Freeform!
One day workshop with Niall Ashdown.
Improvisation is a wonderful way to explore your creativity but how much structure do we need in order to explore the possibilities?
A lot of improv has structures and strictures that can give a performer both a sense of security and of limitation.
What happens when we throw away the formats and formalities and play without boundaries?
In this workshop, we shall be investigating ways to identify stories, find new points of concentration and moments of change, and escape the sometimes restricting conformity that can both facilitate and frustrate our creative impulses.
Niall Ashdown is a hugely experienced performer and teacher.
We will be exploring his favourite mode of improvisation, and the mood will be light, playful and pressure-free!
A basic knowledge of improvisation will help, of course, but it’s not mandatory.
next available dates:
Date: Saturday 16th August 2025. BOOK
Time: 12pm – 3pm.
Teacher: Niall Ashdown.
Price: £55.
Venue: Old Diorama Arts Centre, Regent’s Place, 201 Drummond St, London NW1 3FG.
Tubes: Warren Street/Euston/Great Portland Street.
Some improv experience is recommended (but not required) for this workshop.
Niall Ashdown
Niall is one of the UK’s finest improvisers and a regular performer with The Comedy Store Players and original cast member of Whose Line is it Anyway!
He is the baritone singer and improviser in Impropera the improvised opera.
He has worked with a wide range of improvising companies including Impropera, Paul Merton’s Impro Chums, Improbable’s Lifegame and The Improbable Musical and The Suggestibles. He has also performed a story-telling and sketch show with improvising quintet Between the Notesled by cellist Matthew Barley.
He has co-devised and performed with some of the UK’s most innovative theatre companies including Improbable, Cartoon de Salvo, Punchdrunk and Told By An Idiot.
Niall has also performed two solo shows Hungarian Bird Festival and The Man Who Would Be Sting both of which were made into radio plays for the BBC, and has appeared at the Young Vic in Annie Get Your Gun and Public Enemy.
He has appeared many times on television comedies including Outnumbered (BBC1), Drop the Dead Donkey (Channel 4), Parentsand Whose Line Is It Anyway (Channel 4).
On radio he has written and performed two series of Losers for BBC Radio 4.
He has a written songs for radio plays and stage shows, poetry for Radio 3’s The Verb, and was the author and voice behind Robbo Robson, the Voice of Sport on BBC5 Live’s The Treatment.