Get ready!  Expanding on last year’s popular SXSWi Core Conversation (and Audience Favorite winner!) “Improv Lessons for Freelancers,” Team Hirsch will be returning to Austin with their new presentation:  “Improv for Everyone,” a panel that explores how improvised comedy can help professionals of all types have more fulfilling careers.  Hunh?  Improv?  You bet!

During a recent interview, Amanda and Jordan Hirsch (“Making it up together since 1999”) talked about Team Hirsch, about their lives, and about their upcoming SXSWi presentation (with games!), presenting skills promised to help in all walks of life:

Are you active with an improv troupe in New York?  If so, which one(s)?

Jordan:  I’m currently getting a new 2-person show off the ground with my friend Phil Wolff, called Jordan Wolff, where we try to play as many characters as possible in one scene with no edits. I’m also in Vox Pop, a 2-person musical improv show with my friend Karen Lange.

Amanda: I’m in between groups in the moment, but I’ve got something in the works.

Was last year your first time to participate at SXSW?

Jordan: We’ve gone for several years as attendees, and were very excited to finally make the leap to presenters.

Amanda: I came to SXSW for the first time in 2002, when I was still working at PBS. At the time, I felt very out of place as a representative of a big organization – I felt like everyone else was working out of their garages! When I came back in 2007, as a freelancer, it really clicked. I love the creative energy of SXSW. We’ve been coming every year since. It feels like a reunion at this point.

Wow!  SXSW Interactive 2010 Audience Favorite?  How did that feel?

Amanda: We were so excited.

Jordan: Incredible!  We got a much bigger audience than either of us had anticipated, and the fact that people liked it enough to vote it an Audience Favorite really felt wonderful.  It wouldn’t have been nearly as good or as much fun without the great and active participation of the attendees, so I consider all of them co-recipients of the Audience Favorite selection.

Are there “lessons learned” (either as a SXSW presenter, or during the last year as you operationalized improv in your business dealings in the real world) that will surface in this year’s presentation? 

Amanda: In many ways, improv is about attitude…it’s about the mindset you bring to everything you do, whether it’s building a business, or navigating changes in your personal life, or something far more mundane. The value of the improv “attitude” has been driven home for me personally in the past year, and it was something I emphasized in a recent improv workshop I led at Etsy that really resonated with people. So that’s something we’ll be emphasizing more this year.

Jordan: It’s cheesy, but expect the unexpected.  We definitely were planning for a smaller group than we got last year, and we were pleasantly surprised with how many people actually showed up.  But it’s true in business, and of course in improv (and all of life, really) – don’t be afraid to let things surprise you, or go down corridors you may not have expected to find yourself in.  We’ll talk more about that theme during the panel.

Is there a particular aspect of your presentation this year that you would like to emphasize?

Jordan: People will have fun!  We’ll play some improv games, and there will be a lot of audience participation. 

Amanda: When I first started studying improv, I was struck by how many improv lessons double as life lessons. There’s so much we can glean from the artform to help us in our day-to-day lives, not to mention in a professional context. If you’re feeling at all stuck, this session will inspire change. If you’re in a rut, this session will get your juices flowing. And you’ll walk away with concrete strategies to try at home and at work.

Will you be offering any types of take-home media?  (To put it crassly:  will you have a table at the back of the room that sells CDs and DVDs so we can carry your torch onward?) 

Amanda: We’re working on it! Wish us luck.

Jordan: We’re working on an e-book, but I don’t know if we’ll have it ready in time for SXSW.  At the very least, we’ll have a mailing list where you can sign up to hear from us when the book is done.  And I’ll put out some CDs with my music (I write a music and technology blog, Wired for Music, at http://wiredformusic.blogspot.com)

 ____________________________

For more information on the interesting work Amanda and Jordan are doing – and to keep up with their current projects – be sure to  visit:  http://www.teamhirsch.com/.