I am an improvising performer and actress based in Tokyo. I use my business background and performance experience to:

  • coach individuals to discover their personality when presenting

  • design and deliver workshops to meet the needs of clients who want to discover new behaviors in communication, communicate more effectively, approach life and business situations with confidence and creativity.

    “When people are taken out of their comfort zones and explore new things, they learn more about themselves.”

 

Business background: former member of the Chartered Management Institute, working at management level for over 10 years in Human Resources, training, legal, finance, sales, marketing, resourcing, facilities and administration management, project management.

Performance experience: hours and hours of performance training and live theatre performances, plus all those wonderful hours rehearsing! Performed live theatre and improvisation in UK, Japan, USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, India, Dubai and Hong Kong. She currently directs Perfect Liars Club Toyko, a comedy storytelling interrogation show, and performs monthly in Tokyo with 2 groups: Tokyo Comedy Store and The Pirates of Tokyo Bay. For more details go to my performance website, www.christianebrew.com.

Coach to discover: ghost written presentations for clients and coached them through the delivery; coached clients to discover how to use their bodies and voice effectively when delivering presentations; how to deeply listen to colleagues and clients. Storyteller coach for individuals and business.

Communicate more effectively: facilitating the discovery of effective and collaborative ways to communicate in the workplace, with client teams or customers; and finding client's assertive self and feeling confident to deal with the unexpected.

 

 

 
 

What businesses & experts are saying

What are the real benefits and affects according to science and other leading voices in the business field. 

 

 
 

Boosts creativity & collaboration

•   The National Institute for Play cites multiple research efforts which found that pretend play “remains key to innovation and creativity.” They state that play mixed with science begets transformation. From

•   Musician and Researcher, Charles Limb, looks at the benefits from a scientific perspective in his TED talk.

•   "Innovation thrives in an atmosphere of safety and non-criticism," says Daena Giardella, improvisational leadership class teacher at MIT's Sloan School of Management, in this inc.com article.  "Improvisation builds a muscle for trusting our own impulses and ideas, before we have to analyze how good they are, as well as helping develop an open-mindedness toward other people's ideas." 

One happy company said this after a few weeks of improv communication training::

"I notice that in meetings now, there's a lot of language like 'Yes, we could do that--and we could also consider this.'"

 
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be more attentive to your customer needs

Improv performers learn how to be present and in the moment and that involves active listening. Really listening. To the words, nuances of tone, and of course observing physical surroundings and body language. Without this tool, an improvised scene doesn't have a flow. It's puzzling. The Impro-Series© workshops will help train you to be more aware and to listen.

Rebecca Waber, 30, who leads a team of consultants at Innosight in Boston, relates this to her contact with clients. 

“What you need to do in improv is listen closely to every word a scene partner is saying,” she says. “Everything’s moving so fast, you may have missed the most interesting thing. The audience may have heard it, and if you missed it you haven’t really driven the scene forward, you don’t know what to react to.” The boon comes in client meetings. “When you’re in a meeting with a client, you need to not only hear but deeply listen to everything.”

Extract from Forbes article, 2014

 
Photo: Travis Bradberry

Photo: Travis Bradberry

adapt to unexpected situations

Amongst other situations, we're talking here about how to survive presentations and pitches. In the moment, it's just you, your laptop, and the audience. Things go wrong. You forget what you wanted to say, the equipment freezes, there's a power cut. Improvisation exercises help you build up a tool kit to feel more confident to deal with these situations. Your muscle memory kicks in and you just deal with it!

"Improv teaches you how to think on your feet and how to react and adapt very quickly to unexpected events and things you may not have planned for,"  

Lakshmi Balachandra teaches Improvisational Leadership at MIT Sloan School of Management and is a guest lecturer for advanced negotiation students at Harvard Business School. Extract from CNN.com article, 2010

The Impro-Series© workshops will help train you to trust yourself to adapt to unexpected situations.