Release your inner-whatever you want. Find easy ways to access free flow of thought, trust and hone your story-telling intuition and do it all in a cozy environment, creating a core ensemble. We work with the basics of improv lord Viola Spolin’s concepts to get comfortable with the group mind. This class is great for people just starting off with improv or improvisers and actors who want to break habits and get back to simple, basic fun.

Before every term, there’s a free taster of what we do at Giant Dwarf Theatre, with an opportunity to audition to head straight into level two straight afterwards. Sign up to the mailing list and our social media below to hear about it.

Our next term starts Monday, 4 October. There will be a free taster on Sunday, 10 September at Giant Dwarf Theatre, with auditions for level two following. There will be another before term four starts in the last week of September.

The ITs curriculum is progressive. Level one focusses on simple creativity and group mind; Level two works on creating scenes through strong character choices and relationships; Level three takes your scenework and puts them on top of strong stagecraft (and is the first level to have a student performance); Level four is a complete performance in the ITs iteration of the Harold, the foundational longform improv that has it all; Level five uses all previous levels, works on different longform styles and explores formats and ways of playing; Level six is by audition only for an ensemble created performance.

All ITS term improv workshops are eight weeks long, and meet once a week for three hours.

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$380.00 Add to basket

$345.00 Add to basket

Characters are just the best and rule everything! Create interesting, funny, relatable and engaging character through classical theatre and modern improv skilz. Find both your comfort zone and stretch your range, find the balance between honest and absurd, initiate with intention and help your scene partners find their own character qualities and come to realise that character is everything and without it, there’s no story, there’s no nothing. This class is available to students who have taken level one and those who successfully go through the level two audition. Stay tuned to our Facebook page and mailing list for info on the next auditions, after the free workshop taster at noon on April 9 at Giant Dwarf.

Now that we have an ensemble mindset and have can create characters that we all want to see, now we work out how to make it slick on stage. We work out with staging, pacing and really get into strong performance-ready scene work. This class ends in an ensemble exhibition, a performance to strut your stuff from the first three levels for your friends and family. This workshop is limited to those who have completed level two. This workshop ends in an ensemble exhibition performance for your friends and family.

In this level, we get to cultivating a full longform with The Harold, a structured improvised format conceived of by Del Close and his ensemble. It’s the basic language of longform and it’s international. This format is the entry point into figuring out what works about playing themes, challenging theatrical and comedy convention, really focusing group mind in an ensemble performance. It’s jazz, an exploration of ideas. This workshop ends in an ensemble performance, a shared show with ITs faculty.

So, we’ve worked through stagecraft and character skills, we’re a tight ensemble that’s been together for almost a year now, we’ve performed the benchmark of longform improvisation, The Harold, just like they do in throughout North America and around the world, what’s next? Well, in this level, we take everything you’ve done so far and mix it with everything you like about, well, everything, and we examine many different longform formats and explore as many possibilities as time allows – narrative longforms, thematic explorations, directed pieces, set character pieces, freeform jazz comedy, whatever – and we mix it with the collective styles and tastes found in the group to play derivative of everything we know up to this point, challenging what we want to play with and picking what we really like.

By audition only, this final level looks at everything the ensemble is into at this point and works to create a show that honours the tastes and styles of the ensemble. With the direction of an ITS faculty member, the level six ensemble creates their own show.