Drop In Improv
with Clifford and Dixie of the Fun Institute
Treat yourself to two hours of Fun with Adults. Bring your  intermediate improv skills and wake up all your senses, your instant instincts, get Rowdy and Play! We do Mental Jazzercise for the imagination and aerobics for the sense of humor. Stretching your mind and boundaries with humor and revelry. Each class explores a different aspect of Improvisational Acting. Participants start in group and partner warm-ups, and end by performing scenes and games for the class.

Laughter guaranteed! This is Your time to cut loose!

Pricing: Drop In Improv is an ongoing class with special pricing. The first class is free. The next ten are $20 per class, then you get the Friends of Fun Discount for $15 per class.

For more information visit: www.funinstitute.com

Breaking out of the Scene 
with Asaf Ronen
Learn how to go beyond the linear storytelling of improvisation by incorporating editing and presentation techniques appropriated from independent films like Amelié, The Royal Tenenbaums and Reservoir Dogs. Techniques will be shown on developing a group's awareness to all the possibilities that are available to a group at any given moment in an improv scene including ways to build mood, theme and character.

Instructor: Back to SCIF by popular demand, Asaf Ronen is the creator and Editor-in-Chief of YESand.com, a website devoted to improvisation, and is the author of Directing Improv: Show the Way By Getting Out of the Way. Having been involved in improv since 1990, Asaf has performed with NY Theatresports, ComedySportz, and several other troupes out of New York City, most recently the duo Imp. which does improvised vignettes using as few words as possible. As a coach and director, he has worked with the all-girl group goga, the improvised comic book adventure show Ka-Baam!!, and Death in the City, a dramatic longform improv piece, at the NY Fringe Festival. Asaf has taught improvisation in Canada,Great Britain, Norway and in seventeen of The United States at festivals or through regional theaters, as well as throughout NYC¹s public school system as a resident artist through LEAP, New Horizons and as part of Weist-Barron¹s ACTeen program. In 2000, he worked with Cirque du Soleil as a scout for improvisational talent. Currently, he resides in Austin, TX where he is Managing Director of the Austin Improv Collective and he produces, performs and teaches improvisation through Coldtowne Theater.

For more information visit: www.yesand.com

FREE-Form 
with Paul Dome, Dave Sawyer, and Sasha Goldberg of ImprovBoston
This workshop leads participants through a specialized form of free-form which is a combination of the theatricality of long-form with the playfulness of short-form resulting in a very unique style of improvisation.

Instructors: Paul Dome started performing with ImprovBoston in 2001 with Micestro and then joined the Mainstage cast in 2002. A Cubs fan in Red Sox nation, Paul originally hails from the suburbs of Chicago. Over the past 7 years, Paul has studied under various improv gurus at theaters from across the country , including Second City, ImprovOlympic, Upright Citizens Brigade, ImprovAsylum and ImprovBoston. Additionally, he has performed throughout New England and the US as well as internationally in Toronto and Puerto Rico. Past performances at ImprovBoston include Secret Society, Writer's Block, Radio Hour, George & Martha, The ImprovBoston Holiday Spectacular, Bert, and Phys Ed with Coach Crotchky - a character-based improv show where he played Coach Crotchky. He has written for several ImprovBoston original productions and dabbled in voice over and video work. Recently, Paul became an ImprovBoston instructor and is excited about sharing his passion for the craft with others. As a final thought, Paul contends the Chicago-style hot dog is about the most perfect food.

Dave Sawyer has been performing at ImprovBoston since 2005. Previous credits at IB include UnNatural Selection, Comedy in the Round, and Groaners & Boners: Schtick it to Vaudeville. In addition to performing with Mainstage, Dave makes improvised movies with Neutrino. He also writes and performs sketch comedy with The Uncommonwealth and in his two-man show, Sawyer & Hurley which is performed throughout the year in Boston and New York. He was a member of Boston's The Tribe in the sketch comedy troupe, Comedy Bronze. He's a Chicago native but grew up on Martha's Vineyard. There, he appeared in numerous productions at the Vineyard Playhouse and was a longtime member of the Island's popular WIMP comedy troupe. He has studied and performed improv for over 12 years is a graduate of the Second City conservatory. This summer, he will be appearing in Law & Puppet, an improvised Law & Order-style crime drama - but with puppets.

Sasha Goldberg currently performs with ImprovBoston's Mainstage and Rondo, ImprovBoston's premier harold team. Past groups at ImprovBoston include Theatersports, Micetro, Unnatural Selection, and Neutrino Video Project. She also has taken part in many ImprovBoston Showcase Shows, most memorably Backstory (a reverse narrative structure), Pirate Lives (Noel Coward meets Blackbeard), The Robert Cycle (improvised Shakespeare), and BlueScreen (a live film show), and has performed at the Providence Improv Festival in Providence, RI, and the Dirty South Improv Festival in North Carolina. She has also been a member of GEVA Comedy Improv in Rochester, NY, and has studied with Joe Bill, Marjorie Zohn, Will Luera, and Jeff Griggs.

For more information visit: www.improvboston.com

Building Characters 
with Kevin McShane
Tired of playing yourself in scenes? Or just playing yourself with a funny accent? In this workshop, Kevin McShane will provide you with the keys to creating engaging and fully-realized characters completely on the spot through a simple combination of physical and verbal choices. See how easy and enjoyable it can be to expand your range of characters in this fun-filled workshop.

Instructor: Kevin McShane is one half of the improv duo Irish Mutts. A founder of the long-running college improv group The Sunshine Scouts, Kevin currently performs weekly with the acclaimed LA-based Harold team Trophy Wife at the iO West. You should buy him a drink.

Shakespeare for Improvisers 
with Suzanne Schrag of Um..Gee..Um Improv
When your troupe wants to improvise film noir or a western, you study that genre, right? This workshop helps you do the same with Shakespeare. You'll learn more about how Shakespeare works in terms of language, scene starts, characters and more.

Working with Shakespeare can energize your acting and charge up your boldness batteries like nothing else. Find out how "playing the verse" makes Shakespeare come alive, and how you can take what you learn about the real thing into your improvisation of this challenging and rewarding genre.

Please come to class prepared with a short speech from one of Shakespeare's plays—10 to 14 lines—memorized as much as possible.

Instructor: Suzanne Schrag is a long-time member of Um…Gee…Um Improv troupe. She has acted with many local theater companies, including Shakespeare Santa Cruz, and has trained with Shakespeare & Company at their winter intensive, which has also been called "Shakespeare boot camp."

For more information visit: www.umgeeum.com

Make Your Improv Top-Focused (ages 13-18)
with Nathan Melcher
Get to the heart of an improv scene at the top of it both as quickly and simply as possible. So many scenes end up trying to figure out what they're about instead of actually being about something. This workshop is dedicated to creating character relationships and stakes that start scenes high while leaving plenty of room to heighten.

Instructor: Nathan Melcher teaches youth and adult improv classes at the Brave New Workshop Comedy Theater in Minneapolis, MN. He trained at the BNW (1999-2000) and in the Minneapolis ComedySportz Minor Leagues (2006) and various improv festival workshops. In 2003, he founded The Caseous Company, the premiere sketch comedy troupe in Wyoming (2003-2005).

For more information visit: www.nathanmelcher.com