Level 2: Intro To Improv
(proof of vaccination required)

Prerequisite: Must have taken an improv class at ColdTowne or elsewhere.

Strengthen your two person scenes using characters, relationships, and finding & playing “The Game.”

Building on the fundamentals from Level 01, students will begin to practice skills and techniques that strengthen their scenes and characters. Concepts will be introduced to help create deeper characters and relationships more quickly, while keeping things fun! Students will learn how to identify patterns within their scenes to create “The Game”: the engine that drives comedy in an improvised scene or sketch. This class includes a student performance!

ANTHONY ELLISON spent 9 years in Chicago writing, performing, teaching, etc. After dozens of sketch shows at Second City, Annoyance, CiC, he began to seek guidance in longer comedy within structure. He received an MFA in “The Art of Dramatic Structure”, and won the Scott McPherson Playwriting Award, while also directing for the OU Comedy Org - Black Sheep/Six to Midnight.  His plays have been produced in Chicago, NYC, Austin, Liverpool, Athens OH, Muncie IN, and a lot more.

The Writers Room

Prequisite: must have taken Sketch Level 01 at ColdTowne
(proof of vaccination required)

In this 8-week class, you and your fellow writers will pitch your fresh sketch ideas and hold table reads of your drafts in a collaborative setting. This is a deeper dive into satire, parody, characters, and the absurd! You will finish this class with your completed sketch packet - an example portfolio of your sketch comedy writing. This class includes a reading / performance at the end of the eight weeks.

WILL CLEVELAND brings 20 years of theatre experience into his class. He has served as Artistic Director of ColdTowne since 2016 and trained in improv and sketch writing at New York's Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. He wrote and produced works for UCBComedy.com as well as produced for Above Average, Funny or Die, Official Comedy and more. His show "One Hour Til Air" received the B. Iden Payne award for best Improv Cast in 2019.

Advanced Scene Work & The Group Mind(proof of vaccination required)

Prerequisite: must have taken a Level 2 improv class at ColdTowne

Strong group work, or “group mind,” is the focus of Level 3, where students take a deeper look at their scenework and begin to create shows that are more than just a montage of disconnected scenes. While continuing to strengthen and build on the lessons of past levels, various storytelling techniques and other skills are introduced to help students go from improvising a single scene to creating an entire longform improv show. This class includes a student performance!

WILL CLEVELAND brings 20 years of theatre experience into his class. He has served as Artistic Director of ColdTowne since 2016 and trained in improv and sketch writing at New York's Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. He wrote and produced works for UCBComedy.com as well as produced for Above Average, Funny or Die, Official Comedy and more. His show "One Hour Til Air" received the B. Iden Payne award for best Improv Cast in 2019.

Level 2: Intro To Improv
(proof of vaccination required)

Prerequisite: Must have taken an improv class at ColdTowne or elsewhere.

Strengthen your two person scenes using characters, relationships, and finding & playing “The Game.”

Building on the fundamentals from Level 01, students will begin to practice skills and techniques that strengthen their scenes and characters. Concepts will be introduced to help create deeper characters and relationships more quickly, while keeping things fun! Students will learn how to identify patterns within their scenes to create “The Game”: the engine that drives comedy in an improvised scene or sketch. This class includes a student performance!

DREW WESELY graduated from ColdTowne Conservatory in 2008, started as a Teacher’s Assistant in 2011, and became an improv teacher in 2015. He graduated from ColdTowne Conservatory’s Advanced Graduate Improv Studies program in 2016. He hosted the ColdTowne Theater monthly improv jam, and currently hosts his independently operated weekly drop-in improv class/jam. Instructors from UCB, iO, The Annoyance and The New Movement have either coached or taught him in classes or workshops.

Advanced Scene Work & The Group Mind(proof of vaccination required)

Prerequisite: must have taken a Level 2 improv class at ColdTowne

Strong group work, or “group mind,” is the focus of Level 3, where students take a deeper look at their scenework and begin to create shows that are more than just a montage of disconnected scenes. While continuing to strengthen and build on the lessons of past levels, various storytelling techniques and other skills are introduced to help students go from improvising a single scene to creating an entire longform improv show. This class includes a student performance!

ANTHONY ELLISON spent 9 years in Chicago writing, performing, teaching, etc. After dozens of sketch shows at Second City, Annoyance, CiC, he began to seek guidance in longer comedy within structure. He received an MFA in “The Art of Dramatic Structure”, and won the Scott McPherson Playwriting Award, while also directing for the OU Comedy Org - Black Sheep/Six to Midnight.  His plays have been produced in Chicago, NYC, Austin, Liverpool, Athens OH, Muncie IN, and a lot more.

