All Posts

When I hear a student already heightening, I read it as either a breakthrough or a sign of someone with experience. Other players may just laugh naturally at the added detail, while others catch that sudden ah-ha moment where a light bulb finally goes on. Polite agreement never builds momentum, and heightening is what actually moves a scene forward. The standard beginner class leaves students polite instead of creative. Beginning with just yes and tends to point students towa

That workshop with Joe Bill changed how I hear a scene after the offer lands. I had been performing for four years and still thought the entire job was to follow a checklist, so when Joe Bill walked into our room and told us to let our scene partner affect us, I finally understood what he was asking. That's something nobody ever puts on a beginner handout. He was asking me to drop the mechanics and let whatever he handed me actually move through me, which is a step most of us

Seriousness feels safe because it keeps your skills visible, but that safety comes with a tax on the ideas you're actually trying to find. Someone sits in the back row and watches us do a game where we have to accept every object as real. She assumes we're warming up for the actual work, and I used to assume that too. The real shift happens when she sees how much harder the game gets than our actual scenes. You start to notice that the work was happening all along, and nobody

Holding back feels like a small private decision that only costs you. It's neither small nor private, and you're not the one who pays. Someone hands you an invisible banana, and you say, "Oh, a banana, sure." The scene doesn't die right there, but something just happened, and everyone in the room felt it without being able to name it. The usual note afterward is that you dropped the offer. That's true, and it's the least interesting part of what went wrong. Half-committing is

Every improviser learns how to step out into a scene, but the harder lesson is learning when to stay put, and that one applies to a lot more than improv. Two people are in a kitchen scene. It's quiet, it's specific, and something true is starting to surface between them. Back line, four of us are watching, and I can feel at least three people reaching for the door. One of them goes. Big character, big voice, and the kitchen is gone. Here's the part I actually think about afte

Life moves fast, doesn't it? We're all in a constant sprint, juggling emails, meetings, and a seemingly endless stream of notifications. In this always-on world, there’s an almost involuntary urge to fill every silence, to respond instantly, to never leave a gap. But what if one of the most powerful tools for better communication, deeper connection, and even sharper decision-making isn't about what you say or do quickly, but what you don't? What if it's the simple, often-over

We've all been there, you're in a scene, or a meeting, or staring at a blank page, and instead of making a move you wait, you comment, you hedge, you interrupt someone else's momentum because it feels safer than committing to your own. That's not just an improv habit, it's a life habit. And improv is the gym where we unlearn it. The Cost of Waiting for Permission Every time you wait for someone else to go first so you can react, you're handing over the steering wheel. In a sc

You've seen it. That improv scene where every move lands, every line sparks, and the energy in the room is electric. And then there are the other scenes: perfectly fine, maybe a few laughs, but nothing truly memorable. What's the difference? Often, it comes down to one simple, yet profound, concept: SHOWING UP. We all "show up" to practice or a show. We're physically there, we've got our warm-ups done, and we know the rules. But there's a chasm between simply being present an

It sounds counter-intuitive, doesn't it? We're often chasing the biggest laugh, the most absurd gag, or the quickest punchline in improv, but I've found that the shows that truly resonate, the ones that stay with you and make the humor land harder, often have a secret ingredient: a little bit of pathos. This isn't about turning your comedy into a drama; it's about adding a touch of authentic human feeling that makes the funny moments shine even brighter. The Power of Emotiona

The intentionality-as-bait concept makes sense on paper, especially for stand-ups, but it's only one door in. There's a concept floating around in improv teaching right now that I've been thinking about. The idea that intentionality, having a clear point of view, a want, a direction in your scene, is the hook that draws new people into improv. It makes sense on paper. Stand-up comedians, for example, already understand this because creating a set is inherently intentional. Yo

Every group of people trying to do something together eventually faces a choice between two operating systems. The first is the management model. You've seen it in every committee, board, and club you've ever joined. There's a strategic plan, a meeting agenda with time stamps, a succession chart, a membership drive template, and a binder of bylaws that gets updated once a decade. It's safe, legible, and predictable. It's also why most community organizations spend their energ

I've learned that one of the most humbling and beautiful things about improv is that you carry gifts you don't even know you're holding until someone else reaches for them. Here's how it usually happens for me. I step onstage, I make an offer, something small, maybe just a look or a word or the way I hold my body in a certain space. I think I know what I'm doing. I have a vague sense of where the scene might go. And then my scene partner takes what I gave them and suddenly th

The improv insight that'll change how you see office downtime. Here's the thing about improv shows that most audiences never see. The real magic doesn't happen on stage. It happens in the wings, in the green room, in that two-minute pocket between scenes where a performer leans over and whispers "hey, what if we try this on the next beat?" That off-stage moment, the one with no audience, no pressure, no script, that's where the best ideas actually surface. And it's exactly th

Here's something I've noticed teaching improv workshops, people can do beautiful two-person scenes all day but put five of them on stage together and suddenly it's a traffic jam. We spend so much time on duos that group scenes become this mysterious thing nobody quite taught us how to handle. The truth is they work differently and once you get the hang of them they're some of the most fun you can have on stage. The single most useful thing I can tell you about group scenes is

Every good improv scene has an invisible referee. Not a person in the scene telling people what to do, but a shared understanding between the players of what counts. Think about it. In a pickup basketball game nobody stops to check the rulebook, but everyone knows when a shot matters and when someone traveled. That knowing is the referee, and it lives in the room, not in any one player. I've been thinking about this after reading Will Hines's latest piece on intentionality ve

For years I talked about commitment in improv as a performance thing. Commit harder, go bigger, don’t bail on your choice. All true. But I was framing it wrong. I was framing it as courage when really it’s something much more specific. It’s trust. The Unspoken Agreement Every improv scene starts with a silent contract. I’m going to offer something real and I need you to treat it like it matters. And I’ll do the same for you. That only works if both people actually follow thro

There's a moment in every improv show where the audience forgets it's not scripted. The scene is moving, the characters are alive, the story is landing clean. It looks like magic, like pure spontaneous creation flowing out of nothing. And that's exactly what the audience is supposed to think. But anyone who's ever actually done improv knows the truth. What looks like beautiful chaos on stage is held together by very specific frameworks. Beat patterns. Game moves. Status trans

I've been doing improv long enough to know that most people think it's just about being funny on the spot. And sure, there's some of that. But the real magic of a great improv set isn't spontaneity, it's structure. The same way a jazz musician needs to know the rules before they can break them, an improviser needs a framework to build something that lands. So here's how I think about putting together a successful improv set, and more importantly, how that same process can hel

Your scene partner is standing three feet away, waiting. The audience is watching. You have no idea who you are, where you are, or what\'s happening. Your brain offers you a premise: maybe we\'re zookeepers, it suggests, or astronauts, or estranged siblings at a funeral. That\'s the trap. The moment you reach for an invented premise, you\'ve stopped looking at the one person who can tell you everything you need to know. The most powerful way to start a scene is to notice what

My wife has ADHD. And I've taught enough improv classes over the years to know she's not alone in the room. A lot of the adults who show up to learn improv are walking in with brains that move different, and they don't always know that what they're looking for is a structure that finally fits how they think instead of fighting it. So when Chris Gethard's guest column landed in my inbox the other day, one line hit harder than the rest. He said improv unlocks ADHD in kids. He w