Holly Mandel
Improv Utopia East 2024
Holly Mandel presents
Workshop: CHARACTER-BASED IMPROVISATION
Workshop
This workshop is open to performers who are interested in learning improvisation driven by character, made popular by Los Angeles’ Groundlings Theater as well as Mandel’s own school in NYC, Improvolution.
In the workshop, you will approach the fundamentals of improv emphasizing character - the “who” of the scene - exploring how a scene grows and deepens from the character’s information, thoughts, behaviors, emotional life, and relationships to one another. You will not use any particular format or structure, focusing more on the building blocks of scenes and how character expands your abilities to add specifics, drive action, and open up worlds of possibility.
Participants will also discuss and explore what constitutes a character, how to create and improvise as one, and how Character Improv is unique to all other forms of improvisation.
Recommeded for all experience levels.
About HOLLY MANDEL
Holly has been teaching, performing, and directing improvisation and sketch comedy writing in both Los Angeles and New York City for a few decades now. She currently runs her own improv school in NYC, Improvolution, founded in 2002; she's a professor at Pace University teaching improv and sketch; and a senior instructor at The Groundlings in Los Angeles.
IMPROVOLUTION! was founded by Los Angeles GROUNDLINGS alumna HOLLY MANDEL in January 2002 when she moved to New York. As a GROUNDLING she performed, wrote, directed and taught as a Main Company member for over six years. She proudly created the longest-running long-form show in LA before leaving, “The Crazy Uncle Joe Show” which you can see any Wednesday night. She also studied with the wonderful SECOND CITY director Jeff Michalski and the fantastic Stan Wells of THE EMPTY STAGE. She’s appeared on TV, film and countless commercials (2 of them award-winning in fact!) - all of them using a little or a LOT of improv. She was also on the rotating sub team of improvisers for WHOSE LINE IS IT ANYWAY? (for the ONE ‘girl’ slot.)
Holly occasionally guest teaches and performs at THE GROUNDLINGS in Los Angeles. She has directed the Main Company shows and performed with Drew Droege in an improvised show they created, “WigProv”. She started THE LOWBAR in LA from 2015-2017.
She teaches Improvisation and Sketch at PACE UNIVERSITY in NYC, creating the BFA Comedy Studies program there. She has taught at USC and UCLA, and has traveled to London, Bristol, Sydney and Melbourne to teach as well.
She has created talks and programs based on her work with women and girls on perfectionism, the limits of obeying cultural ‘shoulds’, and liberating one’s self for the sake of all women, called GOOD GIRLS AREN’T FUNNY."
