Our Philosophy
At The Improv Garage we believe there are three things that make a great improviser:
Trust, Community, and Curiosity.
We teach our students to first trust themselves in a scene, then extend that trust to their scene partner. And when both students trust in both themselves and each other they will then begin to learn to trust the scene, and from there the team, which leads us to…
Trust
Once we teach our students to trust themselves and their scene partners, we then teach them how to build a community and have each other’s backs (you’ll hear us say “got your back” a lot around here). This is where we build on the trust to create a team of students in the class that have each other’s backs. Improv cannot be done alone and in order to be their best, they have to learn to be a part of a team and community. And they have to learn how to strengthen that Community, which leads us to…
Community
What is the opposite of judgement? Curiosity. We build a strong Community and foster Trust in that Community by being Curious. If someone throws us a curveball or does something we don’t expect, instead of reacting with judgement and denial, we teach our students to react with Curiosity and agreement (this is the “yes, and…” part of it). We teach them to play characters with sympathy and interest in order to build Trust...
...and the circle starts again.
Curiosity
“Thank god they have Andy. Otherwise, it’s too much dad.”
— Concerned Parent