improvarama

Oh my, this has been a long time. So sorry about that. Life gets busy and relationships change and work piles on and...before I know it two years goes by without checking in on some important things. How's your improv life? Occasionally someone will find this blog and ask me about improv workshops. Yes, I do them. For the past 8 years they have been in the Boulder and Denver area of Colorado. I'm still here, and yet all that might change. I'm contemplating a moving to the Philadelphia area. We'll see. In any case, if you have questions about improv or if you know 5 or more people who would like to get together to play with improv (in the Boulder area for now) let me know and we can make that happen. It'll be fun! - Doug Smith

I'm still improvising the whole emerging Improvarama scene. I plan to involve others thru a series of workshops and build new kinds of improv, especially in the long form. I also plan to use Improvarama as a place where we can create and share improvisational music.  I recently saw a great performance at the IO West in Hollywood:  Visiting IO West Have you explored how much you can learn from improv? The more that I explore drama, improv, music, and the arts the more opportunity I find for learning and applying that learning across my other  fields of pla y. This week I was in Orange County doing some training and it provided the perfect opportunity to see one of the great active improv venues in the world,  IO West  (formerly known as Improv Olympic West) on Hollywood Boulevard. An outgrowth of the  IO Theater  in Chicago that was founded by Charna Halpern and fueled by the late Del Close (a Chicago legend an "inventor" of the now classic long ...

It's been a busy year. How did a whole year go by without keeping up with this improv blog? Maybe it's because I've been writing on other blogs, traveling around the country, doing short films, and acting in a couple of plays. Yeah, let's go with that. If you are interested in attending an improv workshop in the Boulder - Longmont - Lafayette - Louisville area of Colorado let me know. We tend to do those workshops whenever we have enough people interested. Maybe someday I'll schedule weekly sessions that are open to drop-in playing. For now, as other theater companies have no doubt discovered, space is the problem. Finding the space. So if you also know a spot that would be conducive to improv games and activities, that would be affordable, and is available - let me know. We'd love to play. -- Doug Smith