Improvisation

  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...

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...

An Improv Blog About Acting For Improvisers Who Act And Actors Who Improvise This week I came back to Brighton and to the Theatre Royal with Buddy! The Buddy Holly Story and this has led me to think about whether or not improv skills apply to the acting world. I set about to try and...

The difference between schools of improv is sometimes becoming an ugly slanging match – so much so that we aren’t honouring each other or our art form enough. I like spirited debate but I can’t help but feel we would do better by celebrating the diversity of thought in our growing art form rather than...

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,...

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 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 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...