Improvise like a professional

How to act when you’re not acting

Have you ever done a bad scene and then tried to save face by making a joke about how bad it was afterwards? Have you ever gotten so sick of the same suggestion that you straight up turned it…

Harry Potter And The Gender Imbalance

I’ve just munched my way through the first four Harry Potter books for research purposes…

The Circle of Expectation

Here’s a scene:

A: Hey, we’re out of milk.
B: That’s annoying. I’ll get some from the…

Katharine Steer on why she runs Wellprov

As I was researching my Improv Community Heroes blog series, I was put into contact with…

Disney And The Super-Objective

I use the classic Disney films of my childhood to teach narrative improv. I find they’re the clearest way of illustrating how to create a protagonist who can drive a story. That’s because Disney films have this neat trick of sticking the protagonist’s super-objective into…

Don’t fight the flow

As my improv career continues to grow (in duration, if nothing else) I find myself talking in ever more esoteric and borderline cultish ways about how I improvise. I often describe the process of a scene coming into existence as discovering what’s already there, or talk about a character as…

Getting The Get In Long-Form Improv

When I teach narrative improvisation, I say that the “get” (the audience suggestion) is probably…

Improv Rules: Denial

My improv extended family has been writing blogs about rules lately, so I thought I’d “yes and” that too. Mine’s about denial.

In improv, a denial is when you say or do something that contradicts the reality already established by other performers. So I might say…