By Henry Bowler
Prior to 2025, I had only attended one improv festival: the Robin Hood International Improv Festival (RHIIF) here in Nottingham; and have been every single year since it began in 2022. While I always enjoy my time at RHIIF, I started to hunger for more improv experiences; to improve my skills and to watch talented performers showcase their formats. When that hunger mixed with my continuous desire to travel more, it led me to checking out some festivals on foreign shores. What I didn’t expect though, was how different both of these festivals were when compared to RHIIF…
IMPRO Amsterdam (IA)
The festival ran from 15th to 22nd February this year, within Amsterdam-Noord; on the other side of the river to central Amsterdam. While all the shows, the community space and a large handful of the workshops took place at venues within the cosy neighbourhood of Tuindorp Oostzaan, there were a couple of additional venues there were located outside of this neighbourhood; roughly a 20 minute walk or a short bus ride away.
As Europe’s oldest and largest improvisational festival, this year was a special year for IA as they celebrated their 30th anniversary! The organisers were clearly very proud of this fact, which was evident during the MC sections of the shows, and I personally believe they aimed to create such a memorable selection of workshops and shows to highlight this milestone anniversary.
Workshops for the festival opened in early December 2024, and the amount of choice that was available was staggering! With almost 40 teachers offering workshops for the duration of the festival, each time slot for a workshop offered around five choices to select (including all day workshops). I was on the website as soon as the store opened, as the festival organisers commented on social media that some workshops tend to sell out within the first hour of the festival… and they weren’t kidding! I thankfully managed to get the majority of the workshops I had planned to attend, missing out on Chris Mead’s showcase as that seemed to sell out instantaneously. Additionally they had a festival pass to all the shows for €150 (£126), and the pass included a 20% discount to all the workshops you booked onto, which is a really nice incentive!
For IA, I tried to book myself onto workshops that offered a fairly unique topic, trained me in a skill that would be useful for one of the teams I am in or offered me a chance to develop some skills I hadn’t considered before; often there were times where some of these aspects crossed over with one another for a workshop. The workshops I attended were fairly ranged, including stage combat, master of ceremonies skills, adding personal values to characters, awkward moments in scenes, vocal training and effectively using horror in shows. All of these workshops were super interesting, and were all taught by very dedicated and insightful teachers.
In the evenings, there were usually four shows on offer; based in two venues next to each other in Tuindorp Oostzaan. The first slot was an hour long jam or showcase from a workshop that day and took place in the Blauwe Zaal, which this was followed by following two headline shows, each an hour long, inside the beautiful Zonnehuis, before returning to Blauwe Zaal for the final show of the night, which were either experimental shows, or shows that typically had a shorter run-time. For the two headlining shows each night, one of these shows was typically performed by the ‘IMPRO Amsterdam Cast’, which was a large rotating ensemble encompassing some of the teachers at the festival and some local (or at the very least, some Netherlands-based) performers; and each team only had about three hours to learn the format, either that day or the day before.
As I am writing this article in mid-May, I am still thinking about some of the shows during that festival. The amount of quality that was poured onto that stage was insane! In fact, it might even have been the best festival to date, in terms of show content! There was a good range of comedic and dramatic narrative shows, as well as a small handful of musical shows; with teams and/or performers from across Europe, the US and even Asia. The jams were interestingly themed too, with shout-outs to Dungeons and Djammers and the Lost in Translation jam; the latter of which had the single most interesting improv game I had witnessed where it was essentially Chinese Whispers, but the scene was repeated and “translated” several times by various international duos. It was super interesting to see the original scene re-enacted by the first pair, but with them translating their version of the scene into English!
My most memorable and personal favourite shows were Reunion (an IA Cast show), Sound Off! (a duo from Austria), The Allegory of the Cave (UK-based team) and Improvised Roy Anderson (Swedish team). As I am looking through the show schedule again, it is reminding me of so much more content that I had originally forgotten about, but it is amazing to relive the memories of those shows. I can only give praise to the organisers for selecting such terrific shows to schedule, and talented cast members for the IA Cast!
Socially, IA was a bit of a challenge for me. Attendance numbers at this festival must have been entering the hundreds, and with the sheer number of workshops available as well as a lot of improvisers only sticking around for part of the week (which in hindsight, is a smart move because an eight day long festival can be extremely intense, as I have discovered!), it can difficult to truly connect with people and spent a lot of time with them. Heck, it was hard enough trying to catch up with old friends and acquaintances I had met at the previous RHIIF! In fact, I think the only person I got significant time with was my hotel roommate (and legendary Nottingham-based performer), Thomas. Still, everyone I did get to speak to during the workshops was incredibly lovely and I managed to get to know a small handful of performers by the end of the festival. Hopefully I can head over to IA again next year and be able to see them once more!
