Abstract
The purpose of this research is to see whether effective communicative behavior is an accurate predictor of perceived flow and rapport within the context of improvisational comedy. The concept of rapport is defined as the coordination amongst individuals (Capella, 1990), while flow is a psychological construct relating to an optimal experience of performance (Csikszentmihalyi 1993). Effective communicative behavior relates to the ‘yes-and’ rule within improvised comedy. During this research, dyads of participants with varying degrees of experience with improvisational theater were invited to perform scenes, which were then analyzed for communicative behavior. Flow and rapport were measured through questionnaires. A regression analysis shows that communicative behavior is not a significant predictor of flow or rapport. Furthermore, the level of acquaintance amongst individuals seems to predict rapport. Thus, improvisational theater groups should invest time in
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The flow and rapport within a scene will be assessed through participant (actor) questionnaires and treated as the dependent variables. The frequency and extent to which actors adhere to the yes-and rule will constitute our independent variable. Previous research on improvised comedy has mainly used informal interview techniques for data collection (Magerko et al., 2010), yet our current research requires observational data. This research will be using a similar research design as Magerko et al., (2010) of recording improvised scenes and then coding the communicative behavior amongst participants. Through doing so, we hope to contribute to the existing definitions of creativity in the psychological domain. Furthermore, we aim to provide a suitable means for studying the process of creativity from a dynamic perspective in the context of an improvised theatrical