Hey guys, I notice any time I improv, my mouth tends to move faster than my head. I will say something just to say it rather than thinking like the character only because I feel like if I took a second to think, then it would throw off my "flow." I take a lot of time to process and thats why I tend to jump right in.

Just any advice you all can give me?

Hey LA improvisers! We’re running the Weekday Workout at Shared Experience Studio all September.
Come spend your lunch break getting reps, pacing game, and working on specific improv forms like the Harold every weekday from 12–2 PM. Drop in, get some reps, and get back to your day!
Sign up here: https://www.thesharedexperiencestudio.com/service-page/weekday-workout-september?referral=service_list_widget

You folks helped me improve my first book. Now I’m writing a new one.

Earlier this year, many of you helped me improve my first improv book. I genuinely appreciated every suggestion, question, and piece of feedback. It truly meant a lot to me.

Now I’ve written a new book: Shakespeare Improvised.

The book brings together all three of my Shakespeare workshops, more than twelve hours of material, including the exercises, techniques, and approaches I’ve developed for improvising in the style of Shakespeare.

However, I didn’t want it to read like a collection of lesson plans. I wrote it conversationally, as though you and I were sitting across from each other at a café talking about improv. You should be able to read it at your leisure without constantly feeling like you need to gather several people and try an exercise before you can continue.

This time, I’m planning to fund the book through Kickstarter so I can hire a professional editor and layout artist and produce the best book I possibly can.

If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, I would be incredibly grateful if you followed the Kickstarter pre-launch page. If you know any improvisers, actors, or teachers who might enjoy it, please consider sharing it with them as well.

Thank you again for all the support you gave me earlier this year. I truly hope you’ll join me for this next chapter.

Your pal,

Alan

Pre-launch page:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/alanhawkins/shakespeare-improvised-a-new-book-by-alan-hawkins

One of the most common questions I get asked when I'm coaching and teaching is "How do I practice and stay sharp in between classes and rehearsals?" In this video, I'm sharing five of my favorite solo improv practice exercises so you can do just that. https://youtu.be/sZt3Wb0vuGA

Interested in taking improv classes in a country outside the United States next summer. What is an improv school outside of the United States that best teaches the craft of improv and sketch writing?

Hello all again! I wrote out musical improv chord patterns in a previous post, and I've done it again with more patterns and chord names. I have a degree in vocal music, as well as studied composition and musicology. I'm composing choral music, a musical, and scoring a friend's short film...

I wrote out piano patterns for musical improvisers and music directors, with a wealth of experience in the music end.

I've tried to mark what I can with generic ideas for what the pattern's feel would be as well.

I'll keep publishing more scores as I write them out, and all scores for musical improv I write out will be licensed under Creative Commons with Attribution and Share-alike if you choose to modify and publish your own.

Link to the Google Drive Folder, in five keys, C, D, G, F, and A.

Link to the MuseScore if that's your preferred method.

Stay tuned for vocal music warmups rooted in choral music pedagogy for safety of vocal health that I plan to publish when I can as well.

If there's anything else I can write out that you may think would be useful, let me know, and I can do my best to get around to it.

Im in the middle of taking a Harold class and I am really bombing it. I’m finding it extremely challenging to keep track of the opener, and games and details of all the scenes. I also can’t seem to process practice instructions quickly enough to participate the way I want to. This causes me to get overwhelmed and go completely blank. I freak out in group games and get swallowed up in them. It’s all too much to process at once. I really want to learn this material, but I’m concerned that I may not be able to keep up.

I’m worried that my freezing and difficulty tracking scenes are making me a burden to my partners and that I’ll hurt the class show. I don’t want to quit, but I’m worried I don’t belong at this level. I’ve only been doing improv for about a year and I have underlying ADHD and anxiety issues that Im trying to address, but I am still deeply disappointed in myself. I love improv and I really want to improve and be able to perform. I was doing ok leading up to this class, ( I have taken 101 and 201) but I feel like this is showing me I may not be cut out for improv. I don’t know if I should drop out of the class or push through and risk hurting the show and embarrassing myself. Self compassion just feels really hard right now.

Project Description: Casting non-Equity musical theatre actors for principal roles. "Nona's Supper Club" is a comedic, campy scripted new musical about a family-owned restaurant on its grand reopening where secrets, romance, and a pending grand larceny case threaten the future of the Supper Club. Seeking performers comfortable with musical theatre, improv, rock/pop vocal styles, and audience-inclusive improvisation.

Presented by: It’s All Relative Productions
Director: Amy Poux

Casting Breakdown

“Cesar” (He/Him): (45-45, Caucasian/Jewish/Italian/Latino cis/hetero) The highly charismatic, pompous, somewhat incapable/con artist eldest son with a gambling problem. Cesar has taken over the restaurant and is secretly having an affair with the Hostess, “Christina”. Must be able to sell a song.

Key dates:

Rehearses Saturdays September 26 - Nov. 12 in New York City; 

Tentative Performance tours: Nov. 13-14 and Nov. 20-22. Northeast tour to New England and Pennsylvania.

Compensation: 

2 weekend Tours: $1600.00 + lodging, per diem, travel. 

