the technique has been or will be when it comes to preparing people to be a little more - you know - Bruce Lee in their reaction to disaster?
Mary: Bruce Lee together!
Gabe: Sholin monks!
Gabe: The way we design it is there are two simulations. We have a whole database of disasters from the unlikeliest to the likeliest. And we make sure....
Paulo: Zombies apocalypse .... somewhere in the middle.
Gabe: Yes. And the other situation we ran yesterday to end the session was a vintage US nuclear warhead was found in Subic and it was leaking. And that is a little likely. We have a whole database of disasters. And we sandwich the program between them.
So the first disaster simulation we get a base of how did they react? Were they catatonic? Did they just talk?
And with the last one. After they go through the module and five-step process, we time them again with a totally different scenario. And often we see the response is much, much faster.
Paulo: Is quicker
Gabe: Yeah....
Mary: And in harmony as a group.
Paulo: I mean....can you translate the way you ....I don’t know... problem solve........or tackle a particular problem in a light and sort of stress-free environment that you do when you do go through these simulations? Is that supposed to be a model for how you are supposed to handle a situation for when things get real?
Gabe: Well, just to put context about the whole thing we are doing.... We see what we are doing as part of an entire program of disaster preparedness programs that a community must go through. And most training program move on the areas of increasing people’s knowledge. Let’s say: What is an earthquake, what is a storm surge. etc. Or increasing their skills: How to do First Aid. How to do CPR. How to put out a fire.
We see this piece as concentrating completely on attitude. What attitude should the civilian take? And it is really directed towards civilians and citizens. What attitude should we take when disaster hits unexpectedly? And we feel it is a great foundational piece to learn knowledge and skills. And it has been really effective for us that is it done in a spirit of fun. Disasters are depressing enough.
Paulo: Right. Like we said at the start, the last thing you connect to disasters is having fun. But really being loose and being fluid and being able to roll with the punches seems be what being effective in a situation like this is all about. What do from here? Now that we know that an approach like this can work, how to we trickle this down to groups, to barangay, to communities? How do we organize ourselves?
Gabe: We have spent the past.... Has it just been two weeks?
Mary: Since Valentine’s Day.
Gabe: We have been rolling the program out to as many communities as we can. We have gone to Laguna.
Paulo: Right . OK, we have some clips of sessions that you had.
Gabe: Yes. From Laguna. We are heading to Leyte this Friday. And we are putting together all...Mary is an expert on research and writing grants and really taking the data and taking a look at it. When she returns to Washington, we’re gonna take a look at all the data we have generated, fine tune it. And we’re seeing a national-wide roll-out by April or May. How exactly we are going to do this logistically, we are not their yet.
Mary: We are going to improvise, though.
Paulo: We are gonna see what happens. We are going to see how what comes our way. And we will react to that. Right?
Gabe: We see this really....we have volunteer facilitators who are willing and able to run this. If we can get a partner. JCI is already helping us -- the Junior Chamber International. And with their help we want to roll this out - particularly the JCI Makati Princess Urduja Chapter.
Paulo: All right. Well good stuff. All right. We certainly applaud your efforts. It is very interesting actually what we learned from you guys. Well, thanks you very much Gabe and Doctor Mary for joining us this morning. Best of luck and how the program goes farther, faster and quicker.
Gabe: To as many communities as we can manage.
Mary: Thank you.
Paulo: Thank you for joining us this morning. Next up is a sneak-peek at the Gonzilla re-make.
Gabe: That is a great segue.
Paulo: Yes. How would you react to that? Laughter.
