"Judge thy neighbor," rather than "love thy neighbor," was the theme of a bilingual workshop on a recent Wednesday evening.

"Tonight's workshop is going to focus on status," exclaimed Beijing Improv Comedy co-founder and leader of the night's workshop, Jonathan Palley at the Jiangjinjiu Bar, a well-respected venue for live music and a future cathedral of comedy.

"Status is the key to interesting stories," Palley explained to a diverse crowd of about 30 participants arranged in a semi-circle around the stage at the inaugural 2010 Beijing Improv Bilingual workshop."

"What are different ways people have status?" he asked.

"Family," one woman offered.

"How do you mean?" Palley inquired.

"You're born into a privileged family, or by order of birth."

"Occupation," a young man chimed in.

"Beauty, or attractiveness," another woman said.

"Money."

"Great," Palley concluded. "Now remember, body language is a great way to show status," adding, "Think about this in your business meetings. People who are good in business know how to manipulate that."

With a deck of cards in hand, Palley let the games of status begin. "The key to comedy is that it's about large status changes - that's when people laugh," he said.

Palley then explained the rules of the game. The cards would be distributed to everyone, their status linked to their card: aces the highest, two's the lowest.

Participants were then instructed to place their card on their forehead without looking.

The objective of the game was to determine their status based on how others treated them.

Jane Yang, the workshop's translator, suggested the scene take place at a company Christmas party, and then Palley gave the signal: "Okay, mingle!"

People with four's were completely ignored, while a young woman with a king ignored everyone that approached her.

When the game finished, everyone was asked to line up in order of what they guessed their status to be.

"If you met someone whose number was really big, and they were really nice to you, you knew your number was really big," a young Chinese woman mentioned in a discussion afterward.

According to Palley, Beijing Improv Comedy came together three years ago at Jiangjin Jiu Bar as a way for friends with improv isation experience to get together once a week and develop their own skills.

But after half a year of building a team and performing for audiences, they decided to do something a little more inclusive. "The workshops were about exploring culture and language, and teaching and learning improv, as well as learning from each other," he said.

Vivian Huang, a 33-year-old market analyst, said the second-time participation has transformed her.

"The first time I came, I found myself acting in ways I never had before," Huang said. "Here all the rules are broken," she said, adding, "I'm Chinese, and in China you only have one way to go - better, higher. But here I can go high and I can go low. I can laugh and cry."

Community building and charity work are also core components of Beijing Improv's audition-only group, which Palley said sold out every one of its monthly shows at Penghao Theater last year. Admission to the performance shows are by donation only, with all of the proceeds going to Hua Dan, an NGO that uses theater to empower migrant workers and their children.

"The thing about improv," Palley concluded, "Is that, yes, it can be applied to a show, but it can also be a philosophy for life.Really, the comedy's just a nice side-effect."

Bilingual improv manual full of helpful tips 

English and Chinese speakers, who want to know the tenets of improvisational theater, now have the perfect opportunity, thanks to the collaborative efforts of Guillaume Decarreau and Xiaolu Liu, actors with Beijing Improv Comedy.

Decarreau, who came to Beijing from France five years ago said his involvement with Beijing Improv was a natural process: "I joined the group after I arrived and then I auditioned and joined the performance group. This was two years ago. Now I'm dealing with the website and lead workshops, too."

According to Decarreau, he and Liu began writing the Bilingual Improv Theatre Manual in the summer of 2008. It took them more than a year to complete.

Inspired by Beijing Improv Bilingual workshops, the manual is full of exercises - accompanied by diagrams when necessary - arranged in order of difficulty. It is intended that it be used like a textbook, with users graduating from one lesson to the next.

As it states the aims of each exercise and provides tips, it is easy to identify which exercises are most appropriate for a particular goal.

For instance, "Machine" helps group collaboration by having each player at a time perform a mechanical, repetitive action accompanied by sound to create a giant human machine, while "Silly Walks" is intended to establish character building and observational skills by mocking the strut of an on-stage partner.

For those who would like to own a copy, the Bilingual Improv Theater Manual can be purchased for 25 yuan at Beijing Improv's weekly workshops at Jiangjin Jiu Bar.