the Montreal Improv blog

Guest Writer: Andy Eninger (Chicago)

Andy Eninger is the Head of the Writing Program at The Second City Training Center in Chicago, and performs his solo improv form “Sybil” all over the world.  He will be appearing next at IMPRO International Improvisation Theatre Festival in Amsterdam in January 2012.

8 Reasons Why I Love Working With Improvisers 

Over the past twenty years, I’ve worked with thousands of improvisers.  Sometimes, we were doing actual improv stuff - shows, classes, playing giant tomatoes for a corporate event.  Sometimes, we were improvisers in daytime drag, freelancing in our ‘day jobs’ while taking classes at night and performing on the weekends.  Through it all I’ve realized that improvisers are great people to be around. Even if I’d never discovered improvisation, I think I would gravitate toward improvisers for their many qualities. They may not be tidy, but they’re very entertaining, and they have specialized skills that make life better for everyone.

1.) They know how to say ‘yes, and’
Improvisers are good at saying ‘yes.’ More than that, they’re good at saying ‘yes’ and then building on a idea.  They take pleasure in heightening a bit, pushing a game, or exploring a line of thinking - usually in hopes of being the first one to the funny comment about something.  Improvisers make YOU feel funny by jumping onboard your idea.

2.) They make good listeners
As much as they love to talk, the best improvisers make great listeners.  This is because they know they’ll only be able to make fun of you if they pay attention to the details.  Still, everybody loves being deeply listened to…at least until your personal revalation gets ‘called back’ in a bit 30 minutes later.

3.) Improvisers have your back
If you go down in flames in a scene or in a stressful moment, improvisers know to take one for the team.  Sometimes this means getting you off-stage so you can recover from a bad scene; sometimes this means stealing your potential date the moment you’ve been shot down at a pub.  Nonetheless, they are there to fill the vacuum you made when you sucked, and for that, you should be thankful.

4.) Improvisers are forthcoming
Improvisers are not afraid to tell you about themselves, both in real life and in made-up improv-character life.  “Let me tell you about my gluten allergy…” is not so different from “I bet you’ve never seen a man with lava-feet and ice hands like THESE.”  The same instinct that can feel like a curse when you’re trapped at the office party can be a gift on stage.

5.) They see the humor in everything
They say that Comedy is Tragedy plus Time; Improvisers are so ambitious, they like to cut out the “time” part.  Nothing is off limits.  The bright side is that you always have a support network that can bring you up when you’re feeling down.  The down side of this is watching your improv team gleefully launch a thirty-minute longform inspired by an audience suggestion of some inappropriate recent international tragedy. 

6.) Improvisers are better than a Twitter Feed
You think you know what’s trending?  People who ask for suggestions from drunk strangers every night REALLY know what’s on the public’s mind. Want to know what’s ‘hot’ right now? Ask an improviser.

7.) Improvisers are always up for a beer
After years of late night shows, late-night rehearsals, and late-night beers after late-night shows, improvisers are conditioned for late-night action.  Want a beer on a Wednesday?  I bet your improviser friend is up for it.  Heading home late from work and want to blow off steam?  Text an improviser - they’ll be there for you.  Of course, you may have to sit through their late-night show first…

8.) You never have to worry about who’s going to pay for drinks: You are. (Hey, at least it takes the guesswork out of your evening.)

If I was going to be stuck on a desert island with one person…I’d choose an Engineer. Maybe a Doctor.  But otherwise, in this world that moves too quickly and takes itself too seriously, I’ll take an improviser any day. 

Previous guests: Jeroen Van Dyck, Remy Bertrand, Caspar Shjelbred, Sean Michaels, Kareem Badr, RobYn Slade, Ian Parizot, Rachel Klein, Dave Morris, Alex Wlasenko, From the old blog

Guest Writer: Jeroen Van Dyck (Antwerp)

Jeroen Van Dyck has been the coordinator for the Belgian Improv League (www.bil.be) since 2007.

Hate to break the news to you guys, but I am not an improviser. I have never been on stage and do not plan to ever get on there. I work for BIL (Belgian Improv League) and my job description is basically to do everything but be on stage. So, writing for this blog was a bit daunting as I do not have real insights to share in how to play improv, how to grow as an improviser, and so on… So what the hell am I going to talk about?

