Misha Glouberman is an author, improviser, speaker, and consultant.
Glouberman co-wrote The Chairs are Where the People Go: How to Live, Work, and Play in the City with Sheila Heti, a collection of seventy-two short pieces[1] which The New Yorker described as "a triumph of what might be called conversational philosophy,"[2] while the New York Times described it as "pop philosophy."[3] The book was created by Glouberman talking aloud, and Heti transcribing as he talked.[4] It was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2011, and covers topics including "[h]ow to arrange chairs at a reading in ways that involve your audience, how to organize a neighborhood to petition to get a noisy bar to quiet down in the wee hours, how to play charades, [and] how to appreciate the beauty of miscommunication."[5]
Glouberman is a founder and alumnus of the Harvard College-based improv group, The Immediate Gratification Players. He continues to teach improv classes on topics including How to be Really Good at Playing Charades andTerrible Noises for Beautiful People, a mass sound-improv classes for both musicians and non-musicians.[6] These games have been performed as workshops and also in art contexts, at institutions and galleries such as Southern Exposure.[7] Some of the improv games Glouberman created are described in The Chairs are Where the People Go.[8] Heti describes Glouberman's work as "less about entertaining an audience than about getting the audience to interact with each other and have some experience together.[8] " Glouberman has said that he is "much more interested in improvisation as a practice, or as something to do, than as something for people to watch."[9]
Also with Sheila Heti, he co-founded the monthly barroom lecture series Trampoline Hall,[10] which he continues to host in Toronto and other cities. At each event, he offers the audience highly specific and humorous instructions[11] for how to conduct the post-lecture Q&A.
Glouberman teaches negotiation and communication skills and conflict resolution.[12]
Glouberman holds a degree in Philosophy from Harvard.[13] His former partner is Canadian artist Margaux Williamson.