9 years of Phoenix Comedy | Jester’Z Improv

Happy Birthday March Birthdays, it’s our Birthday too!

9 Years of Awesomeness

This March marks the 9 year anniversary of Jester’Z Improv Comedy

Founded in March of 2001, Jester’Z Improv is the longest running improv comedy troupe in the Phoenix area. The look of the theater has changed a lot in the last 9 years… we have seen some cast members come and go, and some stay… but the shows have not changed! 4 awesomely hilarious improv comedy shows every weekend!

One of the best parts about being in business for 9 years and really the only reason we have been able to stay in business for 9 years are the fans! We love our fans, and would do just about anything to make them happy. Truth be told Phoenix has some of the best improv comedy fans on earth!

That is why this March we are trying to give back a little…

If you have a Birthday any time in March, you can get free admission to see the Jester’Z any time in March! Call it Jester’Z March Madness!

This is how it works:

1. Plan you birthday party on a weekend between March 5th & March 27th
2. Call and make reservations for your birthday party
3. Make sure birthday girl/boy bring some form of ID, or at least enough people to verify a March birthday
4. Come and laugh until you wet your pants
5. Hope that other people wet their pants too, so you aren’t the only one…

It is that easy!

Make those reservations far enough in advance that we aren’t sold out! | 480-423-0120

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A Benefit for Alan & Jen | Jester’Z Improv

Our dear friend and talented actor Alan Schuler experienced a tremendous tragedy when his condo went up in flames early Tuesday morning. He and his girlfriend crawled on the ground to safety but not after suffering injuries, and losing everything they owned to the fire. Alan has performed on the Jesterz stage for several years and has brought many smiles and laughs to many people. We are putting on this performance to do our part to help him and his girlfriend re-coop from this tremendous loss.

Please join us for this benefit performance and help support Alan and Jen during this time of great difficulty. It will be a great night of wonderful entertainment, and a great cause to help a good hearted individual, who we have grown to love both as fellow troup members, as well as the many audiences whom Alan has entertained over the years. Please call and reserve at 480-423-0120 as seating will definitely be limited. If you are unable to make it to the show but would still like to contribute to this cause Any Wells Fargo location will accept donations to the “Alan Schuler Fire Recovery Fund.” To make a donation you will need the account #7529308400 or they can search under “Michael Kriley.” All proceeds will go to Alan and his girlfriend Jen to help them get back on their feet.

Hopefully with our help Alan will be back on stage doing his impression of a T-rex!!

Here is a link to a news report about the fire.
Go to out our special page on the site dedicated to Alan.

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6 Week Beginning Improv Class | Jester’Z Improv

This last 12 week beginning improv class was so overwhelmed with students that we have decided to do a 6 week course starting Saturday February 27th at 9am – 12 noon. Hopefully the Saturday and early morning will accommodate students schedules a little better.

The class will cover the basics of improv including, but not limited to: agreement, listening, emotion, team work, characters and basic scene work. A 6 week course is very intense but does offer some great advantages that the 12 week course does not offer. For example, a 12 week course is sometimes a larger commitment then most people want to make. It also forces the student to focus on fundamental improv principals on a week to week bases with out the interruption of ancillary principles.

The class will be taught by Preston Smith who has been teaching, directing and performing improv comedy with Jester’Z Improv for 3 years.

Class enrollment is $200 and includes 6 weeks of classes and a graduation showcase on April 3rd at 6:00pm (yes, there will be a class on April 3rd in the morning.)

For more information or to register for this class please contact Dalane at 480-423-0120

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Why do we create characters on stage? | JesterZ Improv

This is round two in character development blog posts

I am relativity sure that I am not beating a dead horse by going on and on about character development. Tonight in our character development class I posed the question: Why do we create characters on stage? There were a number of great answers that were all correct; to add emotion, variety, point of view and so on… However, there was one answer that I really want to talk about and it is this: To give the audience something they can relate to.

As much as I love a flesh eating zombie on stage with a mild case of narcolepsy, it is really hard to relate to that person… not impossible, but hard. Now create a sales person character who has a huge smile and straight teeth with an overly intrusive personality and you have someone that I can relate to… not only me but other improvisers and audience members.

