Experience The Personal Benefits of Improv

Wellness And Community Classes

Improv and wellness? Yes! Improv is rewarding even if you’re not planning for a professional career on the stage. Many have found The Second City’s innovative improv classes, such as the improv for anxiety courses, to be helpful with stress management, mindfulness, resilience, creativity, and self-esteem.

Take a Wellness And Community Classes Class

Improv for Anxiety 5

Improv for Anxiety 5 is the culmination of all skills learned in Levels 1-4. The skills learned in this class help students succeed in future improv classes and performance, should they choose to pursue them.

Level 5 is all about performance. Students take everything they have learned in earlier levels of the program and use those skills to put together a fully improvised, 45-minute show for friends and family. They learn multiple aspects of improv performance, including communicating with an audience, engaging in a rehearsal process, and introducing, running and executing their own show.

Students revisit improvised performance games they learned in levels 1-4, as well as learn brand new games. The focus in Level 5 is on performing those games for an audience. Students also learn how to introduce games and call the end of them. With instructor guidance and feedback, students engage in a rehearsal process for a show they eventually run themselves.

Improv for Anxiety Level 5 meets once a week for three hours over a seven week term. There is a 45-minute performance for an audience at the end of the term.

BIPOC Community Improv Open Class

BIPOC Community Improv Jams

The Second City Training Center’s goal is to provide a safe environment for BIPOC-identifying students across the larger improv community to come together and play freely. This open class is free; no experience is required and participants do not have to be enrolled in a Second City class to participate. We do ask that those planning to attend register for the event in advance.

The BIPOC Improv Open Class is for people who identify as Black, Indigenous, People of Color only. The class will be led by a BIPOC faculty member.

Improv for Anxiety 4

Improv for Anxiety 4 reinforces the skills needed for strong scene work.

Students explore advanced-level scene work. They focus on synthesizing all the elements that go into strong, well-rounded, dynamic scenes: character, emotion, ensemble, environment, relationship, status, transformation, and more. Students also continue to learn how to improvise group scenes, and receive an introduction to scene styles and genres.

Students dive deeper into scene work, performing exercises that focus on the individual elements that make up successful scenes. Through repetition, observation, and feedback from the instructor, students become comfortable with creating scenes with strong characters, relationships, and a clear beginning, middle, and end. Students also learn several performance improv games, eventually gaining the skills to introduce, run, and perform several games.

Improv for Anxiety 4 meets once a week for three hours over a seven week term. There is a demonstration for an audience at the end of the term.

Improv for Anxiety 3

This innovative class uses ensemble-based improv to help people with social anxiety disorder overcome fear and avoidance associated with work, school, and family life. Improv for Anxiety 3 continues to encourage mindfulness and “being present in the moment” while gently taking students deeper into the improv skill set used to create dynamic, spontaneous scenes.

Improv for Anxiety 2

This innovative class uses ensemble-based improv to help people with social anxiety disorder overcome fear and avoidance associated with work, school, and family life. Building on the “Yes, And” foundation of level 1, Improv for Anxiety 2 continues to gently navigate key triggers for social anxiety – this time with an added focus on the improv skills used in character creation. In a safe and nurturing environment, participants will be introduced to creating characters through internal motivations like point of view, status, wants & intentions – as well as external ones like physicality and relationships to other characters. They will learn how to make choices in scenes that help define their character and clearly establish the “who”.

Improv for Anxiety 1

This innovative class uses ensemble-based improv to help people with social anxiety disorder overcome fear and avoidance associated with work, school, and family life. A Second City Training Centre instructor will lead the improv class through a series improv exercises that are specifically chosen to address key triggers for social anxiety. In a safe and nurturing environment, participants will be introduced to a number of tools they can use to manage their anxiety.

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