If you’ve done long form improv for any length of time you’ll know that there are lots of different formats and structures around. Perhaps you’ve heard of The Harold, The Deconstruction, The Slacker, The Armando, Close Quarters, Cat’s Cradle, The Pretty Flower, The Mini Bar, The Bat?

You shouldn’t have heard of The Mini Bar, we just made that one up. But the point is that there are a trillion ways to structure a long form improv show.

Joe Bill, one of our favourite directors and co-founder of The Annoyance Theatre, teaches that really structure is a produce of mindset. In other words, structure comes about when a certain group of improvisers decide to do long form together for an extended amount of time.

The Committee (1960s San Francisco) didn’t sit down and create The Harold on paper, it evolved over time being shaped by the people who were in the room – their strengths, their preferences, their sense of what improv was and what it could be.

So when we learn a structure, we’re learning someone else’s improv to some extent. Wouldn’t it be better if we adopted a mind set rather than prescribing a structure? If we did that, instead of studying THE Harold, we could study OUR Harold, OUR Deconstruction, OUR Close Quarters. The form that’s already in the room with us.

And more than that we could go on to create our own forms based on the expertise in the room. Something entirely new based on the way we’d like to play.

This class is an experiment. It’s a risk, a new way of doing things. Chris promises to create new exercises especially for the group, to really create a bespoke class for the people who take it – resulting in new ideas, new structures and new ways to do improv.

It might work brilliantly, it might fail gloriously. It will PROBABLY do both simultaneously.

Anyone up for that?

Intended for experienced regularly performing improvisers who have completed previous advanced improv and long-form courses.