What still excites me about improv after all these years? I get this question a lot. And the answer may surprise you. It is the teaching. I love teaching. I love teaching improv even more than doing shows or the podcast Improv Nerd. And this will blow your mind coming from Mr. Self-Hatred and Self-Loather […]
This summer I taught two sold-out weekends of my Art of Slow Comedy intensives, and after the first two-day intensive, one my students from Denmark asked me: "What is the Art of Slow Comedy?" That is hard question to answer since I have evolved and so has my teaching. After I explained it, he said, […]
The Chicago improv community has lost another great one, this time to fucking cancer. Judy Fabjance was a beloved improv teacher at The Second City Training Center, a member of the ground-breaking group Gayco, and a mother to Daphne and wife to Kelly. She was only 41. She started taking improv classes at Second City […]
I really should not write a blog this week. I am fried and burnt out, and the best thing to do in this situation is just re-run an old blog. But I am not built that way. I am from the school of “push through the pain until something breaks,” and I rarely take my […]
Is improv art? Apparently not in the state of Texas, according to the Texas State Commission on the Arts. When the 15-year old non-profit, volunteer-based Out of Bounds Comedy Festival in Austin recently went to apply for some funding, they were told flat out by the commission that "improv is not art," and therefore OOB […]
I recently had a chance to see Mike Birbligia's latest independent film, Don't Think Twice, which was released in limited theaters on July 22. It's the story of a popular New York improv group and what happens when one of the members gets a big break and gets hired by a Saturday Night Live-type of sketch […]
I would like you to meet our daughter, Betsy Jane Carrane. She was born Saturday, July 2 at 2:51 p.m. CST in Evanston, a northern suburb outside of Chicago. She came out weighing 7 lbs. 10 oz., measuring 20 inches long and looking like an little angry old man. I was worried. Nobody wants an ugly baby, […]
Oh, the argument scene. Most of us do them. I know I do, and sometimes they work, but most of the time they don't. I wish I could say that prevents me from doing them, but even after all these years of improvising, when I get scared, it’s my go to type of improv scene. […]
Last week I interviewed Chicago comedian Kelsie Huff for an episode of Improv Nerd, who runs a very popular stand-up class for women called Fem Com. In the interview, Kelsie talked about how important it is to create an environment in class where women feel supported and nurtured and don't have to apologize for what […]
Sometimes we think the goal in an improv scene is for both players to gets laughs — huge laughs. Wouldn't it be great if that happened all the time? Unfortunately, it doesn't. The reality is sometimes one improviser will come out with an incredibly strong character or point of view and the best thing for the other improvisers in […]