Luke Sorba

I have various VHS tapes including a neat TV show I piloted back in 2002 but it was panel game-style. My background is in Keith Johnstone's style of improvisation - where it is all about teamwork, accepting offers, no gagging, no blocking, good listening, building trust etc. I am familiar and adept in the Viola Spolin school too. But I am best known for pioneering long-form or narrative improvisation where keeping in character and not tripping up the story preclude pimping and gagging anyway. When I teach, even the advanced students, I still underline the basics and consider pimping to be a rather lazy way to get a laugh, and gagging to be used strictly for punch-lines since once the reality has been subverted by the gag the story is compelled to end. One of the reasons behind my style is that my peers when I first learnt improvisation were all actors who were funny but came from a theatrical background ands worked as part of ensembles. Stand-up comics with their different sensibility and experience as solo artists, came to improvisation later. I can perform "bar-prov" as my American friends call it, with the best of them, but the improvisation I teach is old school. Not least because the building of a community mentality on stage, without hierarchy, supportive of each other and consequently brave, does not just midwife engaging and innovativre work. It doubles up as a model for society and attitude to life. Although I avoid articulating this directly in workshops I like to think people pick it up by osmosis anyway. Competing with your fellow improvisers, or gaining laughs at their expense, or being judgemental are anathema to that vision.

Luke Sorba