Yesterday, Merlin-Works did a two hour Team-Works training and a one hour Comedy-Works show with a happy hour to the Dell Audit team at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Although I was more than a little nervous before hand (Would there be low turnout? Will we be able to get these accountants to loosen up or even laugh? It’s improvised–so much could go wrong!) It turns out all my worries were a waste of time.

The group was a real joy. They were young and hip and totally got what we were doing. We worked on “Yes And” and building ideas as a team. They seemed to get a lot out of the training and we succeeded in breaking down some barriers among the team mates. By the end of the two hours, they were taking risks in front of each other that they would NOT have done when they walked in the room. We played an exercise where they had to break in to groups and come up with a new toy and a marketing plan for it. They had some great presentations: A butterfly rainbow hovercraft and “The Squall” with a great jingle “It’s a square, it’s a ball, everybody let’s play Squall!”

The show also went very well. My favorite moments were:

-A Shakespeare scene set in a rival accounting office, during which my character actually slayed herself with a ten key pad.
-A bell and buzzer scene. One of the PWC team members described some people he worked with out in the field and the improvisers played those parts. Then the team member rang the bell every time the improvisers did something in the scene that is similar to what would happen in real life. He buzzed them when they did something that would not happen in real life. The resulting scene on the golf course was hilarious.
-The finale. Mike did an amazing flamenco serenade of an employee that deserved some extra kudos for all her hard work.

The Stephen F Austin intercontinental was a great setting for the event. It was a great group to work with and I hope I get a chance to do it again.