back to my roots

I start teaching for PHIT again this weekend. It will be the first class I have taught in just about a year and I'm definitely looking forward to it.

For those who aren't familiar with PHIT from the beginning, the whole idea of a theater started with classes. There had been a few one-off classes taught on longform by folks like Matt Holmes, Bobbi Block, Alexis Simpson, and Tony DiGerolamo when I sat down with a few people in October 2005 and laid out my vision for PHIT.

The first improv class I ever taught was a Level 1 class that shifted all around Houston Hall on the Penn campus because it was a space I could get for free (I was still affiliated with Penn at the time). Every week I would realize I had to teach the class in a few hours and then sit down to try and write what exercises I would do. About halfway through I realized they would want some kind of performance structure to do and settled very haphazardly on The Armando. I'm thankful I didn't ruin them all. In fact, a couple of people turned out pretty darn good: Mark Dames and Jay Brenner were both in that first class. Along with a girl named Sarah Handfest. Sometimes you just cannot make this stuff up.

From that, we've come a long way. There is now a fully written out curriculum with class goals, exercises, descriptions, etc. for each of our improv Levels (the curriculum totals around 65 pages for all three improv levels). We've got a dozen plus people who've taught classes at the theater - and many, many more if you include workshops - and we've started sketch classes.

And now I'm back teaching, at least for a few weeks, which I'll stop short of calling a nice *break* from the business side of things (because that never goes away), but instead call a nice thing to look forward to on Sundays...

You hear that Level 3 students??? Don't mess this up!

PHIT & NMSS' 30th St Station FREEZE

This past Monday PHIT made it's first foray into the world of Improv Everywhere style flashmob stunts. We had been thinking about stuff like this for a couple years, but I had always felt like we'd just be repetitive. However, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society got in touch with us last fall and wanted us to replicate the Grand Central Station Freeze that was done in NYC a few years ago as a way of raising awareness about MS (a disease which keeps people from moving eventually). It seemed like a good cause.

We had a lot of people signed up, and our actual group ended up being smaller due to the weather - a huge snowstorm - on Monday, but NMSS did still edit together the following video so you can get a feel for it. Check it out:



One really cool thing coming out of the event is people's interest in doing more stunts like this. So we may be doing one again soon. If you've got ideas for good stunts that are original, post them below... so far the best thing I've heard is a Snuggie flashmob.