The Crunchy Frog Collective
 The Crunchy Frog Drop-in Workshops
The CFC classes are intermediate-level drop-in workshops. It's for those with already some experience in impro and performance who want to hone their scene work, story-telling or musical impro skills.
You do not need to book for these classes, just show up on the day.
Every week will explore a different aspect of improv. Below I've got a list of who the teachers will be and, where I have the information, what the topic of the day will be. However, the classes will always run and it will always be with an experienced teacher who will push your impro skills into new areas.
What: The Crunchy Frog Classes - improvisation classes
Date: Every Sunday from February 27th to July 31st 2011.
When: 3:15pm to 5:45pm
Where: The Rag Factory, 16-18 Heneage Street (off Brick Lane), London E1 5LJ. It's 10-15 minutes walk from Liverpool Street, Aldgate, Aldgate East, and Whitechapel tubes. Click here for a map.
How Much: £10
Email: dylan.emery@thestickingplace.com
Class teachers and topics - I will fill these in as and when I know - otherwise assume that there will be a different teacher covering a different set of skills each week.
Feb 27 - Dylan Emery - honing your impro skills
March 6 - Dylan Emery - honing your impro skills
March 13 - Dylan Emery - honing your impro skills
March 20 - Sean McCann - School of Night (improvising playwrights and poets, the dark arts)
March 27 - Oliver Senton- School of Night (improvising playwrights and poets, the dark arts)
April 3 - Oliver Senton- School of Night (improvising playwrights and poets, the dark arts)
April 10 - Dylan Emery
April 17 - Dylan Emery
April 24 - TBC
May 1 -
May 8 -
May 15 -
May 22 -
May 29 -
June 5 -
June 12 -
June 19 -
June 26 -
July 3 -
July 10 -
July 17 -
July 24 -
July 31 -
What does improvisation cover?
For those weeks when it's not specified, here is a more general description of what this is all about. Some of the skills you'll learn:
Creativity - learning how not to block your own ideas
Co-operation - how to add to each others' ideas to create a story
Gibberish - see how little communication is verbal by improvising completely understandable scenes in a fictitious language
Status - how people interact and how to bring it to the stage
Narrative - creating coherent stories on the fly
Stagecraft - how to direct yourself on stage
Music - special singing, drum circle and musical story-telling workshops
Some of the teachers...
Dylan Emery
 Dylan has been teaching and performing improvised comedy and music since 2001. He is a co-founder of short-form impro troupe Grand Theft Impro and co-founder of Showstopper! The Improvised Musical, in which he plays the role of the writer.
He has improvised all around the world, including at the the Royal Court's fifty-year celebrations, at the Olivier, The Bristol Old Vic, and for BBC Radio 1,4 and 7.
As part of Ken Campbell's School of Night, he was in the improvised Shakespeare show In Pursuit of Cardenio and the troupe now regularly performs their 'hard bardics' - improvised poetry, playwrights and esoteric madness.
Dylan has also taken the corporate shilling, teaching improvisatory skills to companies including BP, Diaggeo, the NHS and Unison.
He trained primarily under Alan Marriott and Ken Campbell, supplemented by a host of other
 Oliver Senton
Oliver Senton is a highly experienced actor, improviser and teacher. As well as being a core member of Showstopper! The Improvised Musical - and appearing with them in the West End and on Radio 4, he has also worked recently at The Young Vic, Arcola, Menier Chocolate Factory and The Gate; also with the RSC, National Theatre Studio, Almeida, Chichester, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Barbican and many more.
He has appeared on screen in Casualty, Eastenders, Hollyoaks, Bear Behaving Badly, My Dad’s The Prime Minister, Nuremberg, Cathedral, Wimbledon and the award-winning Mr.Gibson. He is a member of The hard bardics improvisers Ken Campbell's School of Night.
 Phil Whelans
Phil Whelans is one of the most experienced, talented and hilarious improvisers in the UK. He did not write this biography but I can tell you it's true.
As well as being a member of veteran short-form outfit Grand Theft Impro, he has performed impro shows in Toronto, Seattle, San Franciso and New York but mostly in London, where he has performed in Theatresports at the Donmar Warehouse, Court in the Act and Eddie Izzard's Impro MD. Phil was invited to improvise at 2001's Just for Laughs Montreal Comedy Festival (CBCTV) and recently made Gibberish: an Impro TV pilot for Celador TV.
Phil's TV performing credits include The Jack Docherty Show (Ch5), Preston Front, Punt and Dennis (BBC), Jo Brand through the Cakehole, Brasseye, Phil Kay is feeling... and The Lost Chord with Bill Bailey (Ch4). His writing credits include The Brian Conley Show, Lily Live and 2DTV (LWT), The 11 O'Clock Show, The Big Breakfast, Your Face or Mine, Armstrong and Miller (Ch4), The Live Floor Show, Velvet Soup, Revolver and TV to Go (BBC).
How it all began: Madness and Laughter
One bright Saturday morning in the spring of 2001, the leafy south London suburb of Balham awoke in alarm to strange sounds of a humorous nature seeping out of a tiny ramshackle theatre, aptly named the Chrysalis. For here veteran improviser Alan 'starter of many groups' Marriott had begun a series of drop-in workshops. His fiendish purpose was to discover fresh, new and talented victims to sacrifice to gods of improvisation.
Several years later, Alan and his group of improvisers were forced out of The Chrysalis by evil property developers* and moved to Stockwell Studios, a ramshackle ex-hospital run by an artists collective.
Two years after that, he was forced out again by evil property developers** and moved to The Stockwell Community Resource Centre.
Then in 2008, Alan was forced to go back to his native Canada after 25 years in the UK by evil property developers***. Dylan Emery took over the classes and moved them to The Bethnal Green Working Men's Club, then, after harassment by evil property developers ****, The Rag Factory in Brick Lane. And that's as far as the story has gone...
* this is true
** this is also true
*** this is a lie
**** no truth in this at all
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