This is part 2 of a 4 part series. These 32 items are compiled from a list that I brainstormed, and include principles that I learned in workshops from David Koechner, Micah Sherman, Mandy Butler, Kevin Patrick Robbins, Armando Diaz, Dad’s Garage, The Village Theatre, and Automatic Improv, as well as a few of my own thoughts. Reconnect to your scene partner. Focus on [&hellip

  In my previous post, I talked about five reasons why improvisers get stuck in scenes. Ideally, we would stay away from those mistakes and all of our scenes would flow smoothly, but in practice, that’s impossible. Maybe you get thrown off by your partner’s idea, maybe nothing in the scene is affecting you. If you [&hellip

One of the greatest dangers for an improviser is getting stuck in a scene – that sinking feeling when you can tell that a scene is not going well and the audience is not engaged. Your mind freezes, hijacked by the thought of “I don’t know what to do,” and you get stuck in a [&hellip

I just read the following passage in Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art, regarding creative blocks: If I think of the violin as an object to be controlled, if I think of the piano, the pen, the paintbrush, the computer, or my body as objects to be controlled by a subject, an I, then [&hellip

When you take improv classes, you learn a lot about yourself. Before I started improv, I used to think I was a great listener. Then one day in class, after doing a scene with my friend Jonathon about the Loch Ness Monster, our teacher Jan pointed out that Jonathon had asked “Do you think she [&hellip

Also see Part I and Part II To demonstrate the effectiveness of “Yes, And” and how critical it is to good scene work, we use the following exercise on the first day of a new level 1 class. First, we get two volunteers who are “ready to fail” to get up in front of the [&hellip

Malcom Gladwell writes about intution in Blink, and how a glance can gather more information in two seconds than a team of researchers can in months of collecting and reviewing documents that attest to a work of art’s authenticity. Rachel Klein writes about intuition in her tumblr post, The Four I’s of Improv. Here’s an excerpt: [&hellip

For part one, click here: Yes And, Part I The second part of saying “Yes, and” is the “and.” There is a lot of meaning behind that little conjunction. If someone says, “I made you a sandwich,” it is not enough to respond “Thank you for the sandwich.” You are saying yes to their idea, [&hellip

My friend Amy recently directed me to a tumblr by improviser Will Hines called Improv Nonsense. I think he has some really great content, and added his blog to my list of links. His two most recent entries are about teaching improv, something that speaks to me as I recently TAed a level one class. [&hellip

Most people come into improv with misconceptions about what it is going to be like. It’s not just making up stuff as you go without any structure or guidelines; it’s not hopping on stage and acting zany; and it’s not trying to come up with clever puns or witty one-liners. When I started taking classes, [&hellip