Improv Comedy Mumbai in Amsterdam 2013 - Workshops

Improv Comedy Mumbai will be back in Amsterdam and give two classes on Saturday the 7th of December:
Workshop 1: 10:00-1:00pm
Workshop 2: 1:30-4:30pm

40 euros per workshop.
70 euros for both.

To sign up, contact Stephanie Blokzijl at improvfuture@gmail.com

The Power of support Improv Workshop. 10:00-1:00pm

Instructor: Adam Dow

If you look good then I look good. This is the foundation of good improvisation. In this intermediate to advance course we focus on radical scene support. This class will work on active listening skills, endowment of other person on stage, attention to detail, and commitment to strong third character entrances. These skills can help you raise the stakes of the scene and make you a more fun improviser to play with. Adam Dow has had over 18 years of professional Improv experience from
working at Seattle Theater Sports, starting the first Improv group at the University of Washington, bringing the Improv scene to India, and being the main trainer of Whose Line is it Anyways India TV Pilot.

Total Class: 3 hours
Max Students: 15 people

Dance & Singing Improv Workshop. 1:30-4:30pm

Instructors: Drhuv Lohumi, Naveen Kaushik, and Nigel Rajaratnam

Learn to use improvised singing and dancing to create dynamic musical numbers. From the Indian Improv group that brought Improvised Bollywood to Amsterdam for Impro festival in 2012. Experience how to create unique and interesting stage pictures of improvised dancers while integrating dynamic expressive songs based around important plot points of a musical number such as Hero Song, Love Song, Sad Song, and a variety of Improvised dance games unique to Mumbai. This highly interactive class will give the students lots of stage time to try out there singing and
dancing skills. Accompanied by the highly talented musician Nigel Rajaratnam get the full experience of Improvised song and dance Mumbai Style.

Total Class: 3 hours

Max Students: 18 people

Workshop with JSTAR from Atlanta

The fabulous JSTAR is coming to Amsterdam!
JSTAR ıs the founder and artıstıc dırector of the 9 year old Basement Theatre ın Atlanta, GA USA. He ıs also the producer of the Spontaneous Combustıon ımprov festıval ın Atlanta ın March (2013 wıll be year 6 for the fest) Jstar has studıed at ıO (ımprov olympıc), Second Cıty and The Annoyance ın Chıcago as well as UCB New York, and Keıth Johnstone. He has also worked wıth everyone (alıve) who has wrıtten an ımprov book! Hıs ımprov style and teachıng combınes the best of the best from all schools ın order to have the most fun on stage! Jstar has travelled the world teachıng and performıng ımprov... ask to see hıs tattoos!

He'll be teaching a workshop on Saturday November 23 about starting scenes in new ways called: THREE STEPS AWAY.
How many times do we get that suggestion from the audience
HAMBURGER... and start the scene... "this is the best Hamburger!"
MOTORCYCLE... "This is the first time I've ridden a motorcycle!"
FOREST..."I've never been to the forest before!"
In this workshop we learn how to expand from the Suggestions
to begin dynamic scenes that will please not only your audience
but you as the actor!

The workshop takes place at Crea in Amsterdam from 1 to 4pm, and costs only 25euros.

Email to anne@easylaughs.nl for more information or to register.

ps If you want to see him perform, he'll take the stage with easylaughs the night before (Friday November 22)

Mischler and More Sci Fi at easylaughs 20th September

On 20th September, Mischler and More premiered their latest genre, Sci Fi. They picked Sci Fi because it’s one that improvisers alway complain as being difficult to do. Mischler and More’s approach is to try as much as possible to recreate a story in that genre. Not going for jokes that destroy that mood,but allowing there to be humour coming from the characters and situations. If that happens. They are also fine if the story is more tragic.

Their secret to science fiction, as with all stories and all improv, is that it is all about relationships and the needs of the characters. If some of those characters happen not to be human or happen to be mechanical, it doesn’t matter.

Mischler and More will be back soon with more visions of the future, watch this space (pun intended).

Epische Impro update

Een passepartout-houder beschreef zijn ervaringen bij de Epische Impro als volgt:

"Een unieke improtoneelervaring. Ik was de hele dag ondergedompeld in een goed geregisseerde soap, gespeeld door de beste improspelers, met spannende verhaallijnen die zich over meerdere uren uitstrekten en "round characters" die hele ontwikkelingen doormaakten, inclusief catharsissen die me echt raakten. Ik raakte gehecht aan de personages doordat ik ze zoveel beter kon leren kennen dan in een stuk van normale lengte. Bovendien was het twaalf uur lang hilarisch, ik heb erg veel gelachen. De spelers waren heerlijk ontspannen en genoten er zichtbaar ook zelf enorm van. Door de tijdsduur groeiden spelers en publiek bovendien naar elkaar toe en bereikte het contact tussen spelers en publiek een intensiteit die bij een normale improvoorstelling nooit gehaald kan worden. Acteurs, publiek, zaal en verhaal werden één. Beter dan "binge viewing"!"

Help us improve the reach of improvisation

All Improv has done lots over the last few years to help improve the quality of improv in Amsterdam, supporting shows, festivals, workshops and other initiatives. We are very pleased with everything we have helped to achieve.

We would now like to give more emphasis to another of our goals – to increase the reach of improv. This means bringing improv to a wider audience – more than just the family, friends and other improvisers that make up a lot of improv audiences. We will be giving special attention to initiatives that help to achieve that goal.

Examples of projects we consider to have definitely increased the reach include Impro Battle and IMPRO Amsterdam festival.

We are still considering ad-hoc projects for this year; and projects for next year will be considered in February 2014.

