Search This Blog

Monday, January 20, 2014

Hey Calgary, Learn How to Fail With Me!

I've been teaching drop in improv classes for many years, which I love doing. There is something wonderful about seeing an improv concept click for the first time in a new student. To see someone's eyes light up and really understand the world in a different way is so joyful for me. The best improv workshops encourage playful discovery. That is what I'm passionate about.

So, I've decided to offer a four-week improv intensive starting next week. The details are as follows.

Dates: Tuesdays, January 28 until February 18
Time: 7:30-9:30pm
Location: Unitarian Church of Calgary, 1703 1st St. NW (It's pretty much the corner of centre and 16th Ave. NW)
Cost: $125

No experience necessary. The curriculum will centre around making your partner look good and joyful failure, with a focus on personal coaching. Class size will be limited to 12 students max.

I'm very excited. Hopefully this is the first of many such classes. If you're interested, please send me an email. Registration is first come first serve. It should be a wild ride. And if you're not failing, you're doing it wrong.

The Desire to Be Profound

It has been a long time sine my last post. To be honest, after my first few posts I put a little pressure on myself to be really profound about improv and kind of pysched mysef out of writing new posts. Which is ridiculous. Improv is many things. It is fast, silly and at it's best rife with beautiful failure. It is not precious and should not take itself seriously. At best it is accidentally profound. The intention to be so almost always ruins art in general and certainly doesn't help when a group of actors get onstage and make up stories on the fly.

So, here is something profoundly silly to shake it up a bit.

Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood have been touring improv for many years and they have a hilarious game I want to share with everybody. I first came across it on youtube a few months ago and I still can't get enough. It's even been picked up be the Whose Line is It Anway reboot, but this older clip is still my favourite. Enjoy "Sideways Scene."

More thoughts to come soon. And no more profoundness. At least not intentioanlly.