The Story Behind the Play
I’ve spent more than 20 years professionally in the performing arts as an actor, director, teacher, and coach, with improv always an integral part of that process. Throughout that time, one idea has stayed with me: acting is about living truthfully under imagined circumstances.
My training also taught me something I’ve continued to explore ever since...just how deeply connected the mind and body really are. As performers, we don’t simply think our way into being more present, spontaneous, vulnerable, confident, or connected. We practice it. We experience it. We embody it.
And perhaps most importantly, we play.
Somewhere along the way, I became fascinated by the idea that meaningful growth doesn’t always have to be so serious. Sometimes we discover more when we’re laughing, experimenting, letting go of getting it “right,” and actually enjoying ourselves.
Over the years, my interest in personal development, neuroscience, habits, identity, visualization, and the mind-body connection kept leading me back to many of those same ideas from a different direction.
But what I kept coming back to was this: play invites all of us into the room. Not just the part of us that thinks and analyzes, but the parts that move, feel, imagine, respond, connect, create, and sometimes surprise us. Not just when life is going the way we expected, but also, and perhaps especially, when it isn’t.
And I think that’s where the real power is.
What if we could harness all of that, not just onstage, but in our real lives? What if imagined circumstances could help us practice living more truthfully in real ones? What if play could give us a space to experience what it means to be fully present, to respond rather than control, and to work with what life gives us rather than against it?
That’s the heart of “Yes, And”: embracing the present moment, because that’s where our power is. Imagine what could happen if we practiced doing that not just in improv, but in the rest of our lives.
That’s where Impossible Improv began: bringing the power of play, imagination, and embodied experience beyond the stage to help us become more fully ourselves...and have some fun while we’re doing it.
EDUCATION
Northwestern University
B.S. in Theatre
University of Washington
M.F.A., Professional Actor Training Program
TRAINING
The Second City
Improv Conservatory Graduate
Directing Program Graduate
EXPERIENCE
20+ Years Professional Experience in the Performing Arts
Acting • Directing • Teaching • Coaching
DISTINCTIONS
Magna Cum Laude
Northwestern University
Theatre Departmental Award
Northwestern University
Top Scholar
UW Professional Actor Training Program
The Ideas Behind the Play
"Play is the highest form of research."
— Albert Einstein
Physicist known for groundbreaking ideas shaped by imagination, curiosity and discovery.
Play gives us permission to experiment, explore and discover without already needing to know the answer. Sometimes possibility appears when we stop trying to get it right and start getting curious.
“We learn through experience and experiencing.”
— Viola Spolin
From Improvisation for the Theater
Widely regarded as the mother of modern improvisational theater and a pioneer of experiential learning through play.
Real change doesn’t happen only in our heads..it involves all of us. Play invites the mind, body, instinct, imagination and connection into the experience. And growth doesn’t always have to be so serious. We can discover, practice and transform while having fun along the way.
“The brain cannot always distinguish between what is vividly imagined and what is real.”
— James R. Doty
From Mind Magic
Neurosurgeon and researcher whose work explores neuroplasticity, visualization and the mind-body connection.
Imagination gives us a way to explore possibilities before we’ve fully lived them. Through visualization, play and embodied experience, we can step into who we’re becoming and begin practicing possibility in the present.
The Impossible Improv Approach
Sometimes thinking harder isn’t the answer.
Modern life makes it remarkably easy to become disconnected. We can spend so much time in our heads and on our screens that we lose touch not only with one another, but with parts of ourselves. Our bodies, instincts, creativity, imagination and even our sense of what’s possible can get quieter. Yet some of our most deeply human capacