Core Improv Skills (levels 1-4)

AndAlso’s improvisation courses in Brighton will help you be more calm, creative, and confident in all kinds of circumstances, whether or not you are a professional creative. They are fun, practical, and full of laughter. You might even make a friend or two.

Our courses are divided into 12-week levels which will take you from a first-time improviser into a confident performer. Levels 1-4 form the core of our improv training, giving a solid basis in scenes, group work, character, story and many other essential improv skills. You can read more about this system here.

We recommend that you take our levels in order, but if you have taken improv classes elsewhere, you can email us at hello@andalsoimprov.com to discuss which level would suit you. See here for our other terms and conditions.

Level 1 - Spontaneity and Play

Do you want to feel more relaxed and creative? To learn improvisation in a sociable, collaborative way? Or maybe meet new people in a friendly environment, to laugh hard and maybe even surprise yourself.

AndAlso’s first level introduces the core skills of improvisation in the form of listening, saying ‘Yes And’ and trusting the process. All this while learning to love failure. In doing these simple things, you will find the delight of creating on the fly. Simple improv exercises give you opportunities to reflect on your habits and maybe even change them. The first step to becoming a seasoned improviser, and maybe making your life just a little bit easier.

Next level 1 courses

Level 2 - Owning Your Ideas

In improv and in life, there is rarely a perfect choice. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make strong ones. It is so easy to lose faith in what you are doing, to sabotage your own ideas before they are even formed. Making a choice and sticking to it is very valuable, onstage and off. In our second level, you will concentrate on making clear decisions, sticking to them and supporting others as they do the same. You will be bold in your leading and your following, becoming more at ease in front of an audience.

This course focuses on the building block of any improv show: the scene. Over twelve weeks, you will be introduced to common tools and building blocks of scene work. You will look at how to use a suggestion, be inspired by your partner and how your characters can agree or disagree, react emotionally and be consistent without feeling like you are following a formula. Examining these ideas through lots of practice and feedback will make you confident and relaxed, knowing what makes scenes fun to play and fun to watch.

Next level 2 courses

Level 2 – Owning your ideas: Boldness and Confidence

12 Mondays from 8th January - 25th March
19:00 - 21:30

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Level 3 - Shared Creativity and Building a Team

In your third course with us, as well as continuing to strengthen your scenework skills, you will start to link scenes together to make a show. You will make connections both by character and theme to build a rich, fascinating world that exists just for one night. In doing so, you will learn more about your taste in improvisation and how you can bring it to the stage. As you form a team, you will create an environment which nurtures and celebrates differing tastes and styles of improvising. You will think about how you can work simply and productively together, finding inspiration in each other and making a show no individual could have created. This course finishes with a performance of the ‘Armando’ (also called the ‘monologue deconstruction’), a simple improv form using true monologues.

Next level 3 courses

Level 3 - Shared Creativity and Building a Team

12 Wednesdays from 10th January - 27th March
19:00 - 21:30

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Level 4 - ‘The Harold’

Our fourth level builds on the combination of boldness and collaboration of previous levels towards probably the most famous form in improv: the Harold. Based on ‘group games’ and scenes structured together in patterns of three over roughly half an hour, the Harold allows for stories, ideas and characters to be woven together without obligation, a new show emerging from the genius of the group that night. The Harold is a few evenings to learn and a lifetime to master.

AndAlso approaches the Harold not as a problem to be solved or a magic trick to be learned, but as something like group meditation. A version of collective creativity where process is as important as product, the shared and individual experiences supporting and merging into each other. Learning Harold will make you bolder in your own ideas and more flexible to others’. It’s an improv full-body workout and the cumulation of your first year of training.