Workshops on Oct. 7

All workshops are paid in cash to the instructor, or reserve your spot by paying online.

Masterclasses with T.J. Mannix and Nick Condon are $50 or
Workshops with Joe Carroll, Neal Leehey, and Noah Rice are $25.
Masterclasses are 3 hours in length. Workshops are 90 minutes in length.

Masterclasses

Each Masterclass is $50 and can be reserved and paid for online.  You have the option to pay directly in cash to the instructor at SCIF.  Each Masterclass is 3 Hours in length.

Character Crash Course

Whether you’re looking to grow beyond your stock characters or don’t yet know who your stock characters are,  this course will help break through and heighten who you can be onstage.  This two-hour workshop will help you listen to yourself, and realize how you are effects who you are.  Learn to discover real,  honest,  believable, fun-to-play characters,  in the moment that will stand the test of time.

“Tackling Your Improv Weaknesses Without Destroying Your Egos (with T.J. Mannix)”

Every improviser has strengths and weaknesses, but we rarely talk about them in front of our fellow team members.  T.J.’s workshop is about bringing those individual and team weaknesses out into the open and dealing with them during practice.  Why pay a coach to just babysit and watch you work on your form when they could be using the warm-ups and exercises to challenge the team?  Imagine paying for those weekly rooms and coaching fees and learning something.  Be brave enough to be vulnerable – and use that rehearsal time to push yourself harder and grow as an improviser.

October 8, 2023

“Getting Out of Your Head (with T.J. Mannix)” 

Does it ever seem as if the more you study improv, the less you know?  So many new tools, options, and challenges… This workshop is all about spontaneity and getting out of your head.  Introducing effective techniques and exercises to break out of that negative loop of self-doubt that sometimes drags down your improv work and keeps you standing on the back wall or that one second too long.   INTERMEDIATE/ADVANCED

Workshops

Each Masterclass is $25 and can be reserved and paid for online.  You have the option to pay directly in cash to the instructor at SCIF.  Each Masterclass is 1.5 hours in length.

Discovering Magic and States of Flow
How can you make magic happen on stage?

In this workshop, we’ll be exploring just that by working with our collective and personal truths together as well as how to delve into what they show us about ourselves. We’ll see how instinct and intuition can guide us in our work with these truths and how we can connect to states of flow and connect together that surprise.

Only a willingness to explore what stories may come from our personal or universal truth is needed.

Two-Person Improv Foundations

Have you ever wanted to be in an improv troupe that’s more intimate than your typical Harold troupe? Then two-person improv might be for you! Marlene Thompson and Joe Carroll will provide students with the foundations for two-person improv based on the form they’ve created for their duo, Mabel’s Baby. They’ll explain how to generate an entire character-driven world with just two people and a suggestion. Plus, they’ll encourage you to make your form!

Musical Improv Workshop

Join Nashville Improv Company’s Music Director and Voice Instructor Noah Rice for an open-level Musical Improv Workshop. Participants will learn the basics of song structure, melody/harmony, phrasing, and musicality, along with introductory singing techniques and essentials of vocal health. Participants will then apply these concepts as they improvise songs in various musical genres (solo singing is not mandatory to participate). This session is open to all improvisers– no musical experience is necessary!   (Limited to 25 participants)

About the Instructors

Nick Condon

Nick has been performing, teaching, and coaching improv for over two decades. He grew up in Minneapolis with Comedy Sportz and The Brave New Workshop performing improv and sketch comedy. In 2006 he moved to Alaska where he served as Creative Director of Denali Drama and Iditaprov. Since then he’s been teaching and performing all over the World. He currently hails from Portland, OR where he performs, coaches, and teaches at Curious Comedy, Oregon Children’s Theater, as well as several theatres and indie teams. He is also the creative director of Conscious Comedy: Socially Relevant Comedy for a Cause.

He’s currently a member of Curious Comedy’s Showdown, CSZ Portland, The Nancy Boys Mysteries, and Solitaire: The One-man Improvised Musical!

T.J. Mannix

Neal Leaheey

Neal Leaheey is a Rhode Island, USA based artist with a world perspective. After a lucky accident in an audition, he’s performed hundreds of improvised shows locally and around the US, Canada, Europe and the Middle East. Neal is also a RISCA teaching artist who has worked for years with high school students to integrate improvisation and storytelling into the public school curriculum. He is currently both a performer at Kismet Improv in Pawtucket and an Ensemble member at The Contemporary Theatre Company in Wakefield where he performs and directs in their regular improvised shows. With a special interest in using Johnstone-based ideas about improvisation to devise new works of theatre, Neal creates works that challenge ideas about gender, find new ways to tell intersecting stories and allow us to rewrite our own personal narratives.

Joe Carroll

Joe Carroll currently teaches improv Levels 1-4 at the Black Mountain Center for the Arts. He began improvising at Appalachian State University in 2007 and taught workshops and classes at the Asheville Improv Collective. Joe has performed at the Dirty South Improv Festival, NC Comedy Arts Festival, Asheville Yes Fest, AIC Fest, Hell Yes Fest, the Asheville Fringe Festival, and Chicago’s Annoyance Theater. He currently performs in his one man show “JOLO”, the all-star ensemble “The No-See-Ums”, and comedy duo “Mabel’s Baby”.

Marlene Thompson

Marlene Thompson is an improviser, actor and stand up residing in Asheville, NC. She moved to the mountains from Chicago, where she studied improv and sketch at Second City and iO Chicago, where she was a member of Improvised Jane Austin. She’s a founding member of and performer with several local troupes and teaches improv at Misfit School of Improv. She also hosts, writes and produces her own political comedy show From the Ashes with Marlene Thompson on YouTube.

Noah Rice

Noah has toured four continents, visiting over 30 countries and playing over 1,000 performances in Holland America Line’s Billboard Onboard duo piano show since 2018. Nightly performances aboard HAL’s luxury cruise ships include thirteen different genre-themed shows, plus all-request shows.

​Other professional vocal credits include Gaylord Opryland, Hersheypark and other national resorts, local BGVs for Hans Zimmer, The Rolling Stones and others, studio recordings for Walt Disney Entertainment, MTI, Capitol Records, LifeWay, Word Entertainment, Lillenas, others.​

Currently Noah can be found performing at private parties, corporate events and other solo private bookings. His diverse and constantly-expanding repertoire includes pop, jazz, country, r&b/soul, oldies/decades, holiday, music theatre and instrumental piano styles.