Welcome to the BIP digital timetable! This site has useful information about the event and an interactive timetable where you can favourite workshops to help plan your weekend.
Skip the menu and open straight on the timetable
It would take months and cost hundreds of pounds to make this site into an app on the iOS App Store and the Google Play stores, but you can download it as an app onto your phone right here! Just open the options/sharing menu for this tab and hit "Add to Home Screen" or "Install app".
A chance for the experienced musical improvisers at BIP to flex their skills with something more experimental. There may be a focus on specific musical styles or genres, or even musical short form games, depending very much on the lovely workshoppers we have available.
I get asked a lot what the prerequisite skills are. Rule of thumb — if you're not sure you have the experience needed to perform an improvised song in a show, you probably don't. Musical Improv relies on very skilled, well practiced and experienced performers, and there is simply not enough time in 90 minutes to go over everything and learn it. Those who can (and should) take part will know who they are (chances are, we all know who they are too :D).
Tom has been an improv musician for over 15 years, having worked with many top acts across the UK and beyond. An audio software developer by day, he can often be found improvising musicals with Music Box or Dragprov Revue, evoking classic Hollywood with the improvised 'Talkies', playing for laughs with internationally renowned comedians, and providing dramatic tension for improvised murder mysteries with Murder She Didn't Write (including a recent transatlantic cruise!).
This is an embodying-focused workshop though not strenuous, it calls upon your listening skills and your observation skills. We will embody Key Words and build scenes which are deeply connected and authentic. Beginners welcome as it is a personal discovery experience. You will feel moved and truly seen during this session. Bring your heart.
I've been performing with Comic Sans Script in Cheltenham since 2018. We focus on Short Form with a little music sprinkled in. I'm trained as a 7 Words Communication Facilitator and this fascinating system lens itself to the world of Improv, incorporating body language, clarity of communication and deep connection between participants. I'm also ridiculously tall, please don't be intimidated!
Friendly introduction to improvising songs, the core of musical improv. Mainly group exercises, good energetic start to the day.
You don't necessarily need a good singing voice, but later on in your musical improv journey it can come in handy. As with all things, it will inevitably get better with practice. For musical improv, however, I would say that a strong sense of rhythm and not being afraid of what's going to come out of your mouth is very important.
Ever felt like the "game of the scene" is just about the strangest thing happening? Those odd moments can be fun but often miss the real magic—the relationships between characters. This workshop shifts the focus to the character game, helping you build emotionally grounded characters who interact authentically from a strong viewpoint. Comedy and connection then grow from within. Through warm-ups, character exercises, and scene work, you'll practise reacting honestly, connecting deeply, and playing scenes through relationships, gaining tools and confidence for character-driven scenes.
Dean trained at the Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB), specialising in the 'game of the scene' technique. He learned from UCB improvisers like Terry Withers, Will Hines, and Shannon O'Neil, and trained with The World's Greatest Improv School and the Radical Agreement Project. He studied narrative improv with Katy Bateson and performed with We Are Improv.
Dean is a regular on podcasts like Podcast Town, Rabbit Hole, Movie! Movie!, and Backstage at the Regency directed by Billy Merritt (Spotify). He has most recently performed live with Your Hot Neighbour. He has taught improv in Lancaster and online with the Radical Agreement Project.
Dean apologises for his profile photo—he hasn't had time to update it since cameras went digital.
Multiple things happening at once on stage – engrossing and impressive for an audience, but tricky to navigate. This workshop will teach you how! We’ll build up the fundamental skills involved to seamlessly give and take the attention in a scene, and hence move between the foreground and background.
Dave has been improvising since 2016. With a particular love for musical improv, he has trained with MissImp, The Maydays , and Showstopper!. His improv adventures have taken in five countries so far, including performances in Berlin and Edinburgh. He improvises songs of all styles with Comic Harmonic, emotionally-powerful drama with Flower Freedom, and a video game with Enter Player 2. He was longtime producer and compere of Smash Night in Nottingham, and has been teaching improv with MissImp since 2019.
What happens when we ditch the story and characters in Improv, and instead focus on music? This workshop is an introduction to the world of CVI, or "Collaborative Vocal Improvisation". Popularised by the likes of Bobby McFerrin ("Don't Worry Be Happy"), CVI is a form of musical improv that creates a band or orchestra with nothing but the human voice. If that all sounds a bit lofty and/or scary, don't worry, it did for me, too! If you have a voice and can keep a beat, you have everything you need to take part. Come along to try something different, and maybe suprise yourself.
