by Rebecca MacMillan First: It’s Father’s Day this Sunday. You forgot? Don’t panic! Get your Dad a gift and help the Maydays by pledging on our Edinburgh Kickstarter project (we have 7 days to raise just less than a grand). Three ideas out of our many offers to pledgers: 1) Tickets to a Maydays show,...

  Stanislavski The Stanislavski system of Objectives refers to a character’s wants within a play. He theorised that the character will always want to achieve something by the end of the play and that every decision they make should lead them towards that goal in some way. Improvised Theatre This also applies to Improvised Theatre...

by Heather Urquhart If you’re an improviser, chances are you’ve heard or used the expression ‘being too in your head’. In my experience this phrase normally has negative connotations. ‘Hey guys why wasn’t our show so great tonight?’ ‘We were too in our heads’ or ‘I totally froze in that scene, I way too up...

by Joe Samuel Im.pro.vise: /?impr??v?z/ Origin: Latin improvisus, equivalent to im “not”+ pro-“ahead”+videre-“to see” Not looking forward Not to see ahead.  A strange edict for improvisers.  After all, without looking ahead how are we to negotiate a scene or a song?  So the time has come for a new word.  A new way of defining...

by Liz Peters We all have bodies. Some have big ones, some have small ones. There are brown ones, white ones, squidgy ones, bony ones…  We are all so wonderfully different but essentially made from the same mould. And we all use our bodies to instinctively communicate with one another.  Every action, movement and gesture...

by Jason Delplanque I believe that all good improvisation is much like baking. If you don’t follow the recipe you’re going to land up with egg on your face! Now I know you’re all going to be throwing your hands up in the air and say, “improv has no rules, you fool!” Yes, I agree...

By Rebecca MacMillan I decided to write this blog after I thought I had lost my usual ‘performance shoes’ on the train following a boozy session to celebrate our first gig at Leicester Square Theatre. I was quite put out. They are just a pair of black flat ballet pumps, and most of the negative...

by Katy Schutte It seems to me that there is sometimes quite a disparity between how much an audience enjoys a show and how much the performers enjoy a show (or how good they think it was). For me, there are three broad reactions I’ll have after doing a show; ·       Recriminating myself and/or the...

By John Cremer The comedian Russell Brand recently launched and hosted ‘Give It Up for Comic Relief’ an all-star gig to raise money for people in the UK affected by drug and alcohol addiction. As a recovering addict himself Russell is passionate about raising the awareness of abstinence based recovery from drug or alcohol addiction and speaks candidly about...

by Katy Schutte Over years of teaching, I have begun to notice that many students at one point or another appear to have a crisis of confidence and dips in their skill sets.  There seems to be an ongoing cycle that starts with enthusiasm, becomes more of a serious work ethic and then turns into...

By John Cremer Our mainstream education system is based on an industrial model of mass produced learning. We compel lively and inquisitive young people to sit in rows and be “educated” according to an outdated and rigid curriculum. In essence children have their minds filled with information and are regularly tested on their ability to...

By Rhiannon Vivian So I almost went, ‘Guys, Maydays. I can’t blog this time. I’m too snowed under with work. To the point I kind of want to cry. Big, square, juicy, sploshy, clench your jaw to keep them in, stress-tears. Tears of word-swimmery, brain fry-ery, thought fuckery and cognitive mash-ery. But also cheer, as it means...

by Jason Blackwater “What you’ve just experienced there is what we , in the improv world, call a ‘nirvana moment’. A complete absense of thought. Buddhists spend decades of their lives trying to achieve an emptiness of the mind and improvisers achieve it constantly” The above quote is something I’ve said in near enough every...

By Liz Peters One of the first things I say when teaching improv to beginners is don’t try and be funny. It’s among the biggest stumbling blocks you can give yourself. Not only will it take you away from listening to your scene partner and actually improvising together, the audience will sniff out your desperation...

By Katy Schutte Improv is largely about the suspension of disbelief.  This is a blog to look at how we can hold the audience’s attention and how we can take them with us wherever we go.  It’s not about short form where there is always a nod to the fact that you are improvising and...

By Alexis Gallagher There are hardly any great books on improvisation. This is no  surprise. One reason: improv is a hands-on skill. It’s more like riding a bike than it is like solving the quadratic equation. In the end, it’s even more like really understanding your mother’s point of view (for instance) than it is...

by Rebecca MacMillan Following Jason’s blog entry on denial, here’s something on our second deadly sin of improv: inattentiveness. Originally we named this sin ‘not listening’ but inattentiveness was not only neater, but better represented what we meant by encompassing the non-auditory forms of this vice. Being inattentive is to be drawn in any way,...

by Joe Samuel If you are going to have a live musician in your improvised show then be prepared for them to play a far more important role than just observer and part time under-scorer.  Clearly if you are improvising songs in your show then your musician will be a key part in cueing the...

by Jenny Rowe THIS IS A BLOG ABOUT FAILURE… …ironically, I failed to write it the first time, but I re-committed and added a ton of enthusiasm so now it’s here. So I suppose that’s an improv lesson right there. This is a slightly embarrassing foray into my improv journey, focusing on something I bring up with...

by Jules Munns Let’s talk about fear. Something everybody who has ever done improvisation has felt at some point. Fear that you suck, fear that you’re letting people down. Fear that the audience hate you. Fear that you’ve overstayed your welcome. Everybody is afraid sometimes. And that’s ok. I’m pretty sure that standing up in...