Improvisation is a fun, engaging, and rewarding creative experience that anyone can learn. In order to improvise we learn some thinking and relationship skills that allow us to enter into a creative space with no script, props or director, and communicate well enough to overcome those barriers to achieve collaboration. From the most basic improv exercises to more advanced scene work, the structure and philosophy of improv generate a safe psychological space where players can take creative - and emotional - risks, stretch into expanded self-expression, and generate joy. And it has real-life applications: growth of creative thinking, communication, collaboration, interpersonal and relationship skills, greater capacity to tolerate uncertainty, confidence-building, and enhanced well-being.

MAKE A SCENE Online Improv: Montage
Mondays 6:30-8 pm EST
November 4, 11, 18, and 25, 2024
$25/class REGISTER ON THIS LINK
This class will focus on a form called Montage, which is a series of scenes inspired by a single suggestion. We will warm up with exercises that activate the improv mind set, use the "muscles" of active listening, receptivity to the unexpected within ourselves and in our partners, and willingness to follow the unusual ideas inspired by a suggestion. The scene work will establish the basics: environment, character, and relationship, to form grounded realities that take the suggestion in interesting directions. We will explore how building a reality and heightening what is unusual about it generates comedy and creative expansion.

IMPROV FOR EVERYONE holiday fun lab
Sunday December 15, 2024 1-4 pm
The Performing Arts Studio
224 E. Main St.
Port Jefferson, NY $30 REGISTER ON THIS LINK
This is an improv class that anyone can join. If you have absolutely no improv experience, this is the class to attend. You will be supported. You will have fun. Improv is one of the greatest ways to destress and galvanize your energy. It has been found (by scientific research!!) to boost mood, and expand creative thinking, something we all need more of but especially during the hectic holidays with so many pressures coming at us. If you have any degree of experience from beginning to advanced, you will have all those benefits of the funhouse and possibly learn some new warm-ups and exercises to enrich your improv repertoire. 

One of the fundamentals of improv is called giving "gifts" -which simply means sharing an idea to a fellow player. Making an offer. In the season of gifting, self-care is important so we can be present and engaged for all the positive holiday times, and have more inner and outer resources for managing the difficult ones.