When you get to be an improv teacher as respected as Will Hines, former head of the UCB Training Center in New York, who happens to write a great blog (http://improvnonsense.tumblr.com), you get flooded with questions from improvisers all around the country. When you’re me, you just tag onto Will’s questions to make yourself sound […]
Last week, I talked about how to give good improv notes if you are an improv coach or director. This week, I'm going to give some tips on how to give improv notes to your own teammates -- a much trickier proposition. First, let me say, if you are part of an improv group and […]
As an improv director or coach, giving notes after a show is an art. Like improvising, you can only get better at teaching and directing improv by doing it and making a lot of mistakes along the way. Though my methods may seem a little unconventional, I wanted to share them with you because I […]
When we first start taking improv classes we have no expectations. Actually, we are ecstatic. We are just so happy that we finally got up the nerve to start doing it. Each week, we look forward to improv class. We rush off to it. Our life starts to change. Our crappy day job becomes tolerable. Our body changes. People think we […]
I am so grateful that there are so many schools, teachers and methods of improvisation. It's the best thing for the art form and is one of the reasons it keeps growing. That was not the case when I started taking improv classes back in the late ’80s in Chicago. In those days, you had three places […]
The number one rule in improv -- over "Yes, And…," listening, finding the game in the scene, environment, adding specifics, and developing character and emotions -- is “Don't Take Yourself Too Seriously.” It has happened to all of us. We make a Harold team, or get hired by a big comedy theater, or finish a […]
Improvisers have all heard that we need to add specifics to our improv scenes. Specifics are they fuel that keeps scenes going. The more specifics we use, the less we have to work to figure out what’s going on. Without them we’re in "Vaugue-land" -- not a good place to take our scene partners or the […]
Accepting other people's success is not easy. Sooner or later it will happen to all of us: One of our friends will get ahead while we are left behind. It’s always hardest with the people we are closest to. You may start out in improv classes with people, and some of them will end up […]
A little over a month ago, Will Hines, a well-known teacher from the UCB, and I started a new segment on our blogs where we decided we would each solicit questions from the improv community and share our answers with you. (By the way, check out Will's great improv blog, too: http://improvnonsense.tumblr.com/) We had such fun […]
The one thing that the improv community has taught me over the years is how to chase the carrot at the end of the stick. Whenever I do this, the result is always the same: I end up eating a lot more shit than carrot. It's rarely worth it. I always end up sacrificing a piece of myself, and I never really get ahead. As I […]