New Seattle improv program offers more than performance skills | Entertainment

How to Seattle

Among the tools that have helped Seattleite Saya Jenks manage anxiety most effectively, here’s one that might seem unexpected: improv. The theatrical art of performing or enacting scenes with no script has also helped her create community when moving between cities, recover from the social isolation of the pandemic and learn to “embrace failure” and be “OK with things not going perfectly,” she said. 

As a professional theater educator, Jenks may be partial to improv — but she isn’t alone. Research indicates improv can increase our tolerance for uncertainty and improve our well-being. One study found that teens with social anxiety had reduced symptoms after completing an improv program. 

Last summer, shortly after moving to Seattle from New York, Jenks blended her belief in the manyfold power of improv, her determination to overcome the Seattle Freeze she’d been warned about and her background teaching theater and team-building workshops to launch an improv program with two primary goals: to teach skills and mindsets that apply both on- and offstage and to help people make real, genuine friendships, without the small talk or awkward icebreakers that often accompany networking events. 

Through IRL: Improv for Real Life, she leads one-off workshops full of improv games and personal storytelling exercises, plus an eight-week series called Grown Up Drama Club. The initiative joins a host of popular improv classes and programs that have flourished in Seattle postpandemic, including through Jet City Improv, Unexpected Productions and Bandit Improv Comedy Theater. 

And there seems to be more demand yet. Many of Jenks’ workshops, capped at 14 people, have filled up with everyone from young tech workers to retirees to couples looking for a fun date night. She hopes attendees leave with skills, mindsets or new friendships they’ll carry beyond IRL, she said. It’s about: “How does that seep out into the rest of your life?”

Skills for the stage — and beyond

Earlier this year, in the auditorium of University Heights Center in the University District, the wooden floors creaked as five people speed-walked in swooping circles, eyeing each other with either suspicion or amusement. 

Members of this Grown Up Drama Club cohort were on an undercover mission, assigned by Jenks: You’re a superhero. Protect one innocent civilian in the room (whom you choose) from an archnemesis (also chosen by you) without letting either one know who they are. Maintaining a facade of nonchalance, you must stay between the civilian and the villain at all times. The result: a swarm of meandering people getting more and more awkwardly close together, with a growing sense of urgency, until the room erupts in laughter.

The activity is fun to watch because it plays with the concept of “objective,” Jenks explained a few moments later. That’s the theme of this particular class, which next involves improvising two-person scenes in which each actor has been given an end goal — like rob a house or get your scene partner to confess their feelings for you — that no one else is let in on. 

“When you have a really clear and playable objective, that makes for a really compelling scene,” Jenks told the class. 

The two-hour evening unfolded with a few more lighthearted, laughter-inducing games like the “superheroes/archnemesis” one, interspersed with praise and pointers from Jenks. She touched on skills, like pantomiming realistically or quickly establishing a setting, and mindsets, like jumping in before you feel ready or staying present enough to really listen to your scene partner. Any missteps prompted an enthusiastic “Woo hoo!” from the group — a reminder that mistakes are welcome. 

Participants are learning the technical side of performing improv, but some say the soft skills they pick up from IRL are even more valuable. They’re learning what Jenks calls an “improv mindset”: an ability to roll with life’s punches, listen fully and embrace silliness and perceived failures. 

One improviser in the room, Jenna Perez, 27, is finding the series to be “a great way to decompress from being an anxious perfectionist,” she said before the Thursday evening class started. She’d been looking for an after-work creative outlet but was completely new to performing arts and nervous to try improv, she said. So far, the “really collaborative, supportive environment” makes it feel like “it’s OK to do stupid things or mess up or be silly,’” she said, “and that’s a feeling that I don’t get elsewhere often.” 

What she hopes to get through improv, alongside new friendships, is “being more confident, being openly myself, not taking up less space because it’s the convenient thing to do,” she said. “And I feel like I’m already starting to get that.” 

Terry Achille, a 23-year-old software engineer, has become more confident and quicker to think on his toes since completing a Grown Up Drama Club series this winter, he said. He’s noticed the shift in his professional and social life. 

“I even just feel funnier … I feel more present,” Achille said. “I feel like I can bring fresher ideas to meetings or work or random people at the grocery store or (being) on the phone with my mom …. that’s kind of permeated in every aspect of my life when it comes to talking to people.”

‘Putting yourself out there’: From improv pals to real friends

Achille came across IRL right after moving to Seattle in September for work. When he spotted a colorful flyer advertising a theater workshop designed for making friends, “it seemed like a very, very good opportunity to meet people,” said Achille, who had been “a theater kid” in high school.

After his first improv workshop, he went on an impromptu outing to get boba with a few classmates who have since become friends beyond improv. He’s made other friends in Seattle, too, through work and the gym. But his improv pals have been “probably the best I’ve made since moving here,” Achille said. Common interests plus “the actual act of putting yourself out there and doing a silly dance move or doing an improv scene with somebody and making those memories” makes it easier to bond, he said. 

That’s a central goal of IRL. Beyond teaching skills, Jenks designs workshops with the aim of helping people find genuine connections and make lasting friendships.

One way that happens: She weaves personal storytelling exercises alongside traditional improv games, letting people open up about their own lives as much as they feel comfortable doing. For example, at University Heights Center last month, the Drama Club cohort broke into pairs and shared a “glimmer,” or a small highlight, from their week. Then their partner delivered a dramatic retelling of the story, with other classmates acting it out. 

Jenks also leads activities that help everyone learn each other’s names, keeps classes to a maximum of 14 people so no one gets lost in the crowd, and creates a WhatsApp group for each cohort to stay in touch. 

Some attendees say the vulnerability and silliness innate to improv naturally lends itself to connection.

Bob Whitehorn, 78, signed up for IRL for a chance to “be silly and goofy” in a way that doesn’t always fit into his day-to-day life. At the workshops, there’s no pressure to present yourself in a certain way, he said. The “Yes, and” principle — an improv adage encouraging actors to accept the premise their scene partner throws out there, and to build on it — creates a feeling of acceptance. 

“People bring themselves, and they offer things, and they’re always accepted,” he said. “If other people keep accepting you, then you relax. And one of the results, I think, is that then you accept yourself more. … It makes you more capable of friendship.” 

While he’s also found community through local poetry readings and meetings at a senior center, improv seems to lend itself to deeper connections, he said, recounting how he recently went to a live improv show with some friends he met through Drama Club. “I’ve never experienced anything quite like it.”