
Second City have been in London for the past two weeks where they have taught classes at the new Angel Comedy venue as well as the Poor School.
There were a variety of classes starting with “the Second City Improv Intensive” for students that have never learned improv before, there was “the Second City Improv for Actors Intensive” and “the Second City Improv Intensive – Advanced” for those performers who already knew the basic elements of improvisation and wanted to learn more.
We also offered a new class, which was “Turning Improv Into Sketch” where students learned many of the techniques used in the Writers Room in Classic US TV shows such as Saturday Night Live. There were performances from the students, which were very impressive and lots of fun.
The tutors this year were Erica Elam, Nigel Downer and Micah Philbrook from the Second City schools in Hollywood, Toronto and Chicago respectively, who created such a supportive environment in all their classes where the students felt completely comfortable to play. They were totally brilliant!
Despite the fact that they had never previously performed with each other before, they performed two improvised shows for sold out audiences and they were two of the funniest shows I have ever seen.
Thank you to all the students who learned with Second City, thank you to all the audiences that came to see the shows and thank you to the team at Angel Comedy for all of their work throughout the year and particularly the past two weeks on the classes and the shows.
It was a real dream to see so many new and established comedy performers learn more ways to be funny and we can’t wait to see how they will develop what they have learned even further.
www.angelcomedy.co.uk/second-city
Photo: Nigel Downer (Second City) Sara Shulman (Comedy Blogedy) Barry Ferns (Angel Comedy) Micah Philbrook (Second City) Erica Elam (Second City)