Master Workshops with Bobbi Block

Workshop in Actors’ Improv™ 



Actors who want to improvise, Improvisers who want to act: 
join instructor Bobbi Block for a half-day workshop exploring the Actors’ Improv Technique™.


This workshop teaches a honed method to create truth-inspired, emotionally grounded characters and build compelling realistic scenes.  Just as writers are advised to ‘write what they know,’ participants are taught to improvise from their own experiences and meld fact with fiction. This method allows both comic and dramatic moments to arise organically.  Participants learn to create a strong emotional point of view, exploring both verbal and nonverbal offers (silence, breathing, physical contact with scene partner).   Participants also learn how to simultaneously behave as both actor and playwright to build the tension and dramatic arc of a scene.  When this method is integrated, the result combines the playfulness of spontaneously-generated work with the integrity of scripted theater.

OPEN TO ALL LEVELS 12pm – 3pm

Instructor Bio:  

Bobbi Block is the Founder/Producing Artistic Director of the critically acclaimed Tongue & Groove Spontaneous Theater.  Tongue & Groove works in the style of Actors Improv taught in this workshop.  For more information and to view video clips of T&G shows, go to tongue-groove.com. 

Bobbi was invited to create LEAP: The Actors’ Improv Experiment, for the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, for which she taught and directed veteran scripted actors in their first improvised show.  Bobbi improvises with Barrymore Award recipient ComedySportz Philadelphia, where she was the Co-Producer and Education Director for 15 years and Artistic Director for 2 years. (comedysportzphilly.com)

In addition, she performed longform improv for twelve years with the popular collaborative five-member ensemble, LunchLady Doris, and performed with the interdisciplinary improvisational theatre company, Playback Philadelphia.

Bobbi has a Masters degree in Theatre, and has trained with master improvisors at renowned improv theaters around the US.

She currently teaches Improvisation at Temple University and Drexel University in Philadelphia.  She taught Improv at New Zealand’s University of Otago and throughout New Zealand and Australia.  She returned to NZ to direct her signature format, SECRETS, for the New Zealand Fringe Festival.  In addition, she has toured Europe teaching Actors’ Improv to various improv groups, and has also taught Improv in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, where SECRETS continues to be performed.

She won the 2008 Philadelphia City Paper Award: Actress Who Will Lead Improvisation to the Promised Land.