Welcome to Nobody Told Me. I'm Laura Owens. And I'm Jan Black. We've been really looking forward to talking with our guests on this episode. Longtime award-winning Stanford

University drama and improvisation educator Patricia Madsen, author of the book Improv Wisdom,

Don't Prepare, Just Show Up. Now much of Patricia's work is about taking the basic lessons of

improv and applying them to all aspects of our everyday lives.

Patricia, thank you so much for joining us.

Well, it's a real pleasure.

I love talking about these ideas because I think they're useful in the world.

Well, tell us about your background and how you came to see improv as such an important tool.

Oh, I love this question.

Well, I came in through the door of drama or theater.

I was a drama teacher for many years, and in 1977, I came to teach acting at Stanford,

and they put me in charge of the undergraduate acting program,

and I was kind of daunted by the fact of having very

talented and highly intellectual students. And it was a challenge trying to teach acting to these

Stanford bright people. And I discovered that while they were very good at coming up with a specific product,

if you asked them to, that it was more difficult for these bright young people to touch

their own emotions and their own thoughts and feelings. If I said, what do you think about that

rather than what's the right answer, I often got a deer in the

headlights kind of look. So I had to find some way as an acting teacher to help unlock the

humanity in these young smart acting students. And as is sometimes the case, when the student is

ready, the teacher appears, the wonderful Keith Johnstone,

who is an improv guru from Canada and formerly from the UK, dropped into my life. First, his book

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