Name: Improv Workshop w/ Rich Talarico
Start: 2025-11-13T18:00:00-06:00
End: 2025-11-13T21:00:00-06:00
Location: Panama City Center for the Arts

$Improv Workshop w\/ Rich Talarico$

Panama City Comedy & Panama City Center for the Arts
present an Improv Workshop with Rich Talarico
Nov. 13th 6pm-9pm
Panama City Center for the Arts Main Gallery

GET OUT OF YOUR HEAD / DISCOVERING CHARACTERS THROUGH GIFTING
LONG FORM IMPROV with RICH TALARICO
When an improviser says “I was in my head up there…” They really mean they were in their LEFT brain on stage. And, what we want as performers is to be in our RIGHT brain when we are improvising on stage. Thinking v. Emotion. Discovery v. Invention. This evening of exercises will encourage players to focus on present-tense moment-to-moment engagement, playing from their strong emotional core. Students will learn techniques on gift giving and playing in POV. Beginner to Intermediate.

About RICH TALARICO
Rich is a Peabody® Award-winning writer/producer with four Emmy® and four WGA Award nominations, best known for his work on Comedy Central’s Key & Peele. He wrote Substitute Teacher (“…Ay-ay-Ron?”), which in 2024, was added to The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum Of American History. Rich also wrote Racist Zombies, Karim and Jahar, Hatz, Teaching Center, Obama Greets, Black Ice, and many more. Other TV credits include: MADtv, The Tonight Show w. Jay Leno, Saturday Night Live, HBO’s The Sketch Pad, and Comedy Central’s critically-acclaimed Review. An alum of Chicago’s The Second City and Improv Olympic, he’s also provided punch-up work on the films Mean Girls and Get Out. Rich’s latest screenplay The Widow Daredevil was an Official Selection of the 2020 Beverly Hills Film Festival.Rich took his first improv class from Stephen Colbert at Chicago’s The Second City in 1992. He went on to tour with SC’s National Touring Company and later co-created five original sketch comedy revues with SC’s Etc., and Main Stage Companies. While in Chicago, Rich was a performer, director, coach and teacher at Improv Olympic (Now iO) under the direction of Charna Halpern and the late Del Close. Rich was in early casts of Chicago’s longest-running improv show: The Armando Diaz Experience. He co-starred in Jeff Richmond and Michael Thomas’ Hamlet! The Musical, and alongside T.J. Shanoff, Rich co-created and starred in the hit parody, The Roof Is On Fiddler. Talarico played on iO house teams, Mr. Blonde and Faulty Wiring and co-created long-form improv shows Close Quarters, Trio, and Dasariski.
As an actor, Rich has appeared on screen on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, MADtv, the feature film High Fidelity, and in A&W Root Beer’s classic TV ad, Mr. Dumass. Talarico’s extensive experience in the comedy industry has made him a sought-after teacher, writer, coach and consultant
Currently, Rich is teaching and performing improvisation and stand-up comedy around the US. He recently headlined the Uptown Theater, Utica NY, The Waco Civic, Waco TX, Oops All Headliners show in Austin, TX, headlined at the Frog Rock Brewery in Austell, GA and performed featured sets at Nashville’s famed Bowery Vault and Scruffy City Hall in Knoxville, TN. This October Rich opened for Kevin Nealon at Kellar’s Magic and Comedy Bar, Erie, PA.