Help ons het bereik van impro te vergroten

All Improv heeft de laatste jaren veel gedaan om de kwaliteit van impro in Amsterdam te helpen verbeteren. We ondersteunen shows, festivals, workshops en andere projecten. We zijn zeer tevreden met de bijdrage die we de afgelopen jaren hebben kunnen leveren.

We willen vanaf nu ook meer de nadruk leggen op één van onze andere doelstellingen - het vergroten van het bereik van impro. Dat houdt in dat we met impro een groter publiek willen bereiken - meer dan de familie, vrienden en andere improspelers die nu vaak naar voorstellingen komen. We zullen daarom vanaf nu extra aandacht schenken aan projecten die dit doel helpen bereiken.

Voorbeelden van projecten die een ander, breder publiek trekken zijn bijvoorbeeld Impro Battle en IMPRO Amsterdam.

Voor 2013 is er nog ruimte om een klein aantal projecten te ondersteunen, dus als je een plan hebt, mail ons dan. Projecten voor 2014 zullen in Februari 2014 in behandeling worden genomen

Artikeltje over impro-jaaropleiding 2012-2013

De jaaropleiding van Andre Besseling geeft je veel!
De opleiding heeft mij inzicht gegeven in wijzen van spelen, zoals waar je meer van mag laten zien of waar het juist ingetogener mag.
Ook heb ik nu zicht op mijn uitstraling als speler, zoals hoe doe je niets en wanneer laat je zien dat je niets doet, wat valt het publiek op en hoe gebruik je dat in jouw voordeel.
Ik heb veel technieken aangereikt gekregen. Technieken, die je ondersteunen in het gebruiken van je fantasie, je beelden, je onuitgesproken woorden, je gevoelens en gedachten, welke talrijk toegepast (kunnen) worden in verschillende speelvormen.
Gedurende het jaar merkte ik dat mijn improviserend spelen zich steeds meer ontwikkelde!

Voor mij is het gevolg van de opleiding dat improviseren aantrekkelijker is geworden, op het toneel, op straat als een kunst en kunde, als een stijl van leven voor elke dag.

Hielkje Dijk.

Tim Orr (USA) - Advanced Wheres and Action

Tim Orr is an actor and trainer from San Francisco, who played with renowned groups like 3 For All and True Fiction Magazine. He now owns his own company Improv Playhouse of San Francisco and has been visiting The Netherlands every two years since he performed at the Amsterdam impro festival in 2005.

For his 2013 tour he visited 3 countries to teach Dutch, Belgian and French improvisers (almost) everything he knows that can add to better improvising.

And it started all with the weekend intensive Advanced Wheres and Action. About this workshop Tim said: "I haven’t taught this yet in Amsterdam. I think that people would love it!"

After 2,5 days of swimming in the Olympics, getting lost in horror houses, flying helicopters and chasing murderers on a merry-go-round, that was indeed what had happened: all 14 participants loved it. And each other. And Tim for inspiring each of them tremendously. 

To close, the master himself speaks:

"Many thanks to all my students, friends and colleagues in Amsterdam and throughout The Netherlands for an awesome month of improv!  It's an honor to work and play with you.  Special thanks to Lady Laura Doorneweerd for a great job of organizing all the workshops, and also to All Improv for its support. Hope to see you next year!" 

Mischler and More

Mischler and More is a collaboration between two established Amsterdam-based improvisers, Nicole Mischler and Peter More. Nicole and Peter have been working together for years in various groups and decided to use their obvious chemistry and love of a challenge to try creating genre-based narrative longform show with just the two of them. By really delving into the genre and avoiding the usual superficial, cheap jokes of much improv genre work they have worked on two well-received "formats" so far, in the style of Shakespeare and Film Noir. There is the promise of more to come.

Thanks to allimprov and easylaughs help, they were able to quickly get off the ground and be dressed for the part. They have even already started making an impact on the festival circuit, starting with the huge Chicago Improv Festival, performing as one of five international groups. Their next festival is the less-well-known Delft Fringe and the hope to have another show in Amsterdam before that comes out.

Like them on Facebook to be kept up to date: facebook.com/MischlerMore

Kevin Gillese (Rapid Fire Theatre) teaching two workshops

Kevin Gillese of Rapid Fire Theatre fame is coming to Amsterdam and teaching two workshops:

1. Shortform impro comedy: Saturday April 20th, 13:00 - 15:30, Crea Amsterdam.
Price: € 30,- per person. Max number of participants: 12. Experience level: All

Description:
Kevin has performed more Theatresports than anything else, and in this workshop he will be bringing all his favourite games and structures to play around with. You will brush up on some games that you have forgotten about, and learn some new ones too. In addition to this the instructor will share his personal tips and tricks for strong short form scenes. As we all know, having strong improv skills is only half the work, the other half is knowing how to play the format that you're in, and that's what this workshop is all about: mastering the art of short, improvised comedy scenes.

2. Narrative in longform: Saturday April 20th, 16:00 - 19:00, Crea Amsterdam.
Price: € 30,- per person. Max number of participants: 12. Experience level: Must have some experience with long form improv.

Description:
Kevin's personal improv philosophy is that narrative is a fundamental part of almost every type of improvised theatre, and that not enough focus is given to developing those storytelling skills. In this workshop Kevin will go over all the building blocks of narrative (objectives, super objectives, conflict, narrative arcs, etc.) and then lead the group through a variety of exercises designed to strengthen those specific muscles.

Kevin is mostly known from his 2-men improv group "Scratch". He performs all over the world and has a wonderful style of teaching.

Apply by e-mailing to: david@groenbrothers.com.

Payment can be cash at the workshop, or if preferred by invoice.

OFFER: if you attend both workshops, you pay only € 50 for 2 workshops!