Jessica Young
Improv Utopia Yosemite 2024
Jessica Young presents
Genre Form
Workshop
Study and learn Nick’s and Jessica’s philosophy on Genre Improv. Learn form, and how to play genre. You’ll be learning how to play the form all leading up to a show at the end of the weekend. Nick's and Jessica's philosophy follows character play and thematic play in genre more than a story or narrative. You'll be able to learn how to develop and carry on a character through the entire show.
A GENRE NOTE: This year we will be doing Tennessee Williams. Why did we choose Tennessee Williams? He’s considered one of the greatest American Playwrights of the 20th Century. He was daring and tackled subjects that no one in his time were tackling, such as homosexuality and human brutality. Williams’ major concerns were society’s impact on the alien, the outcast, the foreigner, race, class system. His central theme of his works are closely related to love and romance, desire, child-parent relationships, and the predicament of the modern family. He wanted to show how the world really was and how it was not being presented on television and other media at the time.
When Jessica and Nick teach this, they do so in the STYLE of Tennessee Williams. What does that mean? It means they don’t take from the text; they take from the themes, ideas, and characters and do a play that doesn’t exist and feels like a Tennessee Williams play. Therefore, it is malleable and can be a current version of the themes of today and what we as a world are going through. Doing the work is serious, and because it’s improv that work makes it funny and entertaining, but we also strive for a theatrical response from our audience too.
About Jessica Young
Jessica is an improviser/actress/stand up comedian in Los Angeles who performs weekly at iO West since 2003. Her first group was the infamous Nite Terrors along side Nick Armstrong and John Abbott. Jessica has been an original cast member of the Kind Strangers for the last 5 years. They have traveled to Improv Festivals across the country bringing their unique style of genreprov, their signature form being improvised Tennessee Williams. Jessica’s latest endeavor is stand up comedy which you can see live, on YouTube, or if you’re lucky, on the back porch of Mozzi’s Saloon during Improv Utopia. She loves the outdoors and attended her first sleep away camp at age 8. Jessica can’t wait to bring the “Arts to the Crafts” at camp this summer.