- Did you see that?

- Whoa, a meatball?

- How did they know I was hungry?

(audience laughing) You want some?

- Off the ground?

- Oh yeah.

I've started catching them.

(audience laughing) - This is my favorite day of the year.

This is our Spring Student Showcase.

We do this every single year.

We bring together kids from a lot of different schools who never get to meet each other or play together during the year, and they all perform for friends and family and the public.

Some of the kids performing here today will have never performed really on stage in front of an audience.

They've done improv in the classroom, but this is their first performance in front of an audience.

- Is it spoiled?

- Ew!

- Breathe.

- I think learning improv at this age is really good.

I mean, I wish I'd have learned when I was younger.

I think the thing that you learn from doing this, and I think you'll find it in the kids you meet here, they have a higher level of confidence in themselves.

They're able to like express themselves much better and I think for a teenager that's, like, huge.

- Who you talking to?

- You don't see the camera up there?

- Detroit Creativity Project was begun in 2011 by a group of improvisers and performers who all met at The Second City theater when it was downtown.

- I am blessed to have been part of a generation of The Second City Detroit, the sadly now defunct Second City Detroit that was at the corner of Woodward and Montcalm at the Hockeytown Cafe next to the Fox Theatre back in the late '90s.

And there is enough of a hit rate.

Enough of us have left there to go on to do fun and exciting things in entertainment that we get asked frequently here in Los Angeles and in New York and various places like what was in the drinking water in Detroit in the late '90s?

A lot of my friends that work as actors and directors and writers and musicians, we got together in 2011 and we said, "What should we be doing to give back to the city of Detroit?"

And it took about two cookouts at my house before we were like, "Oh, improvisation is what's made all of our lives great.

That's something that we should be sharing with the youth of Detroit."

So piloting a program in late 2011, early 2012, we began the Detroit Creativity Project.

We teach improv.

Improv is unscripted short form theater where you get a suggestion from the audience and create something from nothing.

We began teaching that in Detroit Middle and High Schools and it's just a wonderful skillset in addition to being fun and funny, it carries with it some not so secret, really wonderful life side effects.

- It's adaptation, it's dealing with change, it's any moment in your life realizing that something different might happen.

And if you can be cool about it and you can roll with it, then anybody else can look at you and just say, "Hey, that makes sense, maybe I can do that too."

- I like drama improv because I like to join things that like get me out of my comfort zone.

So like I join drama and debate because it can help with public speaking.

- Most of the time, the ones that is the most shy, even in walking in the hallway, now they're verbal.

According to their teachers, especially in math, they volunteer, they're more outspoken, and they're like, "What did you do in that drama class?"

I'm like, "I didn't do anything.

Most of the time it's them."

When I watch Jason and Dana kind of pull some things out of the kids, I'm sitting back like, "Oh my goodness, look at this kid."

I remember when.

- It's a true pleasure to watch a student who goes from, you know, in their shell or even students who are super careful, they don't want to be wrong, they don't wanna make a mistake.

It's very, it's super cool to watch those students go from that state to blossom into a young person that's empowered, that is connected to their own choices, their own voice, that are confident enough in their ideas to be able to share them and build with other people.

- Improv for me is like a expression of freedom.

It's like you don't really have to follow a set of rules, it's just you can freely express yourself.

Also to like really get in the rhythm of being in a social environment and you know, expressing your feelings with other people.

- I love the creativity of improv because you can just say anything on the spot, whatever you're thinking in your mind, you just make it come to life.

I'm a creative person.

I like to build stuff and make it come together as in one big assemble.

And I like working with people a lot.

- You become part of a community of people that are like-minded.

It's almost like, "Oh, I met other people who are just like me.

You know, you're weird just like me.

You like comedy just like me.

You're creative just like me."

And so, it's really great 'cause you get strength from that.

- Correct.

- All right!

(group applauding) - Devising the curriculum initially for the Detroit Creativity Project, the teaching of improv is fairly universal, but we had to pivot a little bit because we realized we're teaching this to, in some cases middle school students, in some cases high school students.

And now we've even moved younger.

We have third graders and fourth graders in some of our programs.

- We've just got this amazing group of teaching artists.

They're all improvisers and performers and teachers themselves.

