Acting Skills for Comedy and Improv with a National Theatre Creative

Improv for Acting (Naturalism) with a National Theatre Creative

This session will focus on building actor , and believable acting, skills for comedians and improvisers.

OLIVIA GILLMAN

Specializing in comedy improv and improv for naturalistic drama, National Theatre Creative Olivia Gillman has created a guide to Tenessee Williams for Digital Theatre Plus, and co-created -with Katie Mitchell- a guide to naturalistic theatre acting. Linked below, this guide launched on the Dorfman stage at The National Theatre in 2024. Olivia works too in improv comedy and is the Edinburgh Fringe 2024 director for The Cambridge Impronauts at The Gilded Balloon. Previously, she has written and directed for The Cambridge Footlights (Harry Porter Prize 2017) and was one of a small group of comics in 2023 to participate in Channel 4 comedy director Amanda Baker's and Abi Grant (Spitting Image) development of a Rosetta Stone for comedy.

Participants will spend the evening improvising comedic scenes... and looking at methods for creating believable worlds in comedy. And how to create humour through believability. Tools explored will include some of those developed through her work with Katie Mitchell at the National Theatre, such as how to realistically represent location through visualization - in combination with those from comedy work.

Participants should leave the session with an insight into ways into using acting skills as comedians.

Olivia is unusual in working in such an interdiscilpinary way in both drama and comedy.

Improvisers, comedians and stand ups may find this useful as a route in using believable acting to create comedy in scenes. For example, for stand ups thinking about producing more nuances in their act outs- or for comedy improvisers looking for new ways into decisively starting scenes in believable worlds.

Performers heading to the fringe may find this a useful workshop for thinking about their performance from new angles ahead of the start of August.

All skill levels welcome, although having an orientation in comedy performance would be beneficial.

Olivia's NT Book (launched on the Dorfman at the NT in early 2024) --

https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/learn-explore/schools/teacher-resources/practitioners-in-practice-katie-mitchell-pdf/

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Theatre Deli, 107 Leadenhall Street, London, United Kingdom

Concerts, fests, parties, meetups - all the happenings, one place.

Get App