|
Return to Improv Festival
Sarasota Improv Festival
Schedule of Performances:
CLICK HERE TO BUY A $49 WEEKEND PASS
(good for all performances, both nights)
FRIDAY, JULY 20 ~ CLICK HERE TO BUY A $29 FRIDAY NIGHT PASS
6 p.m. - FST Improv (Sarasota)
7 p.m. - Just the Funny (Miami)
8 p.m. - Improv Boston (Boston)
9 p.m. - Dad's Garage (Atlanta)
10 p.m. - The Hitmen (Chicago)
Opening Night Party at the Broadway Bar
SATURDAY, JULY 21 ~ CLICK HERE TO BUY A $29 SATURDAY NIGHT PASS
5 p.m. - Vintage Whine (Sarasota)
6 p.m. - Lazy Fairy Improv (Sarasota)
7 p.m. - Stacked (Cabaret)
7 p.m. - Dad's Garage (Atlanta)
9 p.m. - Available Cupholders (Austin)
10 p.m. - SAK Comedy Lab (Orlando)
11 p.m. - All Play
Closing night party at Maximo
 Available Cupholders - Austin, TX
Saturday Night at 9:00pm - BUY NOW
The Available Cupholders theatre ensemble is dedicated to producing experimental, enriching and entertaining improvisational comedy. The Cupholders aspire to explore and expose an art form cloaked in natural communication, believing Improv to be the theatre of everyday existence. Unlocking the power of this art form through live performance and various performative media, they strive to be on the cusp of a daring theatrical experience that takes place anytime, anywhere. Their goal is to elevate the form and playing field, shedding light on the ever-changing zeitgeist in which we live, with belly laughs along the way. "If you don't know Available Cupholders, you don't know improv." - Austin Chronicle
 Dad's Garage - Atlanta, GA
Friday Night at 7:00pm - BUY NOW
Founded in 1995, Dad's Garage Theatre has grown from a small volunteer-led organization to a thriving mid-size theatre led by professional artistic and administrative staff. The family at Dad's has continued to grow along with us, including over 300 volunteers and performers, and entertaining more than 30,000 people a year. Dad's Garage produces 52 weeks per year with Improv shows every Thursday, Friday and Saturday. They perform traditional and original formats, including the improvisede soap opera Scandal!, TheatreSports (TM), and the Japanese-style game show Samurai Davis Jr. and Dim Sum's Super Mega Happy Fun Time Improv Show! Dad's Garage has won Best Theatre and Best Improv Troupe in Creative Loafing five years in a row, as well as similar awards in almost every major publication in the city.
 FST Improv - Sarasota, FL
Friday Night at 6:00pm - BUY NOW
Sarasota's Original Anti-Depressant and host of the Sarasota Improv Festival. Taking what is right in front of them, in the form of audience suggestions, FST Improv creates characters and sketches on the spot. No one - not even the performers themselves - knows what is going to happen next. It is this element of the unknown that makes every Improv show unique - and what makes for some exciting moments onstage. "Quick-witted...energetic" - Sarasota Herald-Tribune; "We laughed hard and often." - Longboat Observer
 ImprovBoston - Boston, MA
Friday Night at 8:00pm - BUY NOW
ImprovBoston Mainstage is the ever-evolving show that is the cornerstone of ImprovBoston. Blending skillful storytelling, memorable music, audience participation, and joyful chaos, an elite cast of Boston's best improvisers creates a show that redefines itself with every performance. No rules. No boundaries. Just spectacular comedy and incredible improvisation. Voted "Best Comedy Club" in the 2009 and 2008 Improper Bostonian.
