Santa Barbara Improv Workshop

Wow! We just topped last week’s attendance with 22 people in class last night, including me. Four of the players were brand new to improv, and they still jumped up and participated in just about everything.
The camera got passed around a fair amount. There were at least 4 people that I saw taking pictures. I’m [...]

Once again, Bill Arnett at iO Chicago wrote up a great post about scene work. This time he discusses the problem with being coy about an object or situation in a scene. We’ve all seen the problem where some object in a scene is described in indirect terms: how amazing or disturbing it is, how [...]

The Santa Barbara Improv website is back up and running. We are now officially hosted at www.sbimprov.com, so be sure that your links are addressed correctly. I still have the members.cox site, but it should be directing you to the new home page.
Just a quick note to warn folks that I’m going to be making [...]

If you are having problems getting to our front webpage (http://www.sbimprov.com), I am working on correcting that. For now, this blog is hosted at another location, so it shouldn’t suffer while the main page is being corrected.
Sorry about the inconvenience!

I want to thank Andy for grabbing the camera and taking these shots.
Last night was a big class, with 21 people including me. We still got everyone through 5 games, separate from the warm-up exercises.
These pictures don’t capture everyone, but I picked out 6 that I think represent the class pretty well.
This was a panel [...]

Dyna Moe at Nobody’s Sweetheart is putting together an Improv Infographic that explains a Harold. Roughly in the form of a flow chart, all the phases (beats) are illustrated along with an indication of the flow, timing, and points of focus. It’s a pretty fun graphic although she hasn’t finished it, yet. It’s possible that [...]

This post doesn’t directly address improv performance, improv in Santa Barbara, nor improv techniques. This is more along the lines of my post on Soviet Era humor. I see these as examples of how humor is a common component of the human condition, no matter how horrific or oppressed that condition may be. This post [...]

I come from an improv background which advocated NO QUESTIONS. The core reasoning around this rule is based on very sound, scene building principles. A questions doesn’t usually add information to a scene. And what’s worse, a question typically demands that your partner supply additional, specific information.
A question is usually asked to avoid defining something [...]

It’s official. We have Jefferson Hall reserved for the next class recital. Here are the specifics so that you can start letting friends and family know:
Date: Saturday, September 30, 2006
Time: 8:00 pm until 9:30 pm
Location: Jefferson Hall, 1525 Santa Barbara Street
I passed around a sign up sheet at the last class and I’ll continue signing [...]

Here’s the thing: I’m not sure whether this is an amazingly ironic moment, or a setup by a very clever improvisor in the workshop.
We rent a small performance space for our workshop, and I usually arrive a couple of minutes early to start setting up. Last week I unlocked the door, and there on the [...]