Along the lines of socialising, there was a community space set-up in the Basilika, which was short walk from the Zonnehuis and Blauwe Zaal. There were two sections to this space: a larger social space where you could mingle with other performers or just a place to unwind or rest, and there was a smaller bookable area where little improv jams or other events were happening (like Mimi’s photoshoots where I had my professional headshots taken), or were used for an enclosed practice space for some teams. Having that bookable space was great feature for the festival, even if it wasn’t completely utilised; I believe at least half the time didn’t have anything booked in. The few times I dropped in to chill in the social area, it also wasn’t fully utilised and ended up becoming more of a volunteer organisation hub. I think that might be why RHIIF stopped running a social space last year (although it could be more likely due to the change in venue) and instead focused on having the WhatsApp community for attendees to organise social gatherings.
IA organised their own brand of social events, dubbed the ‘Secret Schedule’. Inside their WhatsApp community, they would post about an event that is happening that very same day and included things like ‘bullshit walking tours’, morning yoga sessions and a ‘beards and wine’ evening event. A special shout out to the lovely Paige for organising and promoting these! I was only able to attend one of these events due to scheduling, which was the last ‘beards and wine’ session, and it was a lot of fun!
As we all know, there’s only one way to finish a festival, and that’s the classic afterparty! Hosted in the Basilika, there was bar set-up in the social space for us to grab various beers and other alcoholic drinks, with a dance floor set-up and a live band performing in what was the bookable space. It was a great opportunity to say goodbye to some of the faces I had met at the festival, as well as celebrate IA Cast member Kim Tan’s 40th birthday, but unfortunately, I could only stick around for a couple of hours as I had to catch an early flight the next day.
Without a doubt, I would whole-heartedly recommend any improviser to attend IA. With the sheer amount of quality workshops on a broad range of subjects, and the staggering number of amazing shows and jams; why would you not go? Heck, I’m considering putting in an application to teach a showcase next year; that’s how inspiring it was! My advice for IA is to go at your own pace; there’s a lot of do and see at the festival of this size (and in Amsterdam too), but if you push yourself too hard, it might be a little overwhelming or exhausting for you. So don’t forget to add breaks to your schedule! I was so tired by the final day that I ended up just chilling at my hotel for most of the day!
Auckland Improv Festival (AIF)
AIF ran its fifth festival this year, which took place in central Auckland and Ponsonby from 19th to 26th April. All the shows and the half-day workshops took place at the wonderful Covert Theatre, while all the full day workshops were on the fourth floor of Lylo Auckland. Walking distance between the two sites was roughly half-an-hour.
Because of the timing of this festival, and my extended stay in New Zealand, it meant that I couldn’t check out the Liverpool Improvisation Festival nor this year’s spring British Improv Project (also known as BIP) retreat. Sorry Brits, this was too good of an opportunity to pass up! Hopefully I can rectify it next year and finally attend both events.
Speaking of timing, it all worked out nicely because when I decided to head to AIF, workshop registration opened the very next day! Places when on sale in early November 2024 and I quickly snatched up a bunch of workshops that I was interested in, as I was paranoid they would sell out quickly like at RHIIF, and would later discover with IA. Turns out, not the case! In fact, I kept my eye on the workshop sales every so often and I think by the time the festival started, there still a handful of workshops that hadn’t sold out. I believe that fact alone shows that this was a smaller scale festival than I had been used to but a festival of that size does have its own merits!
The thing I found most interesting about the workshops was that there was only a small number of teachers running these workshops. Each of the international instructors (Stacey Hallal, Inbal Lori, Joe Bill and Rik Brown) had five workshops to their name, which is usual to me but not unwelcome. Each of these instructors had three half-day workshops, one full day workshop and one showcase (they called them ‘workshop-to-shows’, but I will refer to them as ‘showcases’ for this article); and in the schedule, there were two half-day workshops and one full day workshop on any given day. The great thing about having fewer teachers and making them running more workshops offers the chance to really get to know them and what they value in improv: Stacey was often trying to find and bring the joy in improv and her sessions, Inbal was great at spotting little details in people and scenes and tried to bring the best out those elements through her directions, Joe has decades of improv and comedic experience and has ended up developing a technical mind-set when it comes to performance and analysis. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any of Rik’s workshops as my goal at AIF was to work on my core skills and Rik’s workshops, while incredibly interesting concepts, mostly went against my aims for the festival. Additionally, there were two local teachers, each with their own workshop on the Friday but didn’t book onto either of those as that was my day off from the festival.
The workshops I took included an acting masterclass for improvisers, emotions, and how to maintain a scene ‘for the next three minutes’. I also signed up for two showcases! One was a true Armando-styled show, while the other was somewhat Armando-styled but the cycle in the format included some scene games like ‘Everybody get in here!’, pile-on scenes and tag-out sequences. These were a lot of fun to practice and perform on stage, even if my performance in these shows was… less than stellar.
Formats for the shows at the festival (mostly) boiled down to NZ/AUS teams/developed formats, teacher shows and the aforementioned showcase performances; with the majority of these being solely comedy narrative shows, although there were some exceptions, such as a couple of musical comedy shows and a panel show akin to Taskmaster. In terms of scheduling, there were three slots per night but there weren’t many defined rules for these slots, unlike with IA; the showcase performances were typically in the final show slot of the night and all of the 30-minute shows were always the first to perform in an evening, but not every night had a showcase nor teams performing a 30-minute show. Additionally, not every evening had performances, because the festival took place during Easter; so the Easter Sunday and Monday evenings were devoid of shows. I was able to watch most of the shows with my festival pass, which cost NZ$150 (£66.53), but missed one or two of the late shows due to crashing and burning from jet-lag.