Proof of vaccination required

Level 01 covers the fundamentals of stand-ups Over seven weeks, you will learn jokes construction, style, and, most importantly, confidence. What's your unique comedic voice and how do you craft material around it and connect to an audience through it. With direct feedback, you'll construct a full set of original material with a showcase at the end to premiere it.

ROCHELLE MCCONICO is the founder and CEO of MoonCricket Productions a live entertainment company specializing in interactive, multisensory comedic events. She is a visionary, writer, producer, and performer. In June 2020, Rochelle launched the Amuse-Bouche Comedy Festival to showcase the many great improvisers, comedy podcasters and stand-ups in New Orleans and performed as all three. In 2022, she followed up by co-founding, programming, performing and co-headlining the Lysistrata Comedy Festival, an all femme comedy festival, in New Orleans.

Additionally, Rochelle performs standup, improv, and sketch around the country both individually and with the groups: Black Improv Alliance’s Wakanda Vs. Everybody, Black As Phuck, Switchblade, Edge Control, and No Lye Comedy. 

Notably she has performed improv at the New York Comic Con (2022), Black and Funny Ocean City Festival (2022), and Baton Rouge Improv Festival (2022); sketch in the Dallas Comedy Festival (2018) and the Los Angeles Diversity in Comedy Showcase (2019), and stand-up in the the Black Girl Giggles Festival (2018) and Tower City Comedy Festival (2022). Rochelle also hosted during the Austin Sketchfest (2022) and will be appearing in the Moontower Comedy Festival in April 2023.

Rochelle also wrote, directed, and starred in three plays centering her alter ego character, billionaire media heiress Stangela Angela Hemsworth Kingsley Winthrop Farouk Adams III: I’m Only Here for the Snacks, and Stangela for President, and Stangela’s Swamp Thing. The first two plays were both featured at Infringe Fest in New Orleans (2018 & 2019). 

No lesson plans. Just a steady stream of scenework to help you pinpoint your individual tendencies. Find out what your strengths are and where you could explore further. Working in a non-stop series of improv reps, you'll learn what your patterns are and how to break them through personalized challenges. Maximized stage time guaranteed. Great for beginners who want to develop new skills and for professionals who want to keep fresh.

ASAF RONEN is the author of Directing Improv: Show the Way By Getting Out of the Way. He regularly performs, teaches and produces in Austin, was Education Director at The Institution Theater for eight years and is currently the Conservatory Director at ColdTowne Theater. He is also a Producer and Education Director of Austin’s annual Out of Bounds Comedy Festival. He has taught and performed improvisation in Canada, Great Britain, Norway and in twenty-eight of these United States with such groups as the B. Iden Payne Award winning Confidence Men (improvised plays in the style of David Mamet) and imp (mostly silent improv). He was also producer on TRUST US, THIS IS ALL MADE UP, a documentary on legendary improvisers TJ & Dave that premiered at Austin’s South by Southwest Festival in 2009 and helped develop the improvised film Days of Delusion with director Scott Myers. In 1999, Asaf founded the improv website, YESand.com of which he is Editor-in-Chief.

Trying to be funny. Ugh. So hard to do and so tough to watch. Once you're trying to be funny you're doomed. The audience can sniff it on you. Whether they can articulate it or not, they just can’t let go and enjoy what you’re doing. In this intro level class we'll endeavor to be honest, to be present and to be real. We'll play fun little games, do solo explorations, and possibly get into some more gutsy forms of play. Alec Jones-Trujillo will be drawing upon over 20 years of experience doing stand up, improv and clown. So expect exercise based on improv and clown (wanna do stand up? Go to an open mic.)

Old God is Alec Jones-Trujillo. Since 2018 he has been performing in the Las Vegas hit show “Absinthe” at Caesar's Palace where plays the foul-mouthed host/comedian The Gazillionaire. In that time he has performed over 1200 shows at Absinthe and will likely do 1200 more seeing as the show is highly improvised and different every time. While living in San Francisco for many years he studied clown by day and did stand up by night. He graduated the Clown Conservatory at SF Circus Center and moved on to study mime with Leonard Pitt and James Donlon five days a week at the Flying Actor Studio. He has worked with Cirque Du Soleil's John Gilkey on multiple projects including We Are Nudes, Wet The Hippo and The Murge. In Los Angeles he studied improv at Groundlings and UCB. Old God contains everything Alec has ever done--mime, improv, stand up, clown--all in the name of wild and inspired comedy.