Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances [Improv Workshop]

Sanford Meisner, a legendary acting instructor famous for the method acting technique, defined acting as “living truthfully under imaginary circumstances.” Writers create the imaginary circumstances, actors live in them, and directors shape them. In improv, we aren’t just actors, we’re writers, actors, and directors. This means we must juggle multiple elements of truth at the same time. If a character enters a scene shouting there’s a fire, and no one panics, the scene is forced to become about how oddly calm everyone’s reaction was – instead of it being about what was behind the choice to enter shouting fire. In this workshop we’ll focus not only on the performative aspects of behaving truthfully, but also controlling our imaginary circumstances to highlight the interesting thing in every scene.

Instructor: Sam Forbes has been performing and studying theatre for over fifteen years, with a large emphasis on improv for the last ten or so. He has had long standings on both long and short form teams, and traveled to Improv Festivals throughout the country with groups: Pictures of Spaghetti and Community Theatre 3000. Positive, supportive class environments are very important to him; students should feel listened to and cared for while navigating the, sometimes vulnerable, class experience.