There were also some jams on the first and final nights of the festival, and I took part in both of these! Registrations for these only opened up during the week before the festival started and I only found out on the day I was due to fly out that I was in both shows. The first jam (or I guess it was more accurately an ensemble?) was called The Mash Up, which was a show of two halves. Composed of a cast of NZ performers (mostly from outside Auckland, but included a couple of local performers), a couple of AUS performers and myself (in a rather jet-lagged state, after flying for 25 hours and landing that very morning); the first half was of various improv games that we had selected backstage (although we didn’t have time to showcase all of them) and in the second half, we had been split into two teams before the show and we performed some scenes with our designated teammates. Not a wild format in itself but truthfully, it was just a lot of fun to perform with so many new people on stage at once! Now the jam on the final night, known simply as The Improv Jam, had a pretty fun concept! Everyone who signed up was put into teams but had no idea which team they were in until 10 minutes before they were due to go on stage. Within those 10 minutes, you all had to figure out what the format for your performance was. All the performances were great with some really strong formats (one of which I admittedly want to steal for a future show)! It’s a fun idea that is essentially the very definition of “improvisation”!
Some of my favourite shows from AIF’s schedule include Ruby Rocket (Stacey Hallal’s show), Tutu (AIF tutors show), Dream Team (NZ duo) and Gen V (musical duo from AUS and NZ). There were several entertaining shows that I haven’t included in the list but were still excellent in their own right and would enjoy watching again. Although to be perfectly candid, I did feel as though the show selection from IA was too strong to be fairly compared to a smaller festival like AIF, especially as IA had more shows overall, but AIF did showcase some unique concepts that I hadn’t seen anywhere else and really enjoyed, like the previously mentioned jam on the final night and panel game show/talent show format of Grifted and Talented.
All of the social events were organised by attendees in a WhatsApp group for the festival, and the group itself was created by fellow improvisers Kitty and Jess. I tried to go to as many as I could, but had to bail on a couple of them due to jet-lag (to no-one’s surprise). They were mainly going for drinks or meals in Ponsonby but to be fair, there was a lot of good food options nearby the Covert Theatre (which is a strong bonus when compared to IA, where it was fairly difficult to get food nearby most of the venues and I often relied on stocking up at a Lidl near the hotel each morning).
I definitely felt more connected with the attendees at AIF than I did at IA, especially as everyone was extremely welcoming. I had managed to get in contact with a couple of NZ-based performers before the festival (shout-outs to Elle and Matías!), thanks to local-legend and extremely well-connected performer, Liam. Both were very approachable and offered to answer any questions I had about New Zealand itself and the festival; an offer I should have used more often than I did! I also managed to catch-up with my old RHIIF chum Franzi during the festival, which was lovely! I think that connected feeling is also attributed to the size of the festival generally (with the frequency of regular faces that you see and the smaller number of venues) and having the WhatsApp group for co-ordinating some social gatherings. Even though I’ve been back home for a few weeks now, I still miss many of the faces I had met out there and do wonder if I will be able to see them again. Fingers crossed I’ll be able to revisit Auckland and the festival again in the future, or perhaps I could attend the New Zealand Improv Festival in Wellington instead? Who knows, the future’s unpredictable like that!
AIF’s afterparty was a pretty unique experience for me: it was essentially a lock-in for the performers at the theatre and we had karaoke set-up in the theatre space! The over-head projector at the back of the stage was used to project the lyrics and two microphones were positioned on the front edge of the stage (the stage isn’t raised, so no worries about falling off!). I was informed that karaoke is kind of a big deal in New Zealand, so in that respect, it’s no surprise that this is was how they decided to close off the festival! In my slightly inebriated state, I ended up singing Backstreet Boys’ classic hit: Everybody (Backstreet’s Back); and I do not regret that decision.
AIF is an extremely welcoming festival that’s a bit smaller in scale compared to RHIIF. If you ever have the opportunity to perform there or just attend the workshops to learn from specific teachers, I would absolutely take it (and also stay in New Zealand for a little while before and/or after, because it is gorgeous in the autumn!). If you do go, one piece of advice: don’t perform on the first night you land!
Special mentions and thanks
- A big thank you to the organisers and volunteers for both IMPRO Amsterdam and Auckland Improv Festival for coordinating such amazing festivals. I can’t imagine all the hard work and effort that was poured into running these experiences.
- Another thank you to everyone who took the photographs used this article. Each photo credit should be attached to every photograph, excluding the ones I personally took.
- Special mention to Improv Taranaki (@improvtaranaki), for their continuing interest in connecting both the Taranaki and Nottinghamshire improv scenes. Let’s hope that one day we can make that dream a reality!
