The iO Training Center’s program teaches improvisation as a performance art. Our classes give you the skills you need to create fresh, imaginative and personal theater that inspires awe as well as laughter.
The Improv Program
Level 1 teaches the basics of the iO style of improvisation as created by Del Close and Charna Halpern.
Level 2 builds on the teachings of Level 1 while allowing you to discover your strengths; it focuses on character creation, “the group mind” and object/environment work.
Level 3 concentrates on the two-person scene, the anchor of long-form improvisation.
Level 4 is where you use all the skills you have acquired thus far in order to create the Harold, the signature long-form structure at iO.
Level 4B: The Advanced Harold Level will probe even deeper into the form, focusing intensely on the acting, editing, and group commitment that it takes to generate a 30-minute piece. There is 1 performance at the end of this level.
Level 5 looks at other advanced types of long-form improvisation such as the Deconstruction, the Mosaic, the Living Room and many more.
The Performance Class, or Level 5B, allows students to use their newly acquired improvisational skills to create an original long-form show. Performance Class shows run in the Del Close Theater for six to eight weeks after the class has ended.
Details
The Training Center is open from 11am-5pm, Monday-Friday, or by appointment.
Each iO class runs for eight weeks, meeting once a week for three hours. All classes cost $260. Various workshops and elective courses are also occasionally offered as opportunities to supplement students’ education. Recent offerings have included Sketch Writing, Musical Improvisation, Improvised Shakespeare and Advanced Scene Techniques. Workshops and electives vary in cost.
Michael McCarthy’s Writing Program
with Nate Herman
Michael McCarthy’s Writing Program is open to both writers and performers looking to develop their skills. By the end of the program you will have a professional writing portfolio as well as submitted material to ongoing shows on the Main Stage. The Writing Program is 24 weeks and is taught over three levels using both in and out of class assignments.
LEVEL ONE – Talk Show Portfolio
Learn to write jokes (or two-liners) based upon the events of a given week. From this basic skill, the student heightens and explores the process into writing monologues and then onto the more formidable process of creating all the elements for a state-of-the-art portfolio, suitable for submission to a given talk show in pursuit of a TV writing job, or to an agent in pursuit of literary representation.
LEVEL TWO – Sketch Packet
Learn to write sketches, after the style of “Saturday Night Live,” using the show’s current cast. The basic components of a typical episode of SNL becomes the elements for the students’ own SNL portfolio: Cold Opening sketches, monologues, Weekend Update pieces, TV and film parodies, cast pieces, digital shorts, etc… With a special emphasis on rewriting and marketing said packet in the later half of this eight week course.
LEVEL THREE – Sitcom Spec
Still the most popular way for agents to judge writers (and whether they’re worth representing) is creation of a script, written on speculation, of an existing situation comedy—the Sitcom Spec. This eight week course takes the student through all the various stages: pitching, outlining, writing, rewriting, and offers each student the opportunity to stage a live reading of his or her spec.
Cost: $300 per 8 week session