Three-Quarters Through the Madness of Impro Amsterdam 2026

I’ll write something practical about the shows later. For now, this is what three-quarters through a festival feels like.

It’s a very strange feeling to be homesick at the same time as feeling like I’m at home.

Coming to improv festivals transcends a feeling of coming home beyond anything that makes sense. I remember feeling it at the first one I ever went to. It’s overwhelming.

I’m six or seven days into nine. I haven’t been away from home for this long since my kids were born. So I’m in the deep end of the emotions and the tiredness and the overwhelm. I’ve seen pretty much every single show, most of the late shows and every early show I could that didn’t clash with a rehearsal or a workshop I was teaching.

I’m full to the brim with inspiration, new friends, old friends. Amazing artists. Experiments. Well-established things.

But it’s not even just the shows. It’s the conversations. Standing around between shows or having breakfast with fellow peers who are going through the same struggles as me in their own towns, in their own countries. So many parallel things happening. Growth, change and struggle.

I’ve always called improv festivals “drinking from the source.” Like going to a mineral spring and drinking the purest water and feeling completely refreshed.

If we all had “real jobs,” this would be our conference. Standing around in suits, eating mini pastries, talking about this year’s numbers. Whatever the improv equivalent of that is, that’s this.

And then there’s the happy-sad of it all. Being here without Jules. He’s at home with our family. This place, not just Amsterdam, but Rome, Poland, wherever, we used to call it “Improv Island.” A place we all go to when we come to festivals. It isn’t geographic. Improv Island is a feeling of welcome and creativity and love.

It feels strange to be here without him. And yet I’m going home to him. He and the kids are my home. They probably wouldn’t exist without these festivals. I mean, obviously Jules would exist 🙂 but maybe the kids wouldn’t. Because we fell so in love in this world. And now, because we have a family, it’s difficult for us both to come. It’s a big ask.

So I’m so grateful to be here. I don’t know when the next time will be. And at the same time, I’m desperate to go home and see them all. Lots of feelings.

Tonight I’m sitting in my hotel room with a bit of a cold, making notes for my workshop tomorrow, trying to pull myself together and make the most of the time I have left. Trying to drink in every single moment.

Trying to appreciate the impermanence not just of the festival, but of improv itself. It happens. And then it’s gone. I do not take this for granted.

Two days to go.