Workshops
“I’ve had the opportunity to work closely with Mona and Shara both onstage as professional improvisers and within the coaching and facilitation realm through several adult and teen organizations. These two are a bright future for improv and applied improv training: intelligent, talented, energetic, curious, immensely pleasant and highly dependable. They have a universal ‘likeability’ stemming from their attentiveness to those around them that enables them to thrive with students of any age.”
“Solid instructors. Very knowledgeable of their craft. Their experience, passion, and joy illuminate the classroom. If you have a chance to practice with them, I recommend Mona & Shara.”
We love to teach! Browse the following offerings and find the perfect workshop for performance skills, formats, and improv offstage.
Participants: We work both with theaters for open-enrollment classes and with performance ensembles who want to explore these skills and formats as a team
Timing: Our workshops can range anywhere from 2 hours to weekend-long intensives. Contact us to learn more about our specific offerings and what will serve your group or theater best. We’re improvisers so no matter what you want, chances are we can make it work!
Performance Skills
Attention & Playfulness
Learn how to be an improviser everyone wants to play with. The best performers are often not the loudest or flashiest players but rather the ones intent on delighting their partners.
Characters & Relationships
Relationships between characters with rich backstories, personalities and physical identifiers are the foundation of good stories. In this workshop, pick up techniques to find unique characters quickly and to communicate to your fellow players and the audience the parameters of your relationships.
Clowning for Improvisers
The art of clowning is all about using your entire body to convey meaning. If you are an improviser who feels disconnected from your body, this workshop will teach you ways to bridge that gap in your performance.
Genres
Learn how to create worlds and characters in specific genres. Have a genre your group would like to play? We’ll help you out! If you’re looking for inspiration, some of our current favorites are westerns, film noirs, and murder mysteries.
We’ve all grown up hearing and telling stories. In this workshop, you’ll harness your innate storytelling skills to captivate audiences, both in shortform scenes and longer narratives.
Narrative Storytelling
As an improviser, it can sometimes feel like you do the same thing every time the lights come up. Shake it up in this workshop and learn a variety of techniques to begin scenes.
Scene Starts
Want to tell passionate love stories or get into wild fist-fights? This workshop will teach you the down and dirty ways to safely and sensitively show intimacy and violence onstage.
Sex & Violence
An improv stage is a blank canvas for your imagination. In this workshop, learn how to use effective space object and environment work to bring your scenes and stories to life. If, for example, you’ve ever wondered how to jump from the top of a cliff into the ocean below or how to have a scene with five people in five different rooms of one house, then this is the workshop for you.
Space Objects & Wheres
After this workshop, you will have the skills to perform two or more scenes onstage simultaneously, exactly like split-screens in TV and movies. Adding split focus to your improv toolbox will bring movement and variety to your stories.
Split Focus
Formats
Keith Johnstone famously compared his Theatresports™ format to professional wrestling. In this high-energy workshop, we’ll teach you a variety of competitive formats and games, and you’ll learn how to keep the audience on the edge of their seats while maintaining playfulness and support onstage.
Competitive Improv
Perfect for exploring all types of shortform improv--and for planning last-minute performances--this show is wonderful to have in your group's back pocket. Anything goes in this fast-paced shortform format. You won't be writing down any rules, but you will be learning to think on your feet in a whole new way.
Flash Freeform
Whether you are a die-hard Shakespeare fan or you are looking to expand your acting range, improvising in the style of The Bard gives you permission dive in with big with emotions, plot twists and strong character choices. Studying this format will push you to access more power onstage than you thought possible.
Improvised Shakespeare
This format is great for taking big risks and having a lot of fun. At any time during a scene or game, a player can step out to ask the audience, "More or less?" More means you continue the scene, less means you start a whole new scene. The audience gets to control the show, and you get to continue the most fun stories!
More or Less
Learn how to perform a completely improvised two-act play or musical. In this workshop, you’ll explore how to create a strong platform for your story, keep characters consistent over time, and co-create a longer story with your fellow improvisers.
Narrative Longform
Super Scene is one of our favorite improv formats. Not only is it a great way to delve into directed improv and longer narratives, but it’s also a nearly fail-proof way to guarantee your audience has a wonderful time!
Super Scene
Improv Offstage
How to Be a Full-Time Improviser
Don’t let anyone tell you improv is just a hobby! In this interactive talk, we’ll share stories of how we’ve made improv into our full-time careers and get you started on your way to doing the same.
Improv for Writer's Block
Whether you’re writing a novel, screenplay, or series of sketches, it can be easy to feel stuck. In this workshop, learn exercises to get your creative juices flowing again to come up with new characters, ideas and... plot twists!