One community charity has been running improvisation classes for its members online since the start of the pandemic. Editor Jessica Brown drops in on a class to meet the members thinking on the spot.
I opened the Zoom call to 11 faces looking at me, waiting eagerly for the session to begin.
But first, some ground rules. Keep the session positive, remember you can pass if you want to, and say the most obvious thing that comes to mind so you keep the momentum going. Now, the improv class, Let’s Make A Scene, could begin.
The classes are led by Craig Werth, facilitator at the Krempels Center, a nonprofit community organisation that provides quality programs and services to people living with brain injury in New Hampshire, US.
He has been running the group since 2016, and invited me to the session on one condition: I had to take part.
Founder of the centre, David Kremples, acquired a brain injury from an accident in 1992. During his recovery, he discovered there weren’t any support services.
He came up with the idea to create a service that supported people to figure out what’s next in their life and improve their quality of life.
The Kremples Centre was founded in 1995, offering up to classes and groups every day that offer members the opportunity to connect and socialise with others. It offers a unique programme, says Lisa Couture, executive director of the centre.
“In the US, there’s not a lot of rehab support services outside medical rehab for people living with the effects of acquired brain injury,” she says.
Around half the people who use the centre’s services have a TBI, and around a quarter had a stroke. Many members lived without their injury as a child and into their adulthood, Couture says, so to then suddenly acquire a brain injury is challenging.
“They’re often unable to go back to work, their social lives and their independence are impacted. This leads to depression and isolation.”
Classes, including meditation and tai chi, brain games, and speech and cognition, have gone online since March this year, due to the pandemic. The centre aims to continue its virtual programme and go back to in-person sessions after the pandemic.
“Members tell us they feel they can let their shoulders down,” Couture says. “No one has expectations about who they used to be, so they can be who they are with people who understand what they’re going through.”
Transporation has been a big barrier for people participating the programme in the past, so going virtual has had benefits.
Financial hardship is another barrier, Kresge says, and the centre tries to be as affordable as possible. It offers free placements for half of its members, and some of the remaining members get scholarship assistance, so very few pay the full daily fees.
“We get people who’ve had no rehab services,” says program director and occupational therapist, Barb Kresge. “They’re discharged from life-saving hospital stays and, sadly, even though they’re supposed to get services they could benefit from, they often don’t, and we might be the first opportunity, in some cases, for people to engage in therapeutic activities.”
The centre’s members also do a lot of community education to help educate the public and reduce the stigma of brain injuries, including to children and community groups.
“One of the truly unintentional, but amazing, outcomes of programme is that people will come somewhere on a wide spectrum on where they are in terms of accepting and acknowledging their brain injury,” Kresge says
“They help others having a harder time or are in they place they were a year ago. Supporting other people is a huge part of it.”
The centre’s core staff aim to offer a balanced programme that supports all aspects of brain injuries, including physical health and cognitive functioning, to help people develop new roles in their lives and figure out new purposes.
The centre also hopes to instil professionals with the tools and values that will carry them forward in their careers.
They do this by having a steady stream of interns, who come from many disciplines, including occupational therapy, nursing, social work, speech therapy and psychology; mostly come from the University of New Hampshire, but the centre has hosted interns from all over the world.
“The use and training of interns is one of the biggest parts of what Krempels Centre does and it’s one of the greatest joys of my work to work in partnership with interns,” says Werth, who says he aims to put interns forward as much as they wish in his sessions.
Members, along with interns and staff, listen as Werth reminds everyone of the aim of the session I’ve been invited to.
“This is a group creation, we’re building something together,” he says.
The first activity is the ‘one word’ game, where we build a story by saying one word each.
As a group, we take it in turns to suggest a word, and come up with, ‘Once upon a raindrop fell silently to the ground and bounced against the heavens’.
I’m number seven, so I take a lot of credit for the word ‘to’. Our next sentence is: ‘Let’s have a party with each other and play with each other’s toys,’ and our last: ‘The sunshine shines on the front of my car and dries the mud quickly’.
One member feels the pressure of having to come up with a word, and worries he messed it up for the group, and Worth reassures him.
“Sometimes in life, we think it’s up to us to build something or make it right,” he says. “This is a community exercise, putting bricks in the wall.
“You don’t have to carry the whole thing, we make it a funny or cool thing as a team. We’re carrying it together. If you pick a word, you’ve done your job.”
The class helps with theory of mind, Kresge says, as well as abstract thinking, and an opportunity to understand parts of humour that might be lost of them, such as irony.
“Some people have a difficult time reading body and facial expressions, of have a flat affect, and this class gives them the opportunity to put on affect and get feedback about what signals they’re sending out,” Kresge says.
“People often say that people here are their family in different ways than their real family, that people understand them more, especially the invisible parts of their brain injury. The improv classes tap into invisible challenges, too.”
Werth has watched members progress as they attend more of his classes.
“One of the main benefits is the reduction of anxiety when dealing with something unpredictable,” Werth says.
“This gives people a chance, in a safe environment, of experimenting with letting go of control and not know what happens next. Sometimes, you see this in a single session, you see them loosen up. For those who come to the classes often, it seems to be a benefit that has some staying power.
“For some folks in the group, it’s easy to see the dark side of things when they’ve experienced so much hardship. Just having a ‘yes’ ethic helps them open up to cooperate and be more positive.
“One of the biggest benefits is self-esteem, I can see beginning to see themselves as someone who can be fun, funny, helpful and creative, regarding to see that on their faces and hearing their voices.
“It’s also about just the opportunity to play, smile, laugh and be a part of creating fun in community is a big step for a lot of people.”
For the next section of the class, we move on to ‘two-word scenes’, where two members give a third member a word, and they must describe a short scene that includes the two words.
We have ten minutes of stories about honkytonks and monkeys, record players and pumpkins, orangutangs, rubber bands, pirates and candlesticks.
Then, one person tells a short story and we all react to it with an over-the-top facial expression, before we move on to the highlight of the class. Members take it in turns to be ‘experts’ on something another member picks, and they must answer questions pretending to be the expert.
First, we meet the expert on scissors.
“Where do scissors come from?” one member asks.
“They come from a little down in France,” the expert replies.
Then, resident expert on hair colouring advises Werth to die both sides of his head different colours. Werth takes the advice graciously.
