Where to learn
Go and get taught
You can start with a book. You will only get good in a room. Here is where to find one — locally first, then the places worth travelling for.
Take a class before you take our word for anything. Every page on this site is written to make your first term of classes more useful, not to replace it. Improv is a physical skill practised with other people; there is no reading your way around that.
Start in Kansas City
- The Bird Comedy TheaterCrossroads. Runs an eight-week Intro to Improv, a Level 2, drop-in classes, and a Thursday open jam — the widest on-ramp in the city.
- The KC Improv CompanyWestport. The city's longest-running professional troupe — worth watching before you enrol anywhere, so you know what you're aiming at.
Two more KC class providers exist that we can vouch for by reputation but not yet link properly: Kansas City's Improv Springboard, a nonprofit running classes for women and nonbinary performers, and Act Your Age Improv, aimed at performers over fifty. Both run through social media rather than websites — if you're connected to either, tell us and we will list them properly.
Cheapest possible start: find the open jam. Most cities have one free or near-free drop-in night where beginners are handed a scene. It costs nothing, you will be bad, and you will learn more in that ninety minutes than in a week of reading. In Kansas City that is The Bird on Thursdays.
Worth travelling for
- iO — ChicagoWhere Del Close developed the Harold. The long-form training programme most of this site's chapter five and chapter ten describe.
- The Second City — ChicagoOpen since 1959. Strongest if you want improv as a route into sketch and writing rather than as an end in itself.
- The Annoyance — ChicagoMick Napier's theatre, and the useful corrective to rule-based teaching: take care of yourself in the scene, do something.
- Loose Moose — CalgaryKeith Johnstone's theatre and the home of Theatresports. The other lineage — status, spontaneity, storytelling.
- The Hideout — AustinA well-regarded training centre outside the Chicago–New York axis, with a long-running programme.
Links were checked when this page was written; theatres close and programmes change, so tell us if one has gone stale. Nothing here is a paid placement, no affiliate links are used, and no theatre has been asked for anything in exchange for being listed.
Books, podcasts and video
The annotated reading list is live: the improv canon and the best books on comedy — what each one actually teaches and who it's for, from Johnstone's Impro to the UCB manual.
Do the thing
Book something this week.
The gap between people who read about improv and people who do it is one phone call wide. Pick a class above, or turn up to a jam and let someone hand you a scene.