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Improv 201 — Game of the Scene

Sundays 3:15-6:15pm starting Mar 30, 2008
Prerequisites: Completion of Improv 101
Cost: $325

The UCB Theatre Training Center bases their curriculum around the idea that all quality individual comedic scenes focus in on one central comedic idea – this idea is referred to as “The Game” of the scene.

This course will focus on teaching students how to use the idea of “The Game” to create their improvised scenes. Students will be taught how to identify “games” within their scenes, and how to use the concept of heightening to properly play out their scenes once they have them. (Heightening is finding new ways to make your scenes get funnier from start to finish.) The class will heavily focus on learning how to use patterns to fill out comedic scenes based around one central “game.”

Students will also be introduced to the idea of “second beats,” or returning to scenes, characters, and concepts from earlier in an improvised piece.

This course meets for 8 sessions that are each 3 hours long. At the end of the course, students will take part in a class performance at the UCB Theatre. Graduation is also contingent upon students seeing at least two improvised shows at the UCB Theater before the end of the course.

Class Size: 14 Students

Improv 201 - Game of the Scene

Students will learn to create great scenes by finding and playing the game and explore these games through second beats, laying the foundation for performing the Harold.

Prerequisite: Improv 101

Maximum class size is 14.

Ari Voukydis

voukydis, ari
Ari Voukydis has been performing improv, sketch and standup comedy in New York City for just over a decade, and has been teaching at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater since 2001. He is regular on all those VH-1 shows your niece watches, like The Best Week Ever and All Access, and has played a number of small (but, according to his family, memorable) roles on Late Night With Conan O'Brien and the Upright Citizens Brigade's eponymous Comedy Central show. Indoctrinated into the UCBT by the four original members (Ian Roberts, Amy Poehler, Matt Besser and Matt Walsh), Ari also owes much of his improv training to Armando Diaz, Joe Bill, Mark Sutton, Mick Napier, and Rebecca Sohn. He has also had the opportunity to learn from Tony Greco, and from Robbie Butler and Anya Saffir at the Atlantic Theater Company. Ari's been working with his comedy partner, Mark Sarian, since 2001. Their most recent show, LOFT, was a Time Out Critic's Pick, and last year their sketch "Small World" was shot and directed by the legendary John Landis, and featured on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. (www.markandari.com) Ari is a member of the UCB Harold team DeCoster, and has performed in countless shows at the UCB Theater, from Robot TV to ASSSSCAT to "Wicked F*ckin' Queeyah," the annual wicked-pissa salute to his native Boston. Ari was introduced to New York through a mutual friend, SPY magazine, where he worked from his arrival in New York in 1997 until SPY's untimely death in 1998. Since then he's written for GQ, Esquire, Jane, Entertainment Weekly, Brill's Content, Modern Humorist, Salon Radio, and others, but will always be a SPY guy at heart. He lives in the Lower East Side with his wife (and fellow UCBT teacher) Betsy Stover, and their dog Walter.

Student Feedback

"I thought Ari was an exceptional instructor- he was professional, organized and adept at teaching- while also enthusiastic, relaxed, and fun (a pretty difficult combination to pull off)."

"As a non-actor, I found this class to exceed my expectations. Ari Voukydis was a large part of that. Not only was he a great instructor but his passion for the exercises and the craft really inspired me."

"Ari! He is so energetic and full of passion for this artform. I couldn't help but be excited to go to class every week. He's an AMAZING teacher and I feel really lucky that I got to study with him."

"Ari was extremely intelligent, very quick, and frickin funny as hell. I actually hope that along the way, I'll have the opportunity to take another class with him."