When the audience can relate to our characters it sucks them more into the scene and makes them believe the idea of the scene better. If an audience member is more involved in the scene, the more they will like it. A great group that I think does this really well is Ratliff & Jackson out of Austin… 19 minute scene between a father and his daughter… as relate-able as it comes! Check out the video here.

Here are a couple of great exercises to help build better relate-able characters:

Interview Exercise
3 or 4 students walk around in the room, the teacher points out the way the student is walking, what they are leading with and so on. The teacher then tells the student to change their walk a little bit, lead with something else. The teacher repeats the process with all students walking around the room. He then invites the students to sit in chairs in front of him where he conducts on interviews of each character, asking them questions while the student stays in character. Once the teacher has interviewed all the characters, the characters are then invited to do some scenes together.

Character Mimic
4 or 5 students sit in chairs on stage. One student just starts talking in character about what ever the character has on its mind. After 30 seconds of so, another students starts talking as a different character, this patter repeats itself until everyone has introduced themselves as a character. Now is where it gets a little crazy… Students can now take turns talking in character, if a students likes another students character they can go and stand behind the student chair and talk as the other students character at the same time the first student is talking as their character… and so on, even to the point that ll 5 students are talking as the same character.

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Jester’Z Improv + Lo-Lo’s Chicken & Waffles

About 9 months ago one of our favorite local downtown restaurants, Lo-Lo’s Chicken & Waffles opened a second location just up the street from us. Obviously we were exited to have such great food so close to us… and to make it ever better they stayed open Friday nights until 3am in the morning… there is nothing better after a long night of improv to warm up next to a couple of waffles and fried chicken!

As you can imagine, we were elated when Lo-Lo’s told us we could offer Free Kool-Aid to our customers on Friday nights, with a Jester’Z ticket stub. It has been a great relationship between two wonderful and fun local businesses.

It is now our privilege to bring to you, “LoLo’s Chicken & Waffles + Jester’Z Improv = Awesomeness“. Basically this means, if you go to Lo-Lo’s between 2/15 – 2/28, you will get a coupon with your receipt… bring both the receipt and the coupon into Jester’Z to any show between 2/19 & 3/6 and you can get $4 off the 8pm show or $6 off the 10pm show, for up to 8 people on your reservation! I don’t want to sound salesie because this is a blog… but that is a fantastic deal. Please, please please still make reservations, we hate turning people away with out reservations… but we do it a lot.

We hope this accomplishes two things… 1. gets all of our great customers to appreciate some great local food, ie Lo-Lo’s Chicke & Waffles. 2. Get Lo-Lo’s Chicken & Waffles customers some great deals to see our shows!

If this goes well we are hoping to do similar deals with other local businesses in the future!

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Character Development | JesterZ Improv

Building healthy strong characters

Over the last couple of weeks we have a couple of classes that have been focused on building strong characters with emotion. Characters within improv are absolutely vital to the survival of a scene. Characters build strong foundations to a scene and help to build the relationship.

We had Jaye Andres Vice-President of the AZ Enneagram Association in to teach our Character Development class this week. She talked about the different types of “personality filters” that are out there. Here are a list of them. Jaye is a fantastic source for Enneagram knowledge… we highly recommend checking out the AZ Enneagram Associations site.

The Ennnagram test reveals different personalities that are all around everyone in society, that is what makes it’s use in improv so valuable. Nothing is more funny then the truth… that is a saying all improvisers should live by. When we can create characters on stage that the audience can connect with, we draw them more into the scene… when we give those characters actual emotion it draws people even more into the scene, which makes the pay off even greater.

Here are some keys to finding a great character:

• Look around you at the people you interact with everyday, what are thier personally quirks. All the great improvisers will tell you that their best characters were inspired by someone they knew.
• Find a character “twitch”, which is a physicality that puts you in the characters persona.
• Create a real history for your character, where they are from, who they grew up with, what they do for a job… whether they like fudge on their ice-cream or strawberries.
• Give your character emotion! Make them real emotion characters. If you counted every time someone said “i am angry” on stage instead of actually being angry, you would not be able to count that high.
• Purpose and motive. Once you have created an emotion character give them a purpose or a want… and a motive or reason for being angry.

I am sure I could go on a on about how you can build characters, suffice it to say that it is important that they are present on stage… they will give you the words to say as an improvisor, they will give you the emotion you need. NOT YOU, you bring nothing to the stage but a character, once you are both there, let the character take over.

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