Maybe how it all began?  I started out with BIL just over 4 years ago. They needed a coordinator and I needed a different job. At that time I was sales representative for a company that sold photo frames and designer furniture. About 7 years before that, me and some friends in Antwerp started organizing all kinds of events: music, theatre, literature, but also a lot of stand-up comedy. I wrote my thesis in university about stand-up, so I was into that a lot at that time (and I still am, I confess). BIL was the headliner at our first big event (900-seat venue in Antwerp). 7 years later, I sit down for the interview for the job. It was supposed to last about 30 minutes, but I ended up spending nearly two hours with the two guys I have since come to know a lot better. They had questions for me that I couldn’t have prepared for in a million years. So I improvised.

Improv was, at that moment, a pretty blank page for me. I had seen BIL twice. There used to be a TV show here with improv in the 90’s and I had seen some bits of shows like Whose Line is it Anyway, etc. But I had never seen an impro-match. That’s the format our company plays in Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium), by the way. Our opening match that season was in Antwerp, in a venue that holds about 500 seats, and it’s mostly sold out. I can tell you, If you have never seen an improv match like that and have to organize the whole shebang, it is slightly scary. By now, it’s close to routine, but back then… The ice-hockey setting, the outfits, the technical part of the show, the line-up with almost 15 improvisers, staff, musician… You can plan all you want, but stuff is always bound to go wrong in such a complex set-up. Bookings lost, broken microphones, a weird smell just under the main seating area, a lost child wandering around in that same seating area during the show… All true examples, by the way.  So you improvise.

Next to shows in the match-format, all our other activities are set up to pay for the touring of these shows. For example, we run our own three-year Academy and do open workshops for beginners. We also work for the corporate world quite often, playing shows at personnel parties, giving workshops or trainings to managers, hosting as special characters at fairs, seminars… I handle all bookings for these things and do all the preliminary work so our actors/improvisers just need to be creative. Now, you may not realize this about yourselves, my dear improvisers, but you are not the easiest lot to work with. And, as you will acknowledge for sure: neither is the corporate world, but in a different way. Getting those two worlds to match is one of my main daily occupations. Things go wrong all the time: people get ill, companies change their ideas about something at the last moment, wrong briefings are given because some intern messed up and now your actors are one hour away from where they should be 15 minutes before the start of something… Funny stuff in hindsight, but at the time… However, you always need a solution to an uncommon problem. And so you improvise.

You can probably see the theme there. I am not an improviser, but I improvise all the time. I find solutions backstage, like you guys find solutions on stage. I try to make the setting predictable and comfortable, so you can find a way to do something unexpected.  Improvisation to me is more than a theatrical form; it is a set of skills, attitudes and ways of thinking that is useful in any situation. It is a way of life: keeping cool, trusting your gut feeling (and knowing when you can and when you can’t), thinking creatively about whatever problem you encounter and most of all, not being afraid of making a mistake. In the end, there are no real mistakes to make unless you’re a surgeon or something like that. So, in everyday life, don’t be afraid to improvise!

It’s a funny business I rolled into. The hours, the pay, the job security,… none of them are great. But I love my job. Because I get to work with people with a passion. Because I get to look for solutions and there is never a clear-cut right answer, but always many possible ways to approach a problem. Because I never know what the next day is going to have in store for me. Because I’m never 100% sure that everything will be going right. But then, I can always improvise. Just, never on stage…

Previous guests: Remy Bertrand, Caspar Shjelbred, Sean Michaels, Kareem Badr, RobYn Slade, Ian Parizot, Rachel Klein, Dave Morris, Alex Wlasenko, From the old blog

Guest Writer: Remy Bertrand (London)

Remy Bertrand runs imprology, a London-based training company and Friendly Fire, a performing group using physical, musical and verbal improvisation.

Mirrors and status, let’s all be friends.

There is a great divide in improvisation between comedy and, well… non-comedy. Lets mend the rift because we’re all brothers and sisters after all, or at least cousins, or maybe our mums used to shop at the same store. I’m doing my bit here to reconcile two staple games on the opposite corners of the ring in an attempt to show that status games and mirroring games are very similar in nature, even though one is more often played by the wordy, all in the brain, comedic brigade and the other by lovely arty people who would never ever dream of gagging on stage. Both games require players to be completely focused on each other. If the rules are different, the skills being developed are almost identical and I will prove it now. So wish me luck.

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Guest Writer: Sean Michaels (Montreal)

Sean Michaels is a writer and improviser based in Montreal. He has been doing improv since 2000, including performances at festivals in Toronto, Ottawa, Chicago and at home - most recently as a member of the duo VENEZUELA. He founded the music-blog Said the Gramophone in 2003.

