A great way to get inspired, see what’s possible and start to find what you like is to watch other people’s shows.
Genre Based Shows
- Austentatious – shows in the style of Jane Austen novels. You don’t need to know the novels. Polite manners, young women considering who to marry. A fun 30 minute radio version on BBC Sounds “Fried and Bread With This” here. (The title from the audience is a play on “Pride and Prejudice”, her most famous novel.) There are two shows available to download here. Brits might recognise Rachel Parris from The Mash Report.
- The Maydays “Happily Never After” – An improvised show in the style of Tim Burton films. The Maydays often have a wide emotional range so they may include sweet and touching moments as well as silly/funny ones. Here they are in Barcelona. One quite dark storyline interspersed with some silliness. Also several recorded at the Nursery in London with better sound quality and video. This show recorded in London. Another one. And another. Basically there are loads at The Nursery theatre archive.
- Impromptu Shakespeare – Improvised Shakespeare-style show. I haven’t found a video of this yet.
Two person shows (“Two prov”)
- TJ & Dave Beloved by improvisers. On Vimeo here.
- Middledith and Schwarz on Netflix – Fast, clever, playful American two person improv. Very funny! They sometimes switch who’s playing a particular character. The embodiment and position on the stage shows you who they’re playing.
- Razowsky & Munns – Dave Razowsky and Jules Munns perform together.
- 10 Thousand Million Love Stories – Improvised stories about love.
- Impromancers – “long form shows around love, relationships and everything else” have some footage of a show here (I haven’t seen them)
Musical
- Showstopper – London improvised musical. Amazing! There are two recorded shows available online here. They now also have recordings of their online shows that were live streamed in October.
- These Folk at The Boulevard Theatre in London. Improvised show including Showstoppers players with improvised folk songs. Here.
- Do The Thing – Fun Brighton two-prov musical whom I’ve enjoyed seeing. Two shows here – The Long Flowing Locks of Lusitania and Sleep Time Fury Now.
Troupes
- Parallelogramophonograph (now called P’graph!) at the Barcelona Improv Festival They are also regularly performing online now at twitch.tv/hideouttheatre
- Dummy and friends (some of the Maydays) at The Nursery. Here. When I asked my friends, this got recommended twice!
- Trike This comes recommended from a friend.
Short Form
Short form improv means players are given challenges and games to play. Mostly we’ve been doing long form improv, where we discover what’s fun while we’re doing it.
- Whose Line Is It Anyway? – Long running US/UK TV show. UK show from the 1990s. US show, which is still running. If you’re in the UK, you can also see it on All 4 here.