2024 Sarasota Improv Festival Workshops

Unlock the power of poetic language on the improv stage by exploring a whirlwind of Shakespearean techniques—such as alliteration, antithesis, and extended metaphor—that will allow you to reach new heights in your scene work. While this two hour class examines time-tested tools borrowed from the Bard, players will find these same approaches can enrich and expand their sense of genre and style (and add finesse to lyrical, musical, and character-based performances too). No prior improv Shakespearean experience is needed! Some improv experience is recommended. Train with SAK Comedy Lab's David Charles, the creator of long-form projects such as It’s All Greek to Me, The Lost Comedies of William Shakespeare, Upton Abbey: An Improvised Comedy of English Manors, (Your) Opera in a Trunk, and Lights Up: The Improvised Rock Opera, and author of Routledge's The Improv Dictionary.

This workshop is about telling a story and moving from moment to moment with dramatic or comic efficiency while still taking your time. We will work on taking care of the narrative and understanding what the scene needs and how to provide it. We will discuss the difference between a joke and a gag and how to be funny without killing the story. These skills apply to short-form work as well as good long-form. Make the story work, and the funny will come.

Conflict and emotional distance can work their way into one’s play over time until they become dominant choices. But what if, instead of choosing conflict, we choose love instead? Making a conscious decision to appreciate and collaborate with your scene partner can take your scenework in unexpected and wonderful directions. In this workshop, we will introduce techniques for finding meaningful connections with your scene partner and explore the virtues of playing from a standpoint of total agreement. When you choose to embrace your scene partners rather than resist them, the possibilities for your scenework are truly limitless.

This workshop is for performers who would like to play from a lighter place and release the inner critic in their head. It is for people who are looking to expand into new territory, and be more authentic and active in their work. It offers a totally different approach to comedy and performance inspired by clowning and focused on play. Open to all levels, as the techniques will be new to everyone.

We will explore the challenge of one improviser playing multiple characters within one scene or show. We will look at exercises and techniques to help remember all those lovely characters in your brain.

Learn to control the audience’s focus by becoming deliberate with your own. You will experience a series of exercises designed to hone your attention and heighten your awareness of yourself, the scene, and your ensemble as a whole. From two-person scenes to large group scenes, you’ll know exactly what’s happening with every person on stage. Think of the focus of a scene as a physical ball of glowing energy. If you're talking about something happening elsewhere, that's where the ball is. If you're discussing a past or future event, the ball has warped through time and is now there. So, what do you do in a scene if the ball gets away from you? You either coax it back or chase it.

Mantras para la interpretación improvisada. Compañía Lospleimovil, Profesora Lissette Villegas ( Chile ) - Se ahondará en el comportamiento honesto de la interpretación y la creación. Poder descubrir en escena actitudes humanas, reacciones y modificaciones orgánicas en el comportamiento de los personajes.

Musical improv can be charming, beautiful, and entertaining, but sometimes you gotta give it that OOMPH! Rapping the bridge of your song is an amazing opportunity to surprise the audience, get some sweet rhymes in, and delve deeper into your character's fears, motives, and philosophies. This workshop will also include exercises that will demystify what to sing about in your verses, allowing your songs to contain a focused message.

So often in improv, performers feel they need to make something happen and force ideas, which can feel unnatural and inauthentic. This leads to shows and performers feeling uninspired, disconnected, and stuck in their heads. This workshop will focus on the skills used in “Rockola,” which involve discovering the moment, scene, and characters. Learn how to become aware of what’s there, let the moment reveal itself, and then utilize those offers and moments.

This workshop focuses on bringing the invisible world of an improv scene to life. Participants will learn skills to make their object and space work more believable and to make everything real for both the actors and the audience. Additionally, participants will learn how to use their object work to heighten the emotions of the scene. Everything an actor touches, grabs, carries, or even looks at has meaning, so everyone will learn how to incorporate the meaning of the world they’re in into the meaning of what is happening in the scene.