Sometimes I am at a party with improvisers, and it is late at night, and each of us has drunk ten thousand beers, and little swallows are flying circles around our heads, and our bellies hurt from laughing, and at this juncture - dumb, drowsy, with salt-and-vinegar-flecked lips - we get heady. We talk shop. We talk shop at other times but it is especially at this time, in the weeer hours, that the headiness becomes earnest, spirited, divisive. Arguments waft from our minds. Counter-arguments are made. Sneers are sneered, retorts are torted, the house falls down. Shit gets real.

One of the biggest arguments of all is this one: WHO IS THIS FOR? By THIS we mean improv. By FOR, we mean what is the telos, the purpose of this on-stage tomfoolery. For whose benefit is it? Who must be entertained? When you get down to brass tacks, sometimes, it’s this: Is the customer always right?

Everyone has had this discussion. The audience didn’t laugh. Was it still funny? Or, worse: Were we being self-indulgent? Sometimes it is a debate about laughing at yourself, or breaking character; sometimes it is about experimentation, the avant garde. It has a thousand manifestations, but it comes back to that fundamental question: WHO IS THIS FOR?

I have heard four different answers to WHO IS THIS FOR?: it is for the pleasure of the audience; it is for the enjoyment of the performer; it is for the benefit of society & the world; or some combination of the above. All have their problems. Let’s dig a little deeper.

THIS IS FOR THE AUDIENCE
For most improvisers, this is the first instinct. Try to make the audience laugh. It’s harder than it seems. In improv, the biggest laughs aren’t just from a string of self-defeating gags. Story, character, rising stakes - this stuff adds traction to the jokes, helps them kill. It’s easy to imagine that the best improv is the kind that tries to serve the people watching it; what better (and more pleasurable) barometer to your success than people’s fun?

At the same time, audiences always laugh at swearwords. They laugh at toilet jokes, gay jokes, gags about getting your genitals stuck in revolving door(s). They’re sometimes oafish or drunk, and often impatient. Certain audiences feels like the worst possible judges of improv. If improv is for the audience, if it’s just a populist art-form, then it risks being reduced to the lowest common denominator. The stuff that’s truly beautiful, provocative, or funny in a different way - not everyone likes it. And as soon as you start spurning some members of the audience, you’re rolling down the slippery slope to…

THIS IS FOR US
Most of the world’s great artworks are understood as works of self-expression. The Tempest, “Billie Jean”, Annie Hall, Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers”, Satie’s Gymnopédies. An original spirit, set down in paint, in ink, on wax. The mingling of experience and invention. Sounds good, right? Improv rarely aspires to this: it’s a form reared in comedy, not theatre. (As opposed to, say, modern clown.) But it gets there sometimes. For a beat, for a scene, for an entire show. Sometimes it’s about speaking to our deeper hearts, sometimes it’s about skimming some high strange funny. When improv is for the performer, it forces you to challenge yourself, search yourself, experiment. To figure out what excites you and the way your vision is different than every other performer’s. It risks failure, breakdown, an echoing and awkward crowd.

And so it isn’t always funny. Sometimes it’s deliberately not funny. Which sounds OK until you realize the corollary, in the eyes of your audience: Sometimes it sucks. Pretentious, self-satisfied bullshit. Performers in their little bubble, entertaining only themselves. Arrogant. Indulgent. Masturbatory.

So, I guess, was Shakespeare?

THIS IS FOR SOCIETY
I don’t think I’ve met anyone who has argued that improv should serve society - that somehow it should serve the world, make it a better place, through laughter, story and spontaneous invention. But it seems like one of this craft’s possible purposes. It’s high-falutin’, aspirational, sorta absurd. But it’s possible. So I leave it here, to consider.

THIS IS FOR THE AUDIENCE, FOR US, AND/OR FOR SOCIETY, i.e. SOME COMBINATION OF THE ABOVE
Like all wishy-washy answers, this is the most boring option. Compromises are sometimes muddier than the problems they aim to solve. But there’s something seductive in taking the best of two answers, and none of the problems. (All the same - Is it a cop-out? Yes!)

