🏋♂️ Join Us At The Improv Gym?
Koppett is bringing the gym to you with free improv gym sessions you can attend from anywhere in the world. See below for the why and the where and the when!
Technology can now write, calculate, diagnose, and even converse. As machines absorb more of what we once thought made us useful, a deeper question surfaces: what is the value of a human being?
At Koppett and The Mopco Improv Theatre, we have a clear answer: people are not valuable because of what they produce. They are valuable because of who they are. The one thing no technology can replace is the experience of being human in relationship with other humans.
Put simply: Authentic human connection is the irreplaceable human resource.
Why does human connection matter?
Loneliness is now a public health emergency. In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy called it an epidemic, with social isolation carrying a mortality risk comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day and raising the risk of heart disease, stroke, dementia, depression, and early death.
👉 Roughly half of U.S. adults report experiencing loneliness even before the pandemic deepened it.
👉 Young people carry the heaviest load: about 80% of Gen Z and 61% of adults 18–25 report serious loneliness—the so-called most connected generation is the loneliest.
👉 The cost is not just human but economic. Loneliness and isolation contribute to worsened mental health, lower motivation and achievement, and billions in avoidable healthcare spending.
As technology grows more capable and more constant, it quietly offers itself as a substitute for human contact. As useful as these tools can be, they cannot give us the one thing we most need from each other: to be met, fully and authentically, by another person. On this topic, Dr. Daniel Knoepflmacher, Director of the General Psychiatry Residency Program and Vice Chair of Education in Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine wrote, “our society will become healthier overall if we can find ways for people to engage more often in the communal human experiences that existed long before the first computer chip was invented.” Source: America’s Loneliness Epidemic: What Is to Be Done?
So...just as we created gyms to exercise our bodies, when technology, such as cars, made the need for rigorous physical activity less the default in our daily lives, we feel we have an obligation to build scaffolding and support for human activities such as conversation, play, and engagement.
We will be offering just such gyms! Virtually, join us the first Thursday of every month at 4:30pm ET. It’s free and you can sign up for Improv Gym now.
And if you’re in or near the Capital Region, specifically Schenectady, NY we will be starting in-person gyms at the Mopco, starting this fall. Hope to see you!