MATT&
improv comedy with an audience member

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Workshops, Classes, and Coaching in Improv:

Matt Holmes is available to teach, coach or consult on improv/sketch projects, and provide personalized workshops.

He'll evaluate your needs and tailor to you; beginning groups, side projects, college improv groups, high-school improv clubs, sketch groups or stand-ups looking to use improvisation to develop material, or anything else you're working on.

Businesses can get a corporate improv workshop focusing on trust, communication, and team-building that's also a lot of fun and not too embarrassing.

Matt Holmes with Yale's Purple Crayon improv group
Matt with Yale's Purple Crayon improv group
Matt Holmes with Evergreens
Matt with The Evergreens retirement community

What do people say about Matt's teaching?

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Anybody Can Do Improv
You can do improv. Not an actor? Not funny? Not outgoing? Not comfortable speaking in public? You can do improv. It'll be fun. In this brief, give-it-a-try, dip-your-toe-in workshop, we'll slowly and comfortably ease into the elements of creating theatre in the moment and playing pretend for an audience. Dress comfortably.

3 Simple Steps To Fun, Easy Improv
Petrified without a script? Wondering if you're doing improv "right?" Befuddled by concepts like platform, deal, and game?

Forget the "Don't do that" rules and learn a 3-step technique to improvise from the inside out, quickly and easily. In this brief workshop, you'll learn how to create something worth watching and fun to do. Whether you're a confused beginner or have years of frustration behind you, this approach will help you hit the reset button and keep it simple. Call it selfish and lazy or efficient and concise, but it works.


Reset Button
You've taken improv classes, read improv books, listened to improv podcasts, and you're an improviser... but it still doesn't feel right. Maybe you expected it to be more automatic, maybe you've hit a plateau, but it's not quite right. Let's unpack everything and reorganize. Let's hit reset and look at everything with new eyes.


You Talk Way Too Much
Even experienced improvisers can fill the stage with words that nobody cares about. In this brief workshop, we'll ease you off the comfortable fallback of talking and help you learn basic mime techniques, how to really listen to your partner and use what they give you, and do a scene where every word counts.


Who's Harold?
You're an experienced improviser; you know ALL the games by now. But there's something called "The Harold" that is also improv, and it's long and confusing. This workshop will give you a quick overview of the moving parts involved in longform improvisation.


Voice and Accents
Can your teammates hear you clearly? What about the back row of the audience? If you got endowed as Vladimir Putin or Dolly Parton, would the scene become all about you trying to do an accent? Explore the anatomy of how the body makes sounds and the structure of language.


Instructor: Matt Holmes
Matt Holmes has been performing and teaching improv since 1998. He ran a weekly short-form improv show in college, co-founded the seminal Philadelphia longform group Rare Bird Show in 2003, and performs improv with a complete stranger from the audience in Matt&, called a "must-see" by PhiladelphiaWeekly and "playful and winning" by TimeOut.

Holmes directed the Philly Improv Theater house team Hey Rube—voted Best New Improv Group—and has taught at national improv festivals and colleges such as Penn State, Oberlin, and Ohio University. He has taught improv to 8-year-olds, 80-year-olds, and others in between.