PROGRAM
IMPROV-ing Emotional Wellness
Partners
Push Comedy Theater
Watermark Psychological Services
Role
Lead Designer,
Researcher & Facilitator
FORMAT
Three-Part Workshop Series
Spring 2024 · Norfolk, VA
IMPROV-ing Emotional Wellness
Partners
Push Comedy Theater
Watermark Psychological Services
Role
Lead Designer,
Researcher & Facilitator
FORMAT
Three-Part Workshop Series
Spring 2024 · Norfolk, VA
IMPROV-ing Emotional Wellness
A Community-Based Arts Intervention for Emotional Well-Being
There is a parallel between what makes improvisation work and what makes healing possible. Both require the same conditions: psychological safety, presence, non-judgment, co-regulation, and play. Both ask participants to be in their bodies, responsive to others, and a willingness to not know what comes next. IMPROV-ing Emotional Wellness was built to make that parallel explicit, structural, and useful for community members seeking accessible pathways to emotional well-being.
Overview
An applied neuroarts program co-designed and co-facilitated at the intersection of improvisational comedy and clinical mental health practice. The program brings together an improvisation facilitator and licensed mental health professionals to create a structured community experience in which participants develop emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and relational skills.
Housed at Push Comedy Theater in Norfolk's NEON arts district, in formal collaboration with Watermark Psychological Services. Designed for individuals seeking to increase emotional and self-awareness, nurture effective communication skills, and develop deeper connection with others.
Origin & Research Foundation
The conceptual foundation emerged from self-directed research during the pandemic — a convergence of active improvisation practice, deep engagement with somatic and trauma-informed literature including Bessel van der Kolk's work on the body's role in trauma and healing, and formal study through the Traumatic Stress Studies Certificate Program at the Trauma Research Foundation.
The observation at the program's core: the conditions that effective improvisational theater requires — psychological safety, presence, non-judgment, co-regulation, and play — closely mirror those cultivated in therapeutic practice. Making that parallel explicit and structurally integrated became the program's central design premise.
This framework has also been tested through independent pop-up workshops under the title improv + the brain! — facilitated across 757 Makerspace, Push Comedy Theater, the Suffolk Art League, and the Creative Well Arts Foundation. These workshops served as iterative research and development for the methodology.
Workshop Design
The three-part series was structured around distinct but interconnected psychoeducational themes, each integrating clinical content with improvisational practice.
Workshop 1 — Emotional Intelligence
Expanded participants' emotional vocabulary and capacity to identify and express emotions. Improvisational games and character work applied concepts to embodied, relational experience.
Workshop 2 — Boundaries
Defined and explored the concept of boundaries in relationships. Participants developed their own boundaries through improvisation exercises exploring when to yield versus when to join new energies.
Workshop 3 — Emotional Regulation
Deepened the work of emotional intelligence, applying expanded emotional vocabulary and awareness to regulation skills in relationships and creative contexts.Each session was co-facilitated alongside Dr. Lisa Mazzio and Jessica Cameron. Participants completed a well-being questionnaire prior to registration, establishing a baseline and signaling the program's commitment to participant care from the outset.
Participant Voice
"The opposite of depression is expression."
A participant documented their experience in a reflective Medium essay titled Depression to Expression — writing of entering the program hoping to align feelings with expression and finding themselves confronting deeper questions of authenticity.
"The psychoeducation is incredibly helpful… I would find it more useful to use the improv time to practice the psychoeducation." — identifying the program's primary design opportunity for future iterations.
"The three of you have a great dynamic that is calm and reassuring and supportive."
"I think this is a viable program and a great asset to our community offerings. Any angle looked at provided ample opportunities for mindfulness, awareness, healing."
Key Findings
Integration depth is the program's primary design opportunity. The most impactful moments were those where improvisational exercises directly embodied psychoeducational concepts rather than running as parallel tracks. Future iterations will pursue tighter structural integration.
Facilitation dynamic is itself a therapeutic variable. Participant feedback explicitly named the quality of the team's presence — calm, reassuring, supportive — as creating the environmental safety the program was designed to cultivate. The relational quality of the facilitation team is not incidental; it is part of the intervention.
Iterative community participation produces visible program development. Participants noted improvement in flow and coherence across the three-session arc, and the program demonstrably matured through the experience of running it with real participants in real time.
Forward Direction
A research partnership was pursued to apply for the Neuroarts Blueprint Initiative Grant, a significant step toward generating publishable evidence for the model's effectiveness in community well-being contexts.
THE FACILITATORS
Lindsay Horne — Lead Designer & Facilitator
Artist and independent design researcher based in Norfolk, VA. Trained, performed, and taught with Push Comedy Theater since 2016. Her independent workshop practice, improv + the brain!, has reached community members, military service members, and youth across the Hampton Roads region.
Dr. Lisa Mazzio — Licensed Clinical Psychologist
Over 15 years and 20,000 hours of facilitated therapy. Relationship and values-based approach to grief, trauma, complex families, and individual identity work. Owner of Watermark Psychological Services, Norfolk, VA.
Jessica Cameron — Licensed Professional Counselor
Specializes in trauma, grief, life stage transitions, depression, and anxiety. Since 2017 has focused on the intersectionality of art and the science of talk therapy using evidence-based practice and creative modalities.