Abstract
New Zealand was ranked the eighth-happiest country in the 2019 World Happiness Report; nonetheless, the country's suicide rate was the highest for the last two consecutive years since statistics were first recorded. This ethnography on theatrical improvisation studies the contradiction between happiness and the mental health crisis in New Zealand society through examining the interfaces between subjective happiness and social wellbeing via New Zealanders and Asian immigrants' improvisational experience, and producing an autoethnography on improv. I conducted three months of fieldwork, analysis of which produced five main themes: 1. Happiness as feeling, meaning and transcendence; 2. Social connectedness as the foundation of wellbeing; 3. The desire for anti-daily gravity; 4. Spontaneity as a practice for improv and life; 5. Healing. Exploring the ways in which participation in improv workshops forms part of the pursuit of happiness and wellbeing for people in three different troupes in Auckland and Dunedin, spending time alongside troupes of both Asian immigrants and the majority New Zealanders, I noticed that the broader contexts of geographic emplacement and social disruption create barriers to individuals' wellbeing. The qualitative research reveals that attending improv practices, such as workshops, embodies participants' pursuit of happiness and wellbeing through the generation of positive emotions to evoke wider changes in their daily life, constructing the post-modern communitas to satisfy participants' spiritual quest and social demands, and healing unhappiness - improving social wellbeing by decreasing social distress. I argue that the lack of diversity of social connections and insufficient spiritual exploration and adventure beyond everyday life are potential threats to people's wellbeing in the New Zealand context that improvisation responds to.