In The Spotlight: Alex LevitonWritten by Jackie Gnepp – This article is from AIM Issue 1 (released December 2022). Jackie Gnepp on Alex LevitonAlex Leviton teaches, writes about, mentors, coaches, and speaks internationally about creativity and creative thinking. Rather than working as an Applied Improvisation practitioner, she uses the principles of AI in every moment of teaching writing, creativity and pre-creativity. “Pre-creativity,” according to Alex, is removing the tangible and intangible obstacles to creativity, most of which can be traced to a person’s internal dialogue. Fascinated by the intersection of creativity, physiology, the brain, and communication, Alex says that her three-layer creativity methodology (safety, bravery, aha!) pulls from a dozen disciplines. “In a way, I feel like the “aha!” layer is improv through a writing context,” says Alex. Alex took her first improv class from BATS in San Francisco in about 2001, and then studied at The Second City in Chicago in 2014. She says, “Improv – more than school, writing, journalism grad school, anything – was the single most helpful thing for my writing.” Having also tried standup comedy, she reports, “Stand-up is a brutal punch to the gut; improv is a warm hug that builds the gut muscles to withstand life’s punches.” Over the years, Alex has created 90+ written exercises that all stack — layer by creativity-inducing layer — into a Creativity Notebook that she encourages clients to keep for the rest of their lives. For example, The Mathematics of Joy exercise is the first one Alex gives her creativity students, workshop participants – everyone who wants to be more creative. Instructions are: Start a list; write down 3-5 things that bring you joy; over the next day or week (or year or lifetime), continue to add things until you reach 100. Journalist, editorial director, writer for Lonely Planet, and newspaper columnist, Alex is also the author of Explore Every Day (Lonely Planet, 2019), a book about incorporating the creativity of travel into our day-to-day lives. She thinks of her book as an act of rebellion against the forces that hold us back from exploring our creativity, our adventurousness and our communities. The book contains 365 (+1) exercises that Alex says are “Very Yes, And...,” such as attend a book reading no matter what it is, or find the closest body of water to you and have the 55-60% of you that’s water say hi. “Like AI,” says Alex, “what I teach is about changing your perspective. And we all need prompts to do that.” “As with about 98% of my life,” says Alex, “finding AIN was a total accident.” Attending her first online Open Space session, however, was sufficient to convince Alex that she had found her people. “Somehow,” she continues, “I accidentally started a ‘Higher Education’ group out of 2021’s online conference, and that amazing group accidentally started this magazine! Yes And, indeed!”
About this article:Here’s the first AIM Spotlight column, in which three Applied Improvisation professionals interview one another about their work. Alex Leviton interviewed Bright Su; Bright interviewed Jackie Gnepp, and Jackie interviewed Alex. (Read more from our magazine issues: click here to access our article database.) (Last Updated: Thursday, February 5th, 2026) |