 Just the Funny - Miami, FL
Friday Night at 7:00pm - BUY NOW
Miami's hottest improv theatre explores humor in the mundane and everyday with WARRIORS OF DUMB. A scene with our not so bright soldiers positioned throughout the jungle (i.e., throughout the audience), is our starting point. WARRIORS OF DUMB uses elements from that opening, along with creative stage choices, to create scenes that feature intelligent and edgy humor, created from characters and situations morphing reality with the absurd. Voted best of Miami 2000, 01, 05 and 06 - New Times. "Miami's funniest Improv Theatre Company" - Coral Gables News
 Lazy Fairy Improv
Saturday Night at 6:00pm - BUY NOW
Lazy Fairy is our way of saying, "laissez faire." Catey came up with Lazy Fairy after we agreed "laissez faire" is too hard to spell! Lazy Fairy is an ever-evolving, innovative, Sarasota-based improv troupe dedicated to entertaining, training and teaching others in the purest form of theatre: Improvisation. In other words, we make crap up on the spot for others to laugh at! "Trust me: they're funny, even enlightening." Sarasotacritic.blogspot.com
 SAK - Orlando, FL
Saturday Night at 10:00pm - BUY NOW
Orlando's powerhouse of Improv. The SAK Ensemble is a group of professional improvisation comedians from divergent backgrounds. Some of the best and brightest improv performers in the nation can be seen at SAK. The improvisers appear regularly in an improv show called "Duel of Fools," a SAK signature style of competitive improvisation. In addition to Duel of Fools, SAK's ensemble performs in many different forms and styles of improv shows such as The audition, SAK Request Live and Rub a Dub Dub, to name just a few. Central Florida's oldest, longest-running improv comedy theater. Winner: Orlando Weekly annual "Best of Orlando" reader's poll award for Comedy; Theater Troup 2006, 2007, 2009; Florida Monthly Magazine "Best Comedy Venue" Award; Florida living Magazine "Top Live Comedy Selection" Award; WESH Channel 2 "A-List" Viewer's Poll Award - Best Comedy Theater - 2007, 2008. SAK Comedy Lab alumni (such as Wayne Brady) have gone on to write, produce or star in such TV shows as: Saturday Night Live, MAD TV, The Office, 30 Rock, True Blood, Everybody Loves Raymond, Whose Line is it Anyway, Let's Make a Deal, Scrubs, Hannah Montana and Reno 911.
 Vintage Whine - Sarasota, FL
Saturday Night at 5:00pm - BUY NOW
A team of senior improvisers - old enough to know better, but young enough not to care - take your suggestions and twist them to show that life really is just one big laugh riot. "The Senior Improv Troupe has the time of their lives on stage...the wackiness ricochets off the wall." - Pelican Press
 The Hitment - Sarasota, FL
Friday Night at 10:00pm-BUY NOW
These four boys met at iO Chicago (formerly improv Olympic), and it was indifference at first sight. It was love at around seventeenth sight, and now The HITMEN have been performing together for nearly three years. Their base is Chicago where they perform all over the city and have been featured in the Chicago Improv Festival's Special Edge Series.The HITMEN play long-form improv that is fast paced and high-energy. The show moves quickly between characters and locations with all 4 players always on stage, and always engaged in the scene. The strong group mind shared by these four best friends allows them to continually follow the fun, and invites the audience to follow with them.
 Stacked- Sarasota, FL
Saturday Night at 7:00pm-BUY NOW
All-female Musical Improv is an ensemble of four ladies lovin' one another and making up songs while they do so. Stacked refers to notes being harmonized on a musical staff, but also alludes to each singer's ample rack. These ladies push the envelope in four-part harmony while doing long-form improv.
Jester Theater Company- Sarasota, FL
Saturday Night at 8:00pm-BUY NOW
The Jester Theater Company was founded in 2004 as Central Florida’s only All-Comedy Theater. Artistic Director Jay Hopkins and Managing Director Diana Hopkins have dedicated Jester to explore, create and produce comedy in all its forms. Since its beginning, Jester Theater has produced the Southeast U.S. premiere of The Musical of Musicals: The Musical!, the World premiere of The Iliad, The Odyssey and All of Greek Mythology in 99 minutes or less, and numerous other comedies, including the historical comedy Moonlight and Magnolias, the greatest modern farce of all-time Noises Off, and perennial theater favorite The Foreigner to close out their seventh season! Jay Hopkins (a 20-year improv veteran with Orlando’s SAK Theatre) helped Jester take on its first improvised production, Is this Seat Taken? That original show was a huge success at both the Sarasota Improv Festival two years ago and the Orlando Fringe Festival, where it was voted Best Improv Show by TheDailyCity.com Audience Choice Awards. Former Orlando Sentinel Theater Critic said, “There are no promises in improv, so all I can say is this: These guys know what they’re doing. You can’t ask for more than that.”Now, Jester Theater is thrilled to be returning to Sarasota with the revival of Hopkins’ original improvised courtroom show, the 1997 Orlando Fringe Favorite, Near-Sighted Justice. The Orlando Sentinel called Nearsighted Justice “delightfully silly” and further said, “If trials all ran this happily and ended in so satisfying a manner (think ''just desserts,'' literally), maybe we'd all be better off.”
| 
