ACT NOW! Inc. is a non-profit organization dedicated to building character and confidence in youth, particularly girls, through an unusual combination of improvisation and moviemaking techniques. In the core program, staff members guide players in creating an original improvised movie over the course of one to five days. Participants select a site, invent a story, create characters, improvise each scene in sequence on camera and immediately screen a 20- to 40- minute, professional looking movie.
A study by Mount Holyoke College psychologists released in 2007 finds that the innovative empowerment method, developed and tested by ACT NOW! over the past eight years, is very effective in raising self-esteem, broadening academic and personal interests and enhancing group interaction.
History and Mission
In 2000, Nancy Fletcher organized ACT NOW! Inc., a 501 Ó (3) tax exempt, non profit education/arts/social service group in order to use a process called MOVIExperience® to foster self esteem in youth, primarily young girls and those at risk for failure. The method is adapted from a format originally designed by David Shepherd, a lifetime advocate of theater as a social resource, and producer of the first professional improvisation theater.
The MOVIExperience® involves making an original, improvised movie from concept to screening, while a professional videographer documents the entire process on video. No scripts are used and scenes are shot in sequence so that an intact 40 minute, professional-looking movie is delivered almost instantly. The youngsters get immediate feedback on their collective efforts. Seeing what they are capable of producing, they shift their self-concepts. Horizons expand. New challenges appear more appetizing. Prejudices drop. And a host of other character and confidence building traits are tapped and reinforced.
This research-based method is designed as an efficient way to help address costly community problems that stem from low self-esteem (teen pregnancy, eating disorders, substance abuse, poor school performance, domestic and intimate violence.) It reveals the undermining discrepancy between commercial female images and girls’ own self-images. It presents viable options on screen that reflect the participants’ realities. By putting the power of those choices in their hands, it makes a lasting impression.
After successfully piloting the method in 1999, with Girls Inc. in Holyoke, ACT NOW! used grants to work with such agencies as the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center, the YWCA in Springfield, the Care Center in Holyoke (pregnant and parenting teens), Centro Las Americas in Worcester (serving foster children) and Pequenas Ligas de New Haven in Connecticut (underserved Hispanic Students). In 2004, we initiated five-day intensives in various locations in Massachusetts mixing youth at risk with others for a more diversified experience. In 2005, we began working in the school system to enhance after school programs. In 2007, we instituted a showcase of original movies improvised by girls using this method. The current focus is on training agencies, schools and camps in order to reach and empower as many young people as possible through this method.
Need for Organization and Problems Addressed
Although we offer MOVIExperience to any young person, we focus on girls 11-14, believing that improving the self-images of girls at that age is an efficient way of impacting society as a whole. A 2007 Women, Power, and Peace Conference speaker at Omega Institute declared, "When you change a girl’s life, then you change her country." Indeed, according to the World Bank, "Educating girls yields a higher rate of return than any other investment available to the developing world." We think this statement is applicable at the community level, too, particularly with disadvantaged, urban communities. If you want to help a community, empower its girls.
Agencies that serve youth at risk say they need media arts programming that is compelling to youth, empowering, inexpensive, and easy-to-deliver. Girls need ways to form positive self-images to offset the costly damage done by unrealistic female depictions projected by the media. A recent landmark report by the American Psychological Association (APA) finds that the media’s "rampant sexualization" of women causes negative self-image in girls. This in turn, it says, leads to shame and anxiety, eating disorders and depression. "We need to replace all of these sexual images with ones… that show the uniqueness and competence of girls."
Further studies show that increasing self-esteem through experiential methods is far more effective and long lasting than is education alone for prevention, intervention and/or treatment of the costly ramifications of low self esteem. The MOVIExperience technique is improvisational and self-regulated, prompting girls to see themselves beyond the media mold. Movies and tapes that document the process show girls in positions of authority, actively shaping their views in a medium that is paramount in their lives. This entire experience creates cogent images that demonstrate for the participants their uniqueness and competence.