Tom is a person, resident of Earth, and famously bad at writing about themselves. Having been in the improv world for the best part of a decade, appearing in various Bristol-based improv projects, Tom has spent the last 12 months or so learning about CVI, or "Collaborative Vocal Improvisation". Despite the wordy title, it's a fun, approachable form of acapella music-making, and Tom is excited to share this new toolkit with fellow BIPers.
Suitable for anyone, pretty much though if you're a complete beginner, be prepared to jump in. We will practice a number of fun micro-exercises - tools you can use to keep scenes vibrant and stop stagnation. Then we'll play a bunch of short-form games to see the tools in action. You'll be active throughout, with some watching of each other playing. Feedback, brief & positive, will be encouraged.
I love the playfulness and connectedness of improv. I've been improvising for bloomin ages, initially in dance, now psychodrama (Playback Theatre with Real & Present Theatre, Rapt) and am founder of improv short-form troupe The Communimps . Improv is like all life forms, it needs oxygen, good soil & sunshine. My workshop is all about keeping your scenes breathing and dynamic.
The Living Room is a wonderfully accessible improv format, but seems less well known compared to Harolds or Armandos. At its best it combines high energy punchy scenes with genuine connection and sincerity. This workshop will use various exercises to demonstrate how you can get the most of the format, both as a performer, and as a living feeling human being.
Participants will be invited to talk personally about their own lives, but it is up to them how much they wish to share. General familiarity with improv is assumed, but no specific skills are necessary.
I can't remember when I first started improvising, but I can remember leading my first improv workshop in 2012. Amidst the chaos, people seemed to have fun! I started improvising regularly in Reading in 2015 when I started attending “What's the Game Improv” classes, performing as part of the house troupe. I was also a founding member of the Free Radicals , using informative “TED-style” talks as the inspiration of our shows. Currently I am part of the longform group Imagination Superhighway, debuting at the Hoopla Improv Marathon with our Choose Your Own Adventure format, and horror based group The Choir.
Bringing the performance to your improv & becoming confident as a performer on stage so that the improv can be seen, heard and enjoyed by all.
As an experienced theatre director and improviser I will start with our first tools, the voice & breath - before looking at how we carry ourselves on stage and present the games and scenes to the audience.
We will check in on how we perform freely whilst always remembering the stage picture.
We'll look at techniques to help with anxiety and nerves as well as diction and pitch and why this is so important for the audience to understand what we say.
Danny is super excited to be returning to BIP for a second time. Danny has been performing improv for 11 years and performs with the duo Bendy House, the Dogface House Team & Chris Mead's The Pretend Company. As well as directing teams and teaching, Danny has performed improv throughout the Uk, at the International Copenhagen Improv Festival, Ed Fringe Festival, the IO and Second City, Chicago. Danny is also Artistic Director for Slow Theatre Company, and is a freelance Theatremaker and Director. This August she'll be performing a 1-woman panto version of A Christmas Carol at the Ed Fringe - Is August to early for Christmas songs? Danny loves dogs & is trying to like dark chocolate without much success.
Improv scenes generally have no scenery but at the same time they can have as realistic or as magical a set as the performers want. It's all made up and free, so why not? In this workshop we're going to look at scene painting in longform scenes- describing the physical setting that our characters find themselves in. Add authenticity and interest to your scenes, know that you’re in the same space as your partner and enjoy playing with stuff and space you’ve made. We'll be trying out different ways to paint scenes and improvise within the 'set' you have created. This workshop is suitable for anyone who has done some longform improv and wants to make their scenes more visual. All improvised set building tools and materials provided!
It was love at first sight for Jo and improv! Having studied drama on a Creative Arts degree way back, most of Jo’s subsequent professional life has been about teaching and teacher development. Then in 2018 she discovered Dogface Improv in a scout hut in Norwich and started laughing an almost indecent amount. This opened up endless ways for her to explore and play with the funny she’d always found in human relationships and foibles, which she does in a duo with Kathryn Knock (Stirling & Knock), and in a wonderful troupe, Ooh! Improv. She has now brought together her understanding of how people learn with her long-standing crush on improv and has become an improv coach for Dogface. She hopes to marry improv one day.
Sometimes in improv, we think we're aiming for subtlety and nuance, when we're really afraid to look clunky or make big offers. This workshop is about throwing subtext out of the window and making strong, fast, explicit moves. Confusion is the enemy of fun — kill it! Expect high energy and side-coaching.
Alex has been improvising since 2009 and organising events, running workshops, touring shows and winning awards for over a decade. You may know him from Lying Together (previously Sex, Lies & Improvisation), MATES: the Improvised '90s Sitcom , Stürike Comedy, or from his various roles at BIP. www.alexrkeen.com.
