THE SECRET PORTAL        by Liz Peters    The older you get the more clear it is that no-one is completely grown up and most people are winging it. When I was young there was a sense that all the adults knew everything, that they had reached maturity and gone through a secret portal of...

The Showstoppers, persistence and when my mum tried improv by Jules Munns My mum came to the Maydays Improvisation Retreat this year. She had never done improvisation before, but thought it looked fun from seeing a few gigs I was in. There is no improv community in Whitstable, where she lives, so it seemed a...

Expectations – do we need them? – by Joe Samuel. Having sat behind my keyboard and played for most of our residential festivals, it is difficult not to lay on mighty expectations in anticipation of the next one.  So many powerful memories, epiphanies, touching moments and personal triumphs that they start to become expected, almost...

  The Leela Bubble By Heather Urquhart The Maydays Improv Retreat is my happy place, no doubt about it and this year more than ever I was desperate to cross the magical threshold into Leela living. The previous 2 months had been crazy busy and I’d come out of a 4 show Edinburgh Festival, straight...

  A dream come true By Rhiannon Vivian   I’m always overwhelmed by how brave everyone is when I teach at the Maydays improv retreat. How willing everyone is to stand up in a room full of people they don’t necessarily know and just give anything a go.   Every single one of my classes...

Class: What’s Happening Now? Day: Friday Time: 11:45 – 1:15   If I was going to pull out a theme from my personal experience of this year’s Improv Retreat it would be “Stop Working So Hard”. It seemed to be something I was saying in all my classes from Short Form With Soul to Game...

by Katy Schutte  1.Craig Cackowski is great. His class ‘Sell It’ was the most fun I’ve had in an improv class for a while and rather than making this introvert make increasingly big and silly choices (which was my guess) he showed us all a really good time and reminded us how joy is the...

By Rhiannon Vivian ‘Consistency is the greatest gift you can give to another human,’ – Chris Mead. Certain quotes stay in your consciousness. In particular those which not only apply to stage life, but real life too. And this is one I’ve been meaning to write about for a while (thanks Chris!) Chris is a...

by Jenny Rowe. What a crazy beast Edinburgh is. It doesn’t matter how much I prepare for it, I always find my best intentions broken; I struggle to know what day it is, I regularly run out of phone battery – not to mention sleep – and I fail to see most of the shows...

By Jason Blackwater I already miss The Maydays I shan’t be leaving until January but I can already feel the absence of them that will hit me far too soon after my final show, or rehearsal, or social gathering, whenever that may be. Last nights (4/9/15) Confessions show symbolised pretty much every element of The Maydays...

By Lloydie James Lloyd As part of a series of blogs on overcoming that moment where you feel you’ve lost your improv mojo, I’ve written to a number of improv greats from around the world asking their advice. How have they overcome moments when they felt bad about their improv? How do they up their game? The second...

By Katy Schutte Do you remember the day you found out about Santa?  For me it’s the same as they day I found out that improv isn’t maths.  I had a teacher who totally contradicted what another teacher said.  I really didn’t know what to do with that for a while.  I imagined there must...

The awesome Emma Bird recently set up Liverpool Comedy Improv weekly drop-in in association with The Maydays. Just months old, it’s already proving pretty popular… ‘I recently relocated from Brighton to my hometown a few months ago. Liverpool has changed a lot in the 22 years since I last lived here. It’s a very hipster, independently...

By Rhiannon Vivian Do you ever feel you’ve cheated somehow if you find certain stuff easy and fun? Whatever that thing is, do you tend to judge it as being less valuable and not worth as much as things you really labour over? Have you even actively thrown yourself a curve ball to try and...

by Liz Peters  Over the years I’ve learned bucket loads of things from improv. These are the top 3 things that have helped me enjoy being a real life Human Being more. 1: Be Here Now There ain’t no other place you can be. All we have is now – all we’ve ever had is now....

By Katy Schutte I’m a teacher, which means that I’m also a learner.  Since I got back from Edinburgh, I’ve learned from a bunch of really great teachers.  I have so many notes, so many ongoing goals and I just want to share with you some of the wisdom that I’ve taken with me.  I’ve...

By Rhiannon Vivian   ‘It’s your limitations that make you the wonderful disaster you probably are.’ – Nick Cave   We’re obsessed with running through life. So pre-occupied with what we should be achieving each year, so fixed on pre-prescribed life goals, expectations, peer pressure whatever you want to call it, that we often feel...

by “Lloydie” James Lloyd Most, if not all, improvisers have had ‘The Dip’ at some point. You can be freewheeling along, loving your scenework and thinking that you’re invincible on stage for a few months and then BOOM, it hits you like a truck – one of those large trucks with a fierce Transformers-like frontage....

I have been slow to write this blog. In fact, I am the reason we failed to manage ten blogs in ten days. That was my fault. I have let down the internet and I am sorry. The truth is, I find writing blogs very hard. Words don’t trip out of me the way they...

Day: Sunday Time: 10am Class: Perverts and Fuck-ups The job of drawing up the first draft of the Osho Leela class schedule is a daunting one. 76 classes over 4 days not including the evening shows and jams. Each year, I need to have a look at last year’s schedule, the student requests, the teacher...