Training.  Team.  Time.

Our mission is to provide a more valuable training experience in the art of improvised theater by giving teams long-term, predictable performance schedules with a consistent cast under the guidance of experienced teachers.

All of our teachers draw from one consistent theory, the Expansion Tree, which can be seen as the "string theory" to all long form improvisation. Discovered in 2005, the Expansion Tree arms the improviser and group with techiques that can be used to react to any and every situation. The process stresses truly reacting to the dynamic of the piece as the events unfold, rather than using a defined structure that may be predictable to the audience. The presentation usually involves a more cohesive performance that stays ahead of audience expectations while allowing the artists to collaborate together using the same language. 

Our theory focuses on recognition and reaction instead of intention and structure.  We teach this approach through a very specific program that stresses training, team, and time in a live performance setting.  We cover:

• Team Through Time - we teach exercises and activities meant to develop team over time based on the Improviser Code of Willingness, Agreement, Commitment, Patience, Effort, and freedom from Judgment.
• Patterns - we teach the flat, linear, exponential, and umbrella patterns as the building blocks of our long form improvisation.
• Individual Techniques - we teach how to establish a character and develop its filter using personal patterns, gravity, truth, and the gifts of emotion, physicality, and history.
• Scene Techniques - we teach the scene to be a relationship between each of the character's filters and how to recognize that relationship through scenic patterns.
• Multiple Person Scene Techniques - we teach the techniques of 3 weights, 4 weights, cloning, ghosting, grouping, walk-ons, call-ons, boardroom group games and more!
• Processing - we teach how to process a scene for its patterns, relationships, locations, people, places, gravity, themes, commentaries, tangents, and direct and indirect inspirations.
• Scene Dynamics - we teach how to recognize the impact of a scene to the audience, a composition of gravity, pace, intensity, length, and content.
• Edits - we teach the how, the when and the why of sweeps, tagouts, swinging doors, split scenes, painting, transformations, slides, zooms, pans, maximizing, minimizing and every imagineable way to go from scene to scene!
• Piece Dynamics - we teach that the impact of your piece on an audience, also known as the piece dynamic, is a composition of crescendos and decrescendos that serve to stay ahead of audience expectations.
• Source - we teach that every piece has a source and the goal of that source in some respects defines the form. 
• Expansion - we teach the types of expansion scenes, both direct and indirect, that define the type of improvisation a team is performing.
• Closure - we teach the types of closure we seek at the ends of our pieces include resolution, satisfying wants, identifying perfect matches, turning tables, and rewards and punishments!
• From Formula to Form - we use the Expansion Tree to view common and uncommon forms that exist in the industry today, including the Harold, Deconstruction, Movie, Armando Diaz, the Bat, JTS Brown, Soupy, Out and Back, Trio, Quartet, Close Quarters, Octet, and Python.  They all have value in their structure, or formula, as training wheels.  But they also have their sometimes unrecognizeable form that is expressed more freely when the student becomes an artist. 

To audition for a Performance Training Team, check out our Auditions Page!