Keep your improv skills sharp as the RISE Comedy High School program goes online! This remote-learning class will continue to reinforce the foundations of improv while introducing new short form games and technique-building exercises that are uniquely suited to an online platform. This class is designed for our returning students, as well as high school-aged students new to RISE Comedy.
Some younger students with previous improv experience may be admitted with instructor approval.
Jessica Austgen is a Denver-based improviser, playwright and Equity actor who was named the “2018 Colorado Theatre Person of the Year” by the True West Awards.
Theatre: Arcadia, Measure for Measure, Miss Julie, The Importance of Being Earnest (Theatreworks); Between Us: The Deck of Cards, Corduroy, Shakespeare in the Parking Lot: Romeo & Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (DCPA); Sense & Sensibility, All My Sons, Tartuffe, The Children’s Hour, The Crucible (Arvada Center); Men on Boats (Catamounts); MacBeth, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It (Colorado Shakespeare Festival). Playwright: Sin Street Social Club (Arvada Center), DragON (DCPA), The Last Apple Tree (Catamounts), Apollo Flies (Theater 29)
Improv: ComedySportz Denver, Impulse Theater, Jane’s Addiction: Improvised Jane Austen, Cult-Following (a long running genre-based long form show) with Off-Center @ the DCPA and Second City’s Twist Your Dickens at the Aurora Fox.
Her longform duo, BAUS, has performed at the Denver Improv Festival, the Omaha Improv Festival and the Detroit Improv Festival. The BAUS ladies—Jessica and her regular comedy partner Lauren Bahlman—also host the comedy/literature podcast Required Readcast.
Jessica has been a member of the teaching artist faculty at the Tony Award-winning Denver Center for the Performing Arts for for over a decade and has taught everything from Shakespeare to stage combat to students aged 3-80. She teaches improv for adults and teens at the DCPA, the Denver School of the Arts, the University of Denver, and is helping to launch the high school improv program at RISE Comedy this fall. Jessica is currently serving as the Executive Director of the GroupMind Foundation and the Artistic Director of the Denver Improv Festival.