IN CONCLUSION
In conclusion, I have no fucking idea what improv is for. I will continue to argue about it, before, after or during the consumption of ten thousand beers. I lean toward the proposition that improv is for the performer, just because I feel that at its best it is a mode of self-expression, of individual artistry, more than just tickling the crowd. But I also feel that improv deliberately sites itself, most of the time, away from high art. Most of us like slipping on banana peels, or yelling a swearword from time to time. So I’m not really sure.

More important than the philosophy or teleology of improv is what we do with these thinkings. How do you take your theory of purpose and apply it to your craft? For me, these meditations manifest in a couple of ways. I try to play on stage, experimenting with my partners (& challenging myself) in a way that is, I hope, infectious for the audience. And I prefer when an improv show is a real performance, a cohesive whole that’s just-professional-enough. From the format to the backing music, a complete iteration of someone’s precise & private vision. Something for us, presented to you, with sincerity and love.

Previous guests: Kareem Badr, RobYn Slade, Ian Parizot, Rachel Klein, Dave Morris, Alex Wlasenko, From the old blog

Guest Writer: Kareem Badr (Austin)

Kareem Badr is an improviser and actor from Austin, TX. He is a founding member of Parallelogramophonograph, and one of the owners of The Hideout Theatre, where he performs, directs, and teaches improv.

I am in a touring improv troupe.

Wait, let me state that more accurately. I am in an improv troupe that tours occasionally. 

Wait, more accurate still: I am in an improv troupe that, on occasion, has been fortunate enough to have improvisers in other cities, some of whom we’ve never met, welcome us with open arms.

On the couple tours my troupe has done, the shows were only possible because the improv communities in the cities we visited were generous enough to give us stage time. Some of them made space for us in existing shows. Some of them arranged for shows and found venues just so we could play. Why? No other reason than the fact that we’re fellow improvisers. We’re in the same club. And so we’ve got the word ‘yes’ embedded in our bones.

If I’m going to be totally honest, the world-wide improv club can feel more like an Improv Cult sometimes. Get a group of improvisers together and it’s all we can talk about. Put one of us in a party full of non-improvisers, and we’ll probably try to convert someone to join our cult. “Oh man, you need to take an improv class!” We must be the happiest cult-members the world’s ever seen. It can feel a little weird at times, when I take a step back and try to imagine it from the eyes of someone who’s not in the cult. On the other hand, if our cult’s supportive and positive energy is the outlier, maybe everyone else is wrong. (Hmm, spoken like someone who’s been truly brain-washed. I digress…)

I am musing on this on the evening of the Austin improv scene’s annual Thanksgiving Potluck. It’s basically a giant love-fest, bringing together hundreds of improvisers in Austin, spanning the 5 or 6 dedicated improv theaters in town. People eat and drink and, with each passing year, marvel at how ridiculously huge and supportive the scene has gotten. And the most amazing tradition is what has been dubbed the “love notes”: everyone writes their name on a small manila envelope and hangs it on a clothes line. Throughout the evening, people write little notes—one or two lines—telling each other how awesome they are, and drop them in the envelopes. When you leave the event, you’ve got this thick stack of love notes, scrawled by fellow improvisers.

Now, I am not one for hippie, “peace and love, man” sentiments, but that’s pretty damn cool. And it should, could, and has extended into the greater improv community, beyond the Austin city limits. Really, the love notes are just a heightened version of the support that improvisers give each other, on and off-stage. It’s the same sentiment that had my troupe performing in random improv theaters on the west and east coasts of the US. It’s the same thing that makes you feel instantly more connected to someone when you find out they’re an improviser, too. You both speak the same language. You’re both in the special club. 

Granted, sometimes our International Cult of Improv has some disagreements. Oh, you know the ones: This type of improv is childish. That type of improv is too structured. This warm-up is infuriating and pointless. This kind of improv got roast beef. This kind of improv had none. But when it comes down to it, we’re all doing the same thing. Short-form, long-form, narrative, Harold, montage, fast-paced, slow-and-patient. We are all on stage, doing this adult version of make-believe, because of how amazing it feels to support and be supported unconditionally, by reflex. That, in my opinion, is the ideal zen-like improviser state that we all aspire to: supportive by default.

So, I feel pretty lucky to be a part of our little cult. And the more I do improv, the more I learn the importance of supporting others, the way I’ve been supported. It sounds pretty cliché and cheesy, even as I write it, but it’s absolutely true.

Now who wants some Kool-Aid?

