TEDxPennQuarter 2011 - Kat Koppett & Geoff Tarson - Reinventing Performance October 25, 2011

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Kat Koppett is the co-director of The Mop & Bucket company, a NY State-based improvisational theatre company, and the Eponymous Founder of Koppett + Company, a consultancy specializing in applying the principles and techniques of improv to enhance individual and group performance anywhere. Her book on the subject, Training to Imagine is considered a seminal work in the field, and she is proud to be a founding member of the Applied Improv Network. Kat has worked with bankers, physicians, engineers, animators, teachers, attorneys, and troubled youth in places ranging from India to Brazil to Paris to Oklahoma. 1n 1995, TheatreWeek Magazine named Kat one of the Year's Unsung Heroes for her invention of the musical improv format Spontaneous Broadway® which is now performed around the world.

Geoff Tarson is an actor, writer and teacher who has performed in theatres across the country and was a television comedy writer in Hollywood for ten years. His writing credits include "Suddenly Susan" and "That's So Raven" as well as selling a pilot recently to Disney Channel.

Geoff has been an improviser for over twenty years, working with some of the best improv talent in the country, including Wayne Brady, Michael McShane, Fred Willard and Kat Koppett, whom he met at Freestyle Rep in New York in the early nineties. Geoff also taught improv at Acme Comedy Theatre and at Los Angeles Theatresports.

He believes the world of television writing is quite similar to the corporate world: pitching ideas, being willing to adjust one's tactics to make a sale, trying to stay current as the marketplace changes, and often dealing with executives who have no sense of humor. His corporate training experience includes Eli Lilly, Charles Schwab and Western Union.

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