A few weeks ago, I got an email from Rob Snow, the Executive Director of Stand Up For Downs, a non-profit organization based in Cleveland, OH, that is dedicated to helping people with Down syndrome. Rob is a native Ohioan who studied at Second City, iO and The Annoyance in Chicago in the ‘90s before […]
I've been teaching improv classes for a long time, and over the years, I've seen students do the same things over and over again that get in their way. Here are the top 5 things that improvisers should avoid doing in class and suggestions about how you can do it differently. 1. Don’t apologize after […]
Let me tell you something that drives me nuts. A person does improv for five or six years and starts getting good at, gets on Harold team, maybe two, and he is killing it. Naturally, he wants more from his the career, which means he would like to get paid. So he saves up enough […]
As improv has gotten bigger over the years, more and more people have become improv teachers. What once was just a hobby for a handful of people has become an actual profession for hundreds of people around the country. So this week, I started thinking… what made me become an improv teacher in the first […]
Improvisers and actors usually classify themselves either as one or the other. But you know what? I wish improvisers would realize they are really actors and actors to realize that learning how to improvise is a necessary part of acting. Over the years, I’ve found that actors are afraid to improvise, convincing themselves they can’t […]
How many times have you started a scene by saying, “How are you doing?” or “What are you up to?” If you’ve done that, you know that the scene goes absolutely nowhere. If you have a good teacher, director, or coach, he or she will usually say, "You need to start your scenes in the middle." […]
Thanksgiving is a hard holiday. You can feel like this whole gratitude thing is being shoved down your throat. And what if you have nothing to be grateful for? Maybe you aren't as far as you would like to be in your career or you think people you started out with are passing you by. […]
Sometimes in one of my improv classes, a student will say after doing a great scene with a strong character, “I felt lost. I did not know where the scene was going.” "Good," I will say in an ironic way. "Stay lost. It's working for you." In our creative process, it’s a good thing to […]