We have a social worker on staff.

We have people who have been teaching improv for decades and they're amazing with the students.

- Typically, every semester we've got about 10 to 15 classes in about 10 or 12 schools.

We are so fortunate to be partners with Detroit Public Schools and local area schools, Hamtramck, Lincoln Park where we just go in, we have the classroom teacher stay in the class and we teach improv games.

- They are contestants in a spelling bee.

The host will give you a word that is made up and the host is gonna ask you to spell it.

I'm a professional, I'm an actor and a drama teacher.

When I heard about Detroit Creativity Project and their mission to not only just teach improv skills but use it as a tool of empowerment, I signed up to to be a teaching artist.

And this is my fifth year.

Throughout these five years I've learned so much that has impacted me as an artist and just as a person.

There's a range of emotions.

What I would love to see from your characters before we even begin, I already know how your character feels.

My teaching style is more so reflective of reflexive of what I'm seeing.

So today, I created a game based on what I was seeing from the students.

And that was these students at Bates are extremely intellectual.

They're very, very bright and they love to be engaged, and they love to be challenged.

Finding ways to still move the group towards that freedom we talked about, I ain't gotta be right, I ain't gotta have the right answer, I ain't gotta have the right statement, to push them there definitely takes you paying attention to the group and knowing what the group need.

Listening, watching, observing, and responding.

What was challenging?

What was easy about that second?

- Okay, 'cause since I had an accent with my voice that I was doing, it was like hard to keep my voice up.

- It really helps me because it helps my brain think of new things on the spot immediately.

- I was feeding off of everyone's energy.

Like, when I heard one thing, I thought of another, and I was like, "Oh, that could go there."

And then I added my own thing into it and it just became one.

- Some of the activities are more focused on things like a character building or emotion point of view.

So we utilize the different games and warmups based on a specific skill that we're trying to work on.

For example, yes and.

- Yes and is probably the biggest rule in improv, which is just accepting an idea and then building on top of it.

So it doesn't always mean that you have to agree with the idea, but in the scene you accept it and you build upon it.

- And you're building together, you're working together, you're honoring what they're saying and adding to it.

Everybody shows up and does their part, and it turns out that if you do that in real life, it goes better.

Improv is really only important for people who ever have to come across another human being in their life.

If you were on the planet Mars, maybe you shouldn't take an improv class.

If you're anybody other than that, you should take an improv class because what it shows you is that you're improvising all the time anyway.

There's no script for your day.

And it shows you that, and then it teaches you that it matters how you approach it and it makes you a more curious, more interested, and therefore more interesting person.

- Once the kids had like a first couple of classes, I was tuned in, I'm like, "Oh, this is it."

And I was always taking notes.

Even some of the most troubled students, I think if they kind of tried improv, it would help them because it does bring out emotion.

It also teaches them how to deal with that.

It teaches them how to communicate.

- It truly opens your life up.

You realize that failure is not a lasting condition.

Not everything's going to go perfectly every day, but you realize it's not fatal, it's not a lasting condition and you fear it less so it makes you more willing to go into the unknown.

It opens up what psychologists refer to as acceptance of uncertainty.

So it reduces the anxiety.

- After school, when I think of after school, I'm like, "Oh yay, I get to do improv today, it's Monday."

And it actually makes me look forward to Mondays because everybody's just so fun here.

They help us like express our emotions and, like, they tell us that nothing's wrong.

- This is great 'cause I'm sure there's other people just like me in Detroit who are in public schools that have talent but don't know how to express it or don't know how to find out what they like.

And I think even with improv, it's not even about acting sometimes, it can be just about being able to like, have confidence and speaking in front of people, and like trusting yourself.

- If every one of our students nails a job interview one day because they can think on their feet and have the confidence to know that they're gonna be okay in any situation, then this program is a success.

- We've seen improvement in test scores, we've seen improvement in attendance.

It helps with math and with reading.

- The progress, I'm one person, I'm able to see in a student in less than a year, sometimes it's six weeks.

I'm so excited by the discovery of their own voice, their own power, their own confidence, whatever they go on to do, they'll be great at it because they'll believe in themselves.

They'll have the confidence and the experience of communicating with others and working with others.

So whatever they decide to do, they're gonna be great at it.