Long Island Improv

10/10/2026

10/02/2026

What Style of Improv Do You Teach?

I recently met someone and when they found out I teach improvisation, they asked “what style of improv do you teach?“. I replied, oh, I usually teach “good” improv. After we all had a warm chuckle, I tried to honestly answer the question, but I’m not sure I was very clear. Afterwards, I thought of a much better way to explain it:

Let’s say you decided that you wanted to learn how to sing. You find a vocal coach. This coach, if they are any good, will not start out teaching you how to sing opera, Broadway, or country music. For quite some time they will just teach you how to sing: how to breathe, how to focus the sound, how to phrase the music, etc. Eventually, if you decide you want to focus on a particular kind of music, the coach will start focusing on a few of the specific elements of that style.

I do the same thing with improvisation.

Most of the skills of improvisation are the same no matter what style you want to focus on. In fact, I think that a “style” is just stressing one or two skills over others. For example, every improviser should be able to create characters, but if you decide to do character-based improv, then after you get all the basics, you would spend more time working on character-based skills.

So I teach all the underlying skills of improv and I try not to favor one skill over any other.

Mostly, I just try to teach good improv.