Previous guests: RobYn Slade, Ian Parizot, Rachel Klein, Dave Morris, From the old blog

Guest Writer: RobYn Slade (Winnipeg)

RobYn Slade is an improviser, a writer, and a performer (the script-remembering kind) from Winnipeg, Manitoba. She performs with Outisde Joke and the Dungeons & Dragons Improv Show, teaches improvisation at Prairie Theatre Exchange, and works with the Manitoba Improv League. RobYn loves improv. And grilled cheese sandwiches. 

First of all, let me say, it is a thrill to be sharing this on the Montreal Improv blog. It’s like a one-stop shop for learning and laughing. So here we go!

I love improv. I love everything about it. But the thing I love most about improv is holding the key to playing any character I’ve ever dreamed of playing in my hot, sweaty little hands. If you’re a television or film actor, there are only so many characters you will ever be cast to play, and it’s entirely dependent on your height, weight, voice, and gender. You can throw on a wig and play a character with a different hair colour, or glue some putty to your face and play an older character, but that’s about it. As a stage actor, there’s a bit more freedom. Suspension of disbelief, right? An audience watching live theatre will forgive the obvious fat suit, AND the almost-Irish accent, AND the 45 year old playing a character who is in their mid-twenties. An improviser has the ultimate range: any character, any age, any ethnicity, anytime. What freedom!

There are incredible improvisers out there who are able to ground themselves in realism or story alone, and I am baffled and delighted by those who can. My brain doesn’t work that way. I find that when I lose my character, I lose everything; all of the fine details of the story disintegrate and I panic. If I ground myself in my characters, I am able to really give myself to the story because no matter what path it takes, I know who am I am. I’m talking minor and major characters alike – knowing who I am makes it clear where I fit into the story so I can spend the rest of the time focusing on supporting my fellow imp-bro-visers.

With that said, here are a few fun tips on making your characters interesting and loveable. (This goes for hate-able ones, too.)

• Make a physical choice. Maybe they’re always fiddling with the seam of their shirt. Maybe they always stand with one shoulder slumped seductively. It’s easy to stay in character when you have a physicality to fall back on. Your physical choice will also inform your character’s choices! A seductively slumped shoulder could inhibit a doctor performing surgery, but might win a president more votes during a campaign speech. Just try it. Slump your shoulder. Now make it seductive. Now you’re a bank teller who convinced a robber to leave without taking any loot, thanks to slumping your shoulder seductively. I win.

• Care. A funny voice will certainly grab the attention of the audience, but they’ll lose interest once they see that the funny voice is all your character has going for them. Your character has to care about what’s happening around them. You’ve got two options: care deeply about the current situation, or yearn desperately to change it. If there’s nothing to care about, there’s no story, and if there’s no story, your audience just paid $5 to breathe the same air as you for 45 minutes. And that’s pretty conceited.

• Be adventurous. Time for another interactive tip. Make a list of characters you’d love to play – A Kindly Mechanic, A Scottish Professor – be specific and write until your hand hurts. Talk openly with the improvisers you perform with about wanting to explore new characters. Make goals. Be open and playful. 

YOU created them, so have fun with them.

xo.

Previous guests:  Ian Parizot, Rachel Klein, Dave Morris, From the old blog

Guest Writer: Ian Parizot (Paris)

Here’s the third guest piece in our new weekly series. Each Monday we’ll have a new guest dropping by with some thoughts on improv. So, ladies and gentlemen: Paris’s Ian Parizot.

Ian Parizot is our guest this week. He is a member of the French improv troupe “Eux” (which “imported” a bunch of formats in a Match d’Impro-dominated France), an improv nerd and a Johnstone enthusiast. As any good Frenchman, he likes theory and ideals a little too much. He blogs (sometimes in English) his impro thoughts and rants at http://improviser.fr/blog

Main differences between the Keith Johnstone and Del Close styles (in my opinion) – Or why I think it’s important to focus on one style

Like many improvisers, I try to learn from as many teachers as I can. Looking to learn more, but lacking teachers, I delved in as many improvisation and acting theory books as I could. For better or worse, I became an improvisation geek. I am now aware that there are different “families” in improvisation, and that they are more or less related : the heritage of the Commedia Dell’Arte, Jacques Copeau and his work on movement and improvisation, Jacob Levy-Moreno and Psychodrama, Viola Spolin and Theatre Games, the Second City style, Del Close and the Harold, Keith Johnstone and TheatreSports, Augusto Boal and Forum Theatre, Robert Gravel and Match d’Impro, The Annoyance Style. And by no means is this list exhaustive.

