• character

character course

8 week course plus show, with Maeve Ryan from Ladyprov or Susan Harrison from Showstoppers and Beings.

Expand your character range and go beyond your default characters.

We all have certain characters that we go to in improv, from naturalistic to larger than life. We will be providing fun energetic exercises and helpful feedback to help you to get out of your comfort zone and find new ways of improvising characters and expand your character range.

We will be teaching a variety of great tools to help find characters in improv including Laban, animal work, emotions, status, vocal choices, levels, tempo, twinning, gibberish, atmospheres, gravities and centres.

We’ll be putting this all together to improvise fun yet believable characters that have depth, as even the weirdest of weirdo characters have feelings too!

We’ll then be looking at how to hold your character with relationships in longer scenes as they are put into various situations with lots and lots of scene and character practice.

Most of all it’s going to be LOADS of fun with a fun and energetic teaching style.

This course is suitable for people with previous experience. If you are totally new to improv it would be best to start with our beginners improv course and do at least levels 1-3 first.

next available dates with Maeve Ryan:

Dates: Every Tuesday for 8 weeks from Tuesday 28th May 2024, plus show on Friday 19th July 2024. BOOK

Time: 8pm – 10pm each week.

Teacher: Maeve Ryan.

Price: £230. Either payable all at once or £100 at time of booking and £130 when the course starts.

Venue: Old Diorama Arts Centre, Regent’s Place, 201 Drummond Street, London, NW1 3FE.

Tubes: Warren Street or Euston.

This course is suitable for people with previous experience. If you are totally new to improv it would be best to start with our beginners improv course and do at least levels 1-3 first.

next available dates with Susan Harrison:

Dates: Every Wednesday for 8 weeks from Wednesday 18th September 2024, plus show on Wednesday 13th November 2024. BOOK

Time: 7pm – 9pm each week.

Teacher: Susan Harrison.

Price: £230. Either payable all at once or £100 at time of booking and £130 when the course starts.

Venue: Charles Dickens School, Toulmin School, London Bridge, SE1 1AF.

Tubes: London Bridge or Borough.

This course is suitable for people with previous experience. If you are totally new to improv it would be best to start with our beginners improv course and do at least levels 1-3 first.

Maeve Ryan

Maeve is one of the producers and performers with Ladyprov, one of Hoopla’s most popular improv nights, and previously performed with Upstairs Downton the improvised Downton Abbey show.

Maeve trained in improvisation at The Second City, Hoopla and The Spontaneity Shop. She studied an MA in Acting at Arts Ed London, and an MA in Drama at National University of Ireland, and is one of Hoopla’s most experienced teachers.

Her theatre credits include the world premiere and British tour of Peter James’s The Perfect Murder, the Caribbean tour of Sea of Souls, the British premiere of Laura Stevens’ And The Little One Said, and more.

Maeve has experience as an Arts Educator with clients including Shakespeare Schools Festival, London Transport Museumn, Studio 23 Youth Theatre, Arcola Theatre and more.

She is the co-founder and Director of Devise Works communication skills company. She also works as a Performance Coach in corporate training and personal development, specialising in Leadership and Rapport, Spontaneous Communication and The Perfect Pitch.

Susan Harrison

Sue performs with the Olivier award winning Showstoppers The Improvised Muscial, performing in the West End, Edinburgh Fringe and national tours.

She was a series regular for series 1 and 2 of the BAFTA nominated CBBC sketch show Definitely Not Newsround (for which she wrote her own characters) and was a series regular for series 2 and 3 of BAFTA nominated sketch show Class Dismissed, also for CBBC.

Sue has taken  four character shows to the Edinburgh Fringe, one of which “Creatures” won a ThreeWeeks Editor’s Choice Award. Her numerous characters include an elderly mermaid, a folk singing Tony Blair, Andy Warhol in a giant can of soup and a horse who has had plastic surgery to become a unicorn.

She also performs with two-prov group BEINGS and guests with GTI, The Playground and The Actors Nightmare as well as hosting her own character cabaret night.

Sue has a podcast with fellow comedian Gemma Arrowsmith hosted by The British Comedy Guide.

“First class comic acting” (The Guardian)

“A Perfomer with depth and range; able to read the audience with the precision of an old hand…a fantastic character comedian” (Chortle)

She trained at The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

faqs