Nick Armstrong
Improv Utopia Yosemite 2024
Nick Armstrong 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 Nick Armstrong
Nick is an Actor, Improvisor and Writer living in Los Angeles, CA. On TV Nick has been on the Emmy-Award winning shows The Office and Grey’s Anatomy. He has also made appearances on Jimmy Kimmel Live, New Girl, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Key and Peele, Stan Against Evil and Parks and Recreation.
Nick has trained at The Groundlings and iO West. He is an alum of The Sunday Company at the Groundlings and M.i.’s Westside Comedy Theater in LA's where he performed on the critically acclaimed Harold Team King Ten. Nick is the former artistic director of M.i.’s Westside Comedy Theater and is the co-owner and managing director of RISE Comedy in Denver, Colorado. He has also taught improv at iO West and The Groundings Theater and has done workshops all over the world.
Nick is also the Camp Director and Founder of Camp Improv Utopia a 501(c)(3), a non-profit improv retreat for grown ups. He is also one of the founding members of the The Improv Network.