Intro to Improv
About the workshop: Intro to Improv: Learn the basics of improvisational theatre. This class will help you with teamwork, spontaneity, and creativity. You’ll learn the basics of improv, and get to play some of the most fun and well known improv comedy games.
About the coach: Mike Young has more than 20 years’ experience performing and teaching improv comedy. He has performed with a number of local improv troupes, including Mprov, Screaming Puppets, Improv Now!, and The Improper Imps of Improv. Mike has performed improv comedy at such lofty venues as The Kennedy Center, Center Stage, The Lyric Opera House, and The National Theater. He has teaching improv for The Laurel Mill Playhouse.
***
Long Form Improv:
About the workshop: Long Form Improv: Learn the techniques taught by Chicago’s Second City and New York’s UCB Theater’s. The schools that launched the careers of many SNL greats. In this course you will learn how to improvise comedic scenes by learning the primary fundamentals of improvisation, making you more confident, trusting and graceful on stage and in life. Learn how to say “yes, and…,” make positive choices, initiate and commit to scenes, heighten, use tag-outs and walk-ons, and deliver real-life monologues. This coaching style emphasizes creating a rich environment for your scenes, committing to your decisions and your scene partners. With the improv field becoming more competitive, the sooner you can hone these skills, the better!
About the coach: Jill Bresnahan is a new resident of Hamilton, VA. Jill studied Improv at the UCB Theater, The Magnet Theater and The New York Conservatory for the Dramatic arts. She performed regularly in NYC with her troupe, The Agency Bureau. With over 6 million views on YouTube and Funny or Die, Jill is best known for her role as Step Mamma Smalls in the Rolling Stones featured web comedy, The Smalls Family, based on the lyrics of the Notorious BIG. She is also known for her role as Sandy in the viral web series, NFL Rhyme Reel, which was later picked up by the NFL and Pepsi. In New York she also worked as a productions assistant and stand-in for many large motion pictures and television shows.
To register for any workshop, email [email protected] or call 571-477-9444.
***
Other improv workshops are available. Take as many workshops as you like! No two workshops are exactly the same.
Intermediate Improv: For those who already have some improv experience under their belt. If you know how to listen and build, but want to learn more, this class if for you. Here we will focus on storytelling, object work, and a character at the start of a scene.
About the coaches:
Katie Hudson’s passion for theatre started at a young age performing with local theatres such as Growing Stage, Pickwick Players, and Sterling Playmakers. During her young adult career, she studied Musical Theatre at an advanced level and, by her senior year in high school, taught her first class as a Teacher’s Aid for a freshman Basic Acting class. During her collegiate years, she performed in main stage shows such as Medea, Romeo and Juliet, Ice Wolf, Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Speed of Darkness. She also followed the path of teaching by directing studio shows such as Bringing All Back Home, Sight Unseen, and Reckless. Katie graduated from Radford University with her Bachelor’s degree in Theatre with a focus in both Performance and Directing. Katie has worked as a Stage Manager, Director of a Theatre Department and as a Director of an After-School Program. With a firm belief that everyone is a singer and everyone is an actor, Katie strives to find pieces that both fit the need of the individual student’s learning process and challenge them to take their skills to the next level yet give them the confidence they need to push them farther.
Lori Muhlstein is an award-winning performer and director and has been in the Northern Virginia theatre scene for more than 20 years. She is a StageCoach Theatre company member and recently performed in Exit Stage Death. She is an experienced trainer who thinks on her feet on a daily basis!
John C. Waldron has been working as an actor, instructor, and director for over two decades. He received a BFA in Theatre from Virginia Commonwealth University. John teaches theatre classes and workshops with Mount Vernon Community Children’s’ Theatre, Compass Homeschool Enrichment, Dodgeball Theatre, NUR Montessori, The Little Theatre of Alexandria, and the Prince William County Senior Center in which he created and formed The Past Time Prime Time Players. Productions that he has directed include Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at Aldersgate Theatre and The Beverly Hillbillies at MVCCT. He can be seen in the movie Talk To Me as well as an episode of Investigative Discovery Channel’s Who the Bleep? as a Doo Wop singer.