Rehearsal compensation: $30 per hour

Submissions: Deadline Wednesday 9/2, 5:00 PM. Send headshot, resume, musical theater reel and acting reel to: [therestaurantnyc@gmail.com](mailto:therestaurantnyc@gmail.com)

Learn more: https://therestaurantplay.com/nonas

As a kid and then teenager I loved improv at school and I took classes downtown with people in their 20-30s.

It was all great fun and I think I was pretty decent at it.

I grew up on SCTV (my heroes). So I’m a fan of character driven parody humor. I recently took a few classes and now I’m the old guy at 60…a s again most other players are 20-30’s.

I enjoyed it, met some amazing people and had a lot of fun. I couldn’t help but notice that I probably stood out as different in that I really lean into character development even at the expense perhaps of the scene.

I also caught myself doing some exaggerated reality stuff, most likely inspired by SCTV that I would have enjoyed watching but didn’t seem to connect with the vibe. I felt the vibe a bit constricting and almost doctrinal around a prescribed improv method. It felt that the humor and interest can only come from scene development and not character development.

I’m wondering if I just need to adjust to the times or if other classes might have different and looser conventions. I’m genuinely not sure if I’ve just aged out of the scene or haven’t found the class that I will flourish in yet and should keep trying.

Edit: thank you to the community here for a lot of thoughtful perspectives. Genuinely helpful!

Hey guys. I’ve booked a taster session down in London to get into improv (never done before, but did always get a good role in the school play!).

I’m 24 and just wondering how the age demographics skew? The main reason for me doing this is to make new friends as I’m sick of being the only one at home while my housemates go out with their other friends.

I do think I’ll be good at this and will definitely engage and put a lot of effort in, but yeah my main goal is just to make some new friends so that’s why I’m hoping younger people do this too. On the promotional video I just watched, the people seem kinda older (no offence!!!).

Does anyone have tips on how to initiate scenes that more quickly get to the “meat” of the scene (i.e. the relationship dynamic, the game of the scene, etc.)? I’m not sure if it matters or not, but I do a lot of organic improv, mainly montages based off of a single word.

For example, a lot of scenes I’m in start with a fairly flat emotional line about our location or environment, like “Hey this is a really pretty campground.” or “It’s so nice to be relaxing on the beach.” These lines feel fairly empty, and typically lead to some slow-paced discovery at the top of the scene between me and my scene partner until we’ve generated enough solid information that allows us to drive the relationship dynamic and/or find and play a game. 

I’m trying to wrap my head around this and figure out how to make this discovery phase quicker and more entertaining. Should my initiations just generally be more emotional? Or should my first line, instead of focusing on the environment, focus on something about myself (“ugh I’m so tired after work today”) or my scene partner (“wow you really stack those shelves with confidence”)? Or are these empty-feeling initiations that lead to slow-paced discovery at the top of a scene fine as it is? 

I improvised a sketch, check it out if you want!

I’ve been searching for a long while for good improv shows to watch, and I get recommended whose line and dropout but i just cant seem to get into those ones. Any ideas?

Hey all, I run an improv game show and we are trying to do a round incorporating music. We are thinking of taking Oscar winning moment and turning it into a Tony winning moment where the actor is given the title of a made up Broadway play and has to give us their solo song. But we don't have a piano player. Would it be incredibly difficult if we used prerecorded music? I know with a lot of musical improv the pianist is following the actor as much as the other way around.

I’m looking to take a class to help me be more creative on my feet. Which teachers would you recommend at Magnet theater NYC? I was leaning towards magnet theater cause people seem to recommend it the most but I’ll happily take recommendations for teaches outside of magnet as well.

So far, I've tried facebook, instagram, flyers, local event websites and some groupchats and I have no idea if any of it is working to get butts in seats or if it's just friends and their word of mouth that helped fill up my first show. But now with a second show upcoming our group is open to new ways of advertising our show.

Context: it's a new group created of some experienced improvisers from other groups. We're independent (not a house team) so we rent a space and do our own thing.

Mainly the crows in our first show consisted of friends, improvisers and theaterpeople. But I'm not sure how to convince random people to come to our show that haven't heard of us before.

What has worked for you?

Hello everyone! I just started my first improv class and was very nervous to even go since I was the youngest person in my class and am a relatively introverted person but I’m always told by many people I am funny so I thought it would be nice to try. I’m kinda feeling very down about how my class went because I feel like my dark deadpan humor wasn’t really understood or taken the way I had hoped which is super frustrating! I don’t know if maybe it’s my presentation since I look very cherubic and cutesy so I don’t know if maybe that’s why my improv came off flat or maybe I’m just dumb and dark humor is obviously not appropriate for improv. I’m just very confused because there was another class member who also had dry dark humor and made everyone laugh and now I’m second guessing myself and feel stupid that I even decided to take this class.

EDIT: Thank you to everyone who responded and gave good constructive feedback! I DO NOT need any more advice! I understand I wasn’t funny! Thanks!

Who is more qualified to create and tour an Improvised X-Files show than the guy who was actually on it? Both parts of Improv Autopsy with Dean Haglund are out now, best known to nerd fans everywhere as Langly of the X-Files and Lone Gunmen series.

Dean talks of his time at Vancouver Theatresports, doing improv for drunk oil riggers in remote areas, and navigating audience interactions with a solo improv show. Plus lots more! Come take a listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Link to part one on the free Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ImprovAutopsy/posts/166931697

Link to more of Dean: https://deanandphil.substack.com/