Design + Facilitation

Since 2010, Olivia has been designing and facilitating classes and workshops that use principles from improv and theatre to strengthen collaboration and engage our collective capacity for growth and development. Additionally, she has taught improv, movement, and acting to people of all ages, experience levels, and abilities. Olivia’s educational work has spanned universities, nonprofits, communities, and corporate settings, where she uses theory and practice from theatre and improv to address topics like collaboration, media literacy, conflict resolution, social-emotional wellbeing, community engagement, networking and mentoring, writing comedic prose, and more.

In her master’s thesis, Liberating Performance from the Stage: Capturing the Impact of Performance Activity in an Extra-Theatrical Setting, Olivia wrote about the relationship between innovation and improvisation in the workplace. In it, she discusses a bespoke method for program evaluation and its application to a leadership development program at a major global financial services institution, that used performance and improvisation as its core methodology. Her research was conducted with Performance of a Lifetime, a consulting firm whose team of coaches and human development experts leverage their proprietary method, The Becoming Principle®, to engage leaders and entire organizations in discovering, creating, and acting on new and uncharted possibilities.

Sampling of classes and workshops that Olivia has designed and facilitated:

• Getting it Done Together: Improvisation Skills for Better Collaboration (Crisis Text Line)

• Improvisation for Advising Conversations (University of Pittsburgh)

• Media Literacy: Online Presence and Performance (Connect-Us)

• Cultivating Mentorship Relationships through Improvisation (University of Pittsburgh)

• Improv for Writers: Finding the Funny in “Writing with Wit” (Sarah Lawrence College)

• Performance and Play for Personal and Professional Development (All Stars Project)

• Political Theatre for Teens (Youth Onstage!, All Stars Project)

• Challenging Conversations: Playing with the "How" (New York University)

• Improv for Conflict Resolution (New York University)

• Improv for Business: From Student Success to Success at Work (New York University, Stern School of Business)

• Emotion Gym: Building Communication Skills with Special Needs Children (Private client)