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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...

by Katy Schutte I know it isn’t always realistic to pigeonhole improvisers into one bracket or another, but in planning a rehearsal for the Maydays, I realised that there are things that we get into the habit of practising and avoiding depending on our innate style and on what the groups we play with NEED....

by Jason Blackwater I read this article yesterday. It’s a short piece about Charna Halpern, owner of iO Chicago and Del Close’s partner in crime, having bought a new venue to move iO into, A $6 million project that will open it’s doors in 2014, and it got me thinking about the UK improv scene...