Specialty Classes

Actors and non-actors alike can benefit from our specialty classes. Read the descriptions below and check the schedule for dates and times.

Get Your Ass Kicked in August

Four Thursdays in August, four opportunities to get your ass kicked. Each teacher will challenge you in their own way to push your improv skills to the limit.

This is and intermediate to advance level series.

$150 for the month or $50 for an individual class.

August 5th - Get your ass kicked by Dan O’Connor

August 12th - Get your ass kicked by Floyd Van Buskirk

Film Noir

Based on Impro Theatre’s recent hit show LA Noir

Instructor: Brian Lohmann and Dan O’Connor
Long Form Narrative Improv In the Style of Film Noir
Start Date: Wednesday July 7th
Duration: 8 weeks
Cost: $300

For those who love the hard-boiled fiction of Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain and the gritty film noirs their stories inspired, this class will teach you how to improvise in the style of Impro Theatres recent hit, LA Noir. Learn how to use a simple suggestion from an audience and tackle the hard-hitting and sensuous world of L.A. in the 1940’s and 50s – while spontaneously creating a completely original and entertaining story.

Director of LA Noir, Brian Lohmann, and artistic director, Dan O’Connor, will use exercises developed in Impro Theatre’s rehearsal room to teach this 8 week workshop. This class requires previous improv experience. At the end of the class, the students will perform in front of an invited audience.

Inquire if interested in the following classes.

Shakespeare through Improvisation

Instructor: Brian Lohmann
Shakespeare through Improvisation
With Artistic Director Dan O’Connor and Co-Artistic Director Brian Lohmann

This class will explore how Shakespeare can actually help you to be a better actor and a more versatile improviser. Whether it is creating a character or establishing the “where” of a scene, the Bard is a great tool for improvisers. We will also look at how to improvise a play using style and story together and sustaining over 90 minutes without a script. Teachers, actors and directors can deepen their own experiences with rhetorical devices, character motivations and storytelling by adapting techniques that Shakespeare employed in his scripts through the art of spontaneous play.

Brian recently presented a workshop on “Shakespeare through Improvisation” at a conference at NYU, and has taught at the Public Theater’s Shakespeare Lab, the Oregon and Colorado Shakespeare Festivals and was core faculty for the MFA programs at A.C.T. and the Old Globe Theatre/USD.

Dan co-created IT’s Shakespeare UnScripted and has taught genre based narrative improvisation for performers around the world.

Commercial Audition Intensive

Instructor: Jo McGinley
This is an on camera workshop

In this 4 week workshop you will learn the concept of 2nd Circle, proper Breath under pressure, and how to nail a commercial audition.

You will learn improv tools that can save your audition, Slating, Group Scenes, Partner Scenes, speaking to the camera, and Solo Scenes all broken down into how each one is different and what you can do to make them work. We will hone in on the trickiest scenarios and how to slow the ball down and make it work for you. You will see your work on tape throughout the class. Learn the technique of improv so you can build a foundation on which to be spontaneous.

Bio: Jo’s commercial clients include Southwest Airlines, Honeynut Cheerios, Bank of America, Wal-Mart, Lowe’s, Bounty, Merck, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, The Learning Channel, Chrysler, Lending Tree, Progressive Insurance, Ameriquest, Maytag, Primestar, Subway, Nestle Tollhouse, H&R Block, Bell Atlantic, UC Davis Med. Center, Raley’s, Hertz, Nokia and others.

Soap Opera Intensive

with Jessica Jimenez-Perry
(daytime emmy award nominee for Guiding Light)

In this students will learn how to create Classic Soap Characters and improvise
-Classic Soap Storylines
-Soap Themes
-Scene Endings
-Inner Monologues
and the Value of Lies (in the soap genre)

The first four weeks students will learn the art of soap storytelling, soap blocking, and invent strong grounded characters which they will rely on for the remaining four weeks of the course. Week three, students will have the oppotunity to watch and play with cast members of Avalon Terrace in a special class that will focus on show openings and endings. On week four, the class will begin preperation to perform a full episode of a soap they will create in class for their friends and family.

The last Saturday of the course will be a full performance, with wigs, costumes, lights and music.

Teacher Bio: Jessica Jimenez
Jessica appeared on Daytime Television’s The Guiding Light. For two and a half years she starred at Catalina Quesada on the long running daytime soap and in 2002 earned an Emmy Nomination for Outstanding Younger Actress on a Daytime Series. She is currently co-directing the improvised Soap Opera, Avalon Terrace with Jo McGinley.

Focus

Led by Jo McGinley
Once a Month on Sundays,
2-5PM, $249

Quotes from former students about the Focus class:

“Jo’s Focus class is a truly holistic, interdisciplinary approach to removing clutter from our lives and our minds — the accumulated stuff getting in our way, stuff we could be dealing with but often don’t address due to avoidance or delaying tactics or piling up blame on ourselves because… we’re not getting things done. Clearing out even the smallest, most mundane obstructions can create a flow, making a space for other things to start in motion. Through class exercises, breathwork, sharing and support, it’s clear just doing stuff, like looking at where we are and stating what we intend to change, can make other stuff start to happen in our lives.”

“This class has, honestly, changed my life by clearing several areas where I have been stuck for years. Jo keeps you on track with kindness and you won’t ever forget that.”

This four session workshop is for those who want to tackle a specific goal, and then see improvement in that area over the course of our working together. Come to the first class with a specific goal in mind, or at least an idea of one, and we’ll create a game plan for you to follow over the following 3 months.

Special Notes:

1. You must attend each session as they build on each other.
2. There is a weekly check-in that is due to the Instructor via email.
3. There may be follow up phone calls with the instructor if the student needs extra information in between the once a month meeting.