Many improvisers today are encouraged to learn and explore as many different styles as possible, and even to cherry-pick things from the various improvisation families and create their own “personal style.”

Yet is that possible? Although some argue that the basis to all improv theory is the same – take for example the ‘yes-and’ rule – and that improvisers from different styles will always manage to improvise together at, say, international festivals, I have actually found it very difficult to bring together the teachings of different styles. Of course there are contradictions between styles. This seems natural. Improvisation theories often even contradict themselves.

But are these contradictions superficial or are they actually more profound? My personal opinion is that yes, they are very deep. Irreconciliable, even.

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Guest Writer: Rachel Klein (Boston)

Here’s the second guest piece in our new weekly series. Each Monday we’ll have a new guest dropping by with some thoughts on improv. So, ladies and gentlemen: Boston’s Rachel Klein.

Rachel Klein is Head of Improv at ImprovBoston and player-coach of Maxitor, one of IB’s Harold casts. Before moving to Boston, she trained at the Second City Conservatory and iO Theatre in Chicago, and performed with the Harold team Chopper at iO. In addition to performing, coaching and teaching improv, Rachel’s comedy writing can be seen on the websites The Smew and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. You can read more of her improv musings on her blog, The House That Del Built. 

My college best friend’s then-boyfriend (and now husband) once said something to me that, at the time, seemed sort of nice but trivial. What he said was this: “I can’t decide if you’re funny because funny things happen to you, or because regular things happen to you and you see what’s funny about them.”

My response then was, “Well, probably both…or something.” And then we probably ate some pizza…or something. But the comment has stuck with me all these years, which (my odd propensity for remembering minute details of my life aside) suggests there might be more to it than I gave credit for at the time.

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Guest Writer: Dave Morris (Victoria)

Here’s the first guest piece in our new weekly series. Each Monday we’ll have a new guest dropping by with some thoughts on improv. So, ladies and gentlemen: Victoria’s Dave Morris

Dave Morris is a storyteller and improviser. He’s performed at Festivals around Canada and the world including, but not limited to, Winnipeg, Seattle, Chicago, Berlin, and of course Victoria where he now lives. He spends his days teaching improv classes, performing as a one–man improvised storyteller, and producing The Sunday Night Improv show at the Victoria Event Centre. He is also the Artistic Director of the Paper Street Theatre co. and The Regional Director of the Vancouver Island Region of the Canadian Improv Games. Find him online at [www.davemorrisisa.com]

You can’t model for the rest of your life, so it is important to diversify your career.
-Tyra Banks

The difference between us improvisers and the “talented” Tyra Banks is that we can do what we do for the rest of our lives. We aren’t subject to how pretty we look. But she does raise a very valuable point. Diversification.

There isn’t a lot of demand for the work of an improviser. Don’t get me wrong, there is demand. I am constantly booking/producing shows, workshops, even speaking engagements, and it pays me well enough that I don’t have to work a day job. I’m a career improviser. That said, the majority of my time is not spent improvising. In fact, the act itself takes up a small percentage of my time. I spend most of my time doing one of the following: Scheduling, invoicing, graphic designing, e-mailing, web-designing, reading, learning, travelling, meeting, phone calling/skyping, and other general managing activities.

Being a career improviser, means being more than just an improviser. The moment I decided to improvise for a living, i became a business. Which means I have to do all of the things a business does.

But tell me, this physician of whom you were just speaking, is he a moneymaker, an earner of fees, or a healer of the sick?
-The Republic, by Plato

If you want to be an improviser full time, you need to learn more then just how to improvise. Things I would recommend learning are: 1) Photoshop. Learn to make posters and flyers. The better your posters, the more professional you look. Looking professional is important to a business. 2) Invoices. Learn how to make a nice invoice, and learn how to file those invoices. Getting paid is a very important part of being a business. 3) Web design. Learn to make a website, or at the very least, learn how to set up a Wordpress site and customize it. An online presence is incredibly important for an independent business.

These are only a few of my recommendations, but I think you get the idea. There isn’t enough money in the world of improvisation to pay one person to book workshops and produce shows, have another person design all the graphics and posters, and have three or four people just teach and perform. If that’s what you’re looking for, you should either start looking for a day job, or learn to live a very modest life. If you want to be an improviser full-time you need to learn to be more then one thing, learn to be MacGyver, Rambo, or Tyra Banks. Learn to diversify.

Previous guests: From the old blog