Aside from creating joy and laughter, improv also compels the mind and body to connect spontaneously.”

Cynthia Baker Burns

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Here is a current list of offerings at the Little Compton Wellness Center. 

Little Compton Wellness Center
115 West Main Road
Little Compton, RI 02837
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Laughter so fierce it feels like a whole body experience — the kind that clenches the stomach, soaks the eyes, and steals the ability to speak — is the kind of laughter that often gets dubbed as “the best medicine.” When belly laughs like this are missing from life, it’s important to find them, and doing so has been made easier for those in Little Compton and surrounding areas thanks to the Little Compton Wellness Center’s improv class — a class that makes the drive worth it, even for those not in the area.

The small building located at 115 East Main Road in Little Compton has a long history with associations as a “wellness hub.” It all began in 1918 (albeit at another location) as a temporary hospital to help with the influenza pandemic. It wasn’t until 1985 that the current location was utilized for the center — and where the focus shifted to the incorporation of an adult daycare.

By 2012, after several changes over the years, the name changed too — from the Friends of Little Compton Nursing Association (a name it received in 1997) to the Friends of the Little Compton Wellness Center. After 90 years of providing nursing services to the community, the transformation was underway to create a wellness center focused on offering affordable programs to support healthy aging. 

The Food Bank became the first tenant of the wellness center. And for the past 13 years, the focus at the wellness center has been on adding more programs like it, services, and classes, for the community to access.  

“Today, we are thriving and have a pretty full schedule. We are now a full-blown wellness center offering a number of programs to people wanting to feel better,” said the current director, Heather Fitzgerald. 

One of these programs gives people an opportunity to strengthen their abs — not with crunches, but with belly laughs. Welcome to improv class.

Setting the scene

“Who found this studio? These postures are ridiculous,” said Mark Strauss, in an aggravated tone. Mark is one of the ten participants that showed up for the latest improv class at the wellness center on June 10. 

Directed to play a game of “freeze tag” by Lisa Rowe-Beddoe, a British-born trained actress and teacher who teaches the improv class every Tuesday night at the center, Mark was placed into a pose that had him hunched over, arms outstretched, and he had to quickly think of a reason why he would be in this position and how he felt about it. Melinda Green, his co-actor for this improv scene, who was placed in a similar fashion, retorted, “What do you call this, half dead?” To which he answered, “bad yoga,” before someone in the class yelled out, “Freeze!” 

Heather Fitzgerald and Helen Woodhouse quickly shuffled over to the spots where Mark and Melinda stood taking over their “bad yoga” positions, but their storyline for the scene played out much differently.

Heather asked Helen, “How long have you been doing sumo wrestling?” The room filled with laughter as the two compared their experiences as wrestlers, all the while remaining hunched over, until another “Freeze!” came from a class participant.

The storyline then morphed into stomping on ants to get rid of them at a picnic, to digging in the dirt to find something (or someone) buried there, to a baby crawling for the first time toward her mother, who was overly cheerful at the sight.   

By the time freeze tag ended, the ten people in the room were keeled over in laughter, unable to speak, with various sounds coming from their mouths as they tried to form words through their laughter. According to the instructor (Lisa), doing “Improv (like this) is therapeutic, regenerative and fun.”

Cindy (or Cynthia Baker-Burns), a participant in the class and the president of the wellness center — echoed this sentiment, saying, “Aside from creating joy and laughter, improv also compels the mind and body to connect spontaneously.” Wellness is always at play during the improv class — through movement and laughter.

Lisa began her class, which takes place in an open room with large windows all around it, allowing the nature outside to act as a backdrop, with movement and music. Blaring music from a bluetooth speaker, the first song she played was “Dance to the Music.” The ten participants moved and grooved as they pleased, showcasing different spontaneous movements.

Large pieces of white paper had been plastered on the walls between the windows by the instructor, who had written the following words on them in black marker: smoothing, dabbing, punching, sloshing, slashing, stroking, flitting, winging, and pushing. These words initiated a series of games (change the mime, freeze tag, emotions, and bus stop) to be played throughout the class, aimed at eliciting emotions, movements, and spontaneous dialogue from the participants — all accompanied by continuous bouts of belly laughs, in an effort to foster joy, i.e., wellness at the Little Compton Wellness Center.

EDITOR’S NOTE:

Although the Choose Joy Improv Acting Class is concluding for the season to encourage people to enjoy the summer weather outdoors, it will return after Labor Day. A specific date will be announced closer to that time. The wellness center will continue to offer a host of classes geared toward wellness throughout the summer. For more information, contact Heather Fitzgerald at the Little Compton Wellness Center at 401-592-0400 and hfitzgerald@lcwellness.org or find a list of current offerings on their website at www.lcwellness.org.