As well as being a format itself, Mockumentary can also be a fabulously simple yet versatile tool, with a multitude of practical applications.
Hugely adaptable, it’s useful as a plug-in module for other longform formats, for exploring character relationship dynamics, for providing a satisfying button to finish narrative & a whole host of other creative applications.
We’ll be briefly explaining the official format, then quickly diving into practical examples, exploring how the use of this tool opens up different ways to flesh out characters, explore relationships & creatively add narrative and depth to your scenes.
There’ll be plenty of chances to pop up & play - with some gentle side coaching (for those who want it).
Stags has performed comedy, attended workshops & run standup courses for nearly 2 decades (also helping multiple people take shows & perform on the Fringe).
Alongside 15 yrs of standup at the Fringe, he’s also taken up several improv shows, inc. popular mythology-based shortform Spontadeity whilst also performing with numerous longform troupes.
He runs several improv nights, all with a very accessible and inclusive approach to elicit the best from all attendees: Derby’s weekly walk-in Chewy, Nottingham’s monthly longform workshop, Petri Dish & more than 100 online longform sessions.
He brings a wealth of learning from countless courses from experts on improv, clowning, acting & standup which he’ll happily share & discuss while teaching.
Come and explore the exciting world of DullProv! What happens if we take slow-burn improv, and slow it down...then slow it down some more. In this super-slow-burn energy, we find that the tiny things become front and centre, and I'll let you into a secret - it's anything but dull!
Chris has been improvising for thirteen years and coaching for eight — he is an experienced and supportive coach.
He's passionate about improv for wellbeing and good mental health, as well a for performance. Chris has trained with Second City, UCB, IO, AndAlso, The Maydays, The Nursery and The Free Association. He's performed in hundreds of shows across the UK, Europe, the USA and at the Edinburgh Fringe multiple times with his improv duo Bendy House .
Inject emotional depth into your scenes, enrich relationships, dramatic tensions & backstories.
This workshop will be taught essentially as an exercise/game to build the improv muscles and competencies to create compelling characters and help tap into emotional tensions.
It’s a really fun way to drill the concept of real emotional depth which you can take away, practice and play with — although it also works well as a technique that can be included in performances.
Josie has performed character stand-up for over twelve years, running and performing on numerous Edinburgh Fringe runs and Leicester Comedy Festival shows and assisted in teaching a good number of stand-up courses (utilising improv exercises).
Discovering improv in 2019, since then she has co-run weekly online and in-person drop-ins in Derby, organised and hosted a set of all-female and non-binary workshops under MissImp, supported on a monthly long-form workshop, and performed improv on four full Edinburgh Fringe runs. Previously performing as part of the now disbanded Squares in the Round , Josie is currently part of Nottingham’s Vox Pops and one half of The Sisters Karazmatik.
Plan your weekend in advance (does not guarantee a space)
On Friday night, we're keeping the entertainment short and sweet, with two longform performances by the weekend's teachers and jam leaders, finishing by 10pm.
Jen and Bobby, who would prefer their names not be portmanteaued either way round, present a fast paced merry-go-round of characters and situations to start your Saturday evening off with a weird bang. Or "wang".
A collection of uniquely weird and wacky short form games that have been invented/adapted by Your Hot Neighbour in Lancaster. You won’t have seen nothin’ like it before!
An argument about whether animals should sleep upstairs; an ode to cake; a celebration of a Duolingo streak? If you can imagine it, Comic Harmonic can sing it! A musical sensation, creating songs of all styles on all subjects. Spontaneous, harmonious, hilarious!
A longform format based on choose-your-own adventure stories! Here, you hold the power to shape the story. Every decision you make sends our performers down a new path, creating a unique narrative filled with unexpected twists. Your choices drives the action - immerse yourself in an unforgettable, interactive adventure!
A BIP tradition, we’ll finish the evening with a rendition of The Cellblock Tango featuring some of the weekend’s longest-running performers.
On the short-form side, The Scenes Only Jam allows you to pick who you want to perform with and show off your scene-work abilities.
Bobby has been teaching and performing improv for over a decade. They co-direct Stürike Comedy and the Sheffield Improv Jam with Alex Keen, who he also performs with as twoprov Joined at the Quip. His preference is for long, character driven scenes focusing on the small absurdities in everyone’s life.
Does what it says on the tin. Draw names from a hat, bring people up to play games, whether quickfire, scenic, guessing, musical, or any other style you can think of!
