Many people think that improv is something people are just "naturally" good at. If you're born funny, you can make people laugh, right? Not so. If you want to get better, you're going to have to study this art form and take a lot of classes before you get good. It's just a fact. And […]
The most important thing you can do as actor/improviser is to put yourself out there. Yeah, I know it’s scary. "What will be people think of me?" That part is not up to you, and it never will be. You are not in the results business, so there's no sense worrying about it. What you […]
Every once in a while we need to be inspired. We are in the arts. We need inspiration like air. Without it we can’t breathe, and our art dies a long, slow death. Actually, I think everyone needs a little inspiration. If you’re an accountant, you need to be inspired. I have included five books […]
More and more on-camera auditions are asking actors to improvise and most actors think that improvising is about talking really, really fast and “trying” to be funny. These actors are ruining their years of acting experience with their skewed concept of improvisation. What they don’t realize is if you’re not listening and not in the […]
Improvisation is a transparent art form. Both your strengths and your shortcomings will be exposed when you improvise, hopefully in front of an audience or in a class, to speed up the learning. The good news is this can be a tool to transform your life on stage as well as off. When I first […]
You don’t have to beat yourself up to get better. Really you don’t. Improvisers get off stage after a show and immediately want to talk about went wrong in a scene or with the show. They think by being hard on themselves they will automatically get better. If only it worked like that. You are […]
Improv is a personal art form, which means how you are feeling on a particular day can affect your performance. That is why I encourage my students to “speak their process,” so they can get in touch with how they are feeling. Why is this important? Because emotions are energy, and if we are in […]