Guest Workshop Bundle: Familiarity Breeds Content AND Surprise Party
About this Event
Take two workshops from two fantastic teachers on one day for a special discount rate.
Familiarity Breeds Content (11am-2pm with Billy Soco): In this workshop, we’ll use our real life as inspiration and dive straight into specifics and dynamic relationships that bring our scenes to life. Through a mix of exercises and scene work, we’ll practice:
- Bringing honesty and depth to our character perspectives and relationships
- Establishing environment with details specific to our lives to inspire meaning and purpose in our scenes
- Playing the obvious and gifting fun facts that honor spontaneity
This workshop is perfect for improvisers at all levels looking to build scenes without inventing so much and getting in their head. Students will take away practical tools to build their scenes with confidence through authenticity.
Surprise Party (2:30-5:30 pm with Bianca Casusol): Scenework stale? In a character rut? In this workshop we'll use our minds and bodies to play and find fun gifts to surprise ourselves and our scene partners with to rediscover how joyful improv can be when there's no "right" answer. A mix of scenework and individual character exercises will leave you with the tools to create memorable and unique characters with distinct perspectives.
About your facilitators:
Billy Soco is a NYC-based actor, improv teacher, facilitator, and voice artist of Chilean and Filipino descent. He teaches at The Second City Conservatory and serves as Artistic Director of the Megawatt house team program at Magnet Theater, where he also teaches improv and musical improv.
Billy began performing poetry and freestyle rap in the Southeast in the early 2000s before moving to New York City, where he trained at Magnet Theater, Upright Citizens Brigade, The Second City Conservatory, and Freestyle Love Supreme Academy. His performance credits include The Armando Diaz Experience, North Coast, Baby Wants Candy, Shamilton, ComedySportz, Big Whoop, Kittyhawk, “serious” and on The Second City MainStage. He can also be heard on Smash Boom Best and the award-winning Story Pirates Podcast.
He has taught and performed at festivals and theaters across the U.S. and internationally, including the Vancouver Improv Festival, Out of Bounds (Austin), Robin Hood International Improv Festival (UK), Teatro Lospleimovil (Chile), Improv Utopia, and Last Word Comedy Festival (VA), where he was an inaugural academy coach. He is also a founding instructor for the Uptown Improv Academy in Utica, NY, founding producer of Shoes Off, an all-Asian improv comedy show, creator and director of the improvised show Live & Direct, and a facilitator with The Second City Works, bringing applied improv to teams and organizations.
Billy’s work is guided by a commitment to authenticity, playful exploration, strong ensemble habits, and creating more space for diverse voices in improv. More at billysoco.com.
Bianca Casusol is a performer and teacher based in NYC, currently teaching at the Second City in Brooklyn, with past experience at Magnet theater, the Pit, DSi and others. You can find her work featured in The Truth Podcast, Story Pirates, Reductress, Risk! Podcast and hot mic with Dan Savage.
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.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
USD 129.89