Former Shrimp and current member of Side Quest, I've been doing improv for 13 years.
I've performed both short and long form improv in Sheffield, and have performed as part of Side Quest at the Fringe in 2024.
Although I mostly do long form now, short form games still hold a special place in my heart, as that's what I grew up on as improv newbie.
Outside of improv, I also play rugby and D&D, just to be difficult. Contrary to the only high-resolution photo I could find of myself, I do not sell used cars.
The Armando is a montage, inspired by an improvised monlogue. One player takes a one-word prompt and recounts a story from their life about whatever that word inspires. The cast create a series of premise-based scenes inspired by that story.
BJen, an American who has called the Manchester area home for ten years, began her improv journey with her first class in 2020. After a stint of online classes during lockdown she was back in classes honing her skills in 2022 and is now a member of both Improv on Demand, Skunkhaus and Jens and Frens, a dynamic women's team created in the Northwest. Jens and Frens initially formed for the 2023 Women in Comedy Festival but grew quickly to include more than 20 women. One of Jen’s favourite formats is the Armando and she’s delighted to be hosting the jam.
The Musical Montage Jam is a chance for those who love singing & scene-work to jam and show off their skills with a variety of musical games and scenes involving music and song. With accompaniment by our resident musician, Tom Hodge.
One of the BIP founders, Geoff is a founder member of Nottingham’s MissImp and Nottingham Improv Comedy Experience (NICE) . He has been 'doing improv' for over 25 years including Loose Moose Calgary under the late Keith Johnstone. Also taught by The Maydays, Baby Wants Candy, UCB, Zenprov Chicago and Mike McShane.
Also known as “Follow the Leaver”, a Slacker starts with a simple two-person scene, but whenever (whenever!) a character leaves a scene, the scene ends and we follow that character into a new scene elsewhere in the world. This can get silly.
Accountant for money, improver for fun as silly comments and laughing in meetings, is frowned upon. I have met amazingly talented people, increased my self confidence and developed skills in performance, hosting and directing since returning to Leamprov 4years ago.
Mum to 3 adults who refuse to leave home, I’m either making it too comfortable for them or not charging enough! Nature lover, especially of honey bees. 99% vegan. Been to more funerals than weddings and despite going to college to learn how to design and make my own wedding dress, I have never been married. My conclusion is I try too hard.
I love a challenge this year I am skydiving for a local charity.
BIP is a cooperative event and is entirely organised by volunteers. Making it happen is incredibly rewarding, but also a lot of hard work!
If you're interested in hearing more about how the event is organised and run, want to ask any questions or share feedback in person, or find out how you can get involved, join Geoff, Alex, Bobby and Jen in Meet 4 at 4:30pm.
The address is Yarnfield Park, ST15 0NL. There is plenty of free parking for those travelling by car.
The main railway station is Stafford, 9 miles from the venue; the nearest local train station is Stone, 3 miles away, but has limited connections.
Post your train arrival time in the SPOND event page and ask if anyone who is driving can swing by the station to pick you up.
Alternatively, book a taxi with one of these local firms:
Check-in is available from 4pm. Checkout is 10am on the day of departure.
Ask reception about your bedroom and keycard. If you are sharing, they will tell you who with.
Bedrooms are not attached to the main building. After collecting your key you will be directed to your lodge.
Meal times are:
Food is all served buffet style. Dietary requests have been passed onto the hotel, but please make yourself known to the kitchen staff for your individual preferences.
Unlimited teas and coffees are available on the balcony during all the sessions.
Free wifi is available with 300Mbps superfast connection.
Please check out of your room after breakfast on Sunday, before attending the day's first workshop. Put your bags in your car or store with reception.
There is a small gym if you have the energy.
Alex, Bobby, Carly, Jen, Jen, Jo and Matt are your Welfare team for this BIP weekend. We're here for you to talk to if you have any concerns or issues with anything at BIP, or if you just fancy a chat. Come and find us at any point over the weekend — we'll be the ones wearing pink BIP shirts. If you want to raise a concern without talking to us, you can leave a message in the welfare box at main reception.
To report an urgent incident, please find one of us. If you cannot find someone in person, call Alex on 0751 772 3666 or Jo on 0797 327 8052.
When you report an incident, there is no required information and we will respect any requests for privacy. However, the more information we have to act on and potentially relay to others where necessary, the better we will be equipped to solve any immediate or ongoing problems and make things better in the future.
If you need to get hold of someone during the weekend, you can contact the list below. Unless it's an emergency, a text or WhatsApp message is preferred when contacting an individual.