Daena Giardella was featured in Boston's, "The Improper Bostonian." Check out the articles below!!!

"Electrify Your Own Energy"

Daena Giardella offers workshops in improvisation that are not just for actors. For more information, call 617-924-9596.

Improvisation, says Daena Giardella, is "the art of acting from the moment." Giardella has the requisite quick wit, but her classes emphasize the methods behind improv's madness. Mixing the personal (scary upcoming job interview, emptying nest, divorce) with the external and universal (George Bush, earthquakes), the improvisor learns how to build a monologue that arcs from beginning to middle to end. Scenes are developed, sometimes based on a suggestion from Giardella, and class members join in, jamming on the spot. The improvisation tap into the interesting momentum brought on by conflict, that bedeviling element that provides the vivacity of drama. Giardella helps participants track the flow from the "breakdown" ("Oh, I can't do it!") to breakthrough, then on to assimilation, whereby the dreaded inner critic, now transformed, actually provides energy and encouragement. Standing in your own spotlight and feeling the texture of expressions and connection, building character--right there!--scriptless, is a good feeling.

~ Author: Mopsy Strange Kennedy

"Capture the Jazzy Fireflies of the Moment"

Improvisational actress, teacher, trainer and speaker Daena Giardella takes notions and principles from acting and helps you apply them to your own life. Her CD, Improvisation in Everyday Life, costs $20. For more information call 617-924-9596 or go to www.daenagiardella.com.

Imagine a cat curiously pondering the joys of the kitchen cabinet: Kitty is "in the moment." Actress Daena Giardella proposes that we can learn from emulating that attitude of being, which is also the specialty of professional improvisers. Actually, improvisation is unavoidable, since every moment of life is excitingly, dangerously created on the spot, however seemingly scripted and predictable it may seem. Giardella invites you to first take a positive attitude toward accepting a given reality, and then enter the situation in an active, intentional, alive state.

That positivity may also hold a fierce No in its fist, because indeed improv, like life, is also about "conflict, the friction, the heat, when contradictory impulses rub against each other." By accepting this Zen-like state, you, Life Improviser become loose and open to the perpetual freshness of life's possibilities, while at the same time staying internally centered. Koans and paradoxes abound here. There's tension between harmonizing with others and riffing your own, between yielding and standing firm, between respecting the immediate past and future and opening up to the crystalline Now. Improvisation is fun because it's humorous, absurd, and confronts the unknown sexily.

~Author: Mopsy Strange Kennedy