The Heart of Improv

I have been practicing long form improv since January 2018. My improv story began when I wandered into a beginner workshop at Curious Comedy in Portland following a sign that said "free improv class here". I loved it instantly and indelibly.

Long form improvisational comedy, if you don’t know, is an ultra-collaborative improv theater style in which players use audience suggestions to make up a series of interconnecting funny scenes (like you would see in a play, though not necessarily with a traditional narrative arc).

I had wonderful, wonderful teachers at Curious. I also watched a lot of improv that, quite simply, blew my mind with a great intensity of delight. It made me laugh so hard and I would just sit in the audience in awe, wondering how on earth these people could be so magically hilarious and heartfelt and wonderful and and and. The improvisers I loved were like gods to me.

I love improv for a lot of reasons. I am going to share some of my thoughts about improv here in a series. Most of these posts are adapted from class emails I wrote for a course I just taught at Santa Barbara Improv called Foundations of Long Form Improv. I found that I had so, so, so much to say on the topic.

In a chat with my friend and multi-modal creative healer counselor collaborator musician artist improviser friend Zöe Dearborn, she suggested that rather than feeling bad about having so, so, so overwhelmingly much to say I should just let myself say it, somewhere.

Then I remembered LionSong is a place where I can say all the things!

So here goes (in the next series of posts). Some thoughts about Improv, the philosophy and feeling of it, & why I feel it is a deeply needed, deeply revolutionary, deeply healing art form that I cannot recommend highly enough. As a path to true, deep collaboration, the joy of co-creation in real time together with loving, capable others, and as a way to realize how much play has to do with what we all are, by nature.

Read the first post in this Improv series here.

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Thumbnail image respectfully borrowed from The Wonderful Things You Will Be, by Emily Winfield Martin.