About this workshop:
Tune up your improv skills by applying short-form techniques to your long-form play. Mary began her improv journey by doing short-form musicals, and she credits one of her longest relationships to playing on a short-form house team at Arcade Comedy Theater. Mary leverages those skills to perform and teach in UCB-style long-form improv. In this workshop, participants will play short-form games to enhance initiations and character development to deepen techniques within narrative long-form.
Note: the location of this workshop may change, depending on the opening date of The Highwire Center. All participants will be notified in advance if the location changes.
About your instructor:
Mary C. Parker (she/her) is a performer, applied theater facilitator, independent international scholar, and Executive Producer.
As a performer, Mary has performed improv comedy on Portland, OR, London, UK, and Pittsburgh, PA teams in 200+ in-person shows including the Improv Festivus (Richmond, VA), Edinburgh Improv Festival (Scotland), Pittsburgh Comedy Festival (Pittsburgh, PA), and 2nd Best Fest (Richmond, VA). Her online improv has reached global audiences with over 6,300 views.
In her applied theater work, Mary employs humor to deepen humility and disrupt fragility, one laugh at a time, using a praxis of applied improvisation, playback theater, and theatre of the oppressed.
As an international scholar, Mary has been on the Faculty at Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama and Point Park Conservatory of Performing Arts and has researched and published on identity, comedy, and structural racism.
As an Executive Producer of the Black Anthology Project (B.A.P.), Mary has received funding from Frank-Ratchye Further Fund and the Regional Arts and Culture Council to capture the experiences and stories form Black improvisers.
Mary earned an MA in Applied Theatre, is a credentialed International Coach Federation (ICF) Professional Coach, and is a Certified Humor Professional (CHP) through the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor (AATH).
Offstage, Mary is as tall as Beyoncé, a reality show junkie, and is a mac and cheese aficionado who fervently believes not all mac and cheese are created equal. More at www.marycparker.com.
About Highwire Improv:
Highwire Improv is a 501(c)(3) non-profit arts organization based in Baltimore, Maryland. Our mission is to steward a community of artists committed to growth, collaboration, joy, and justice — in Baltimore and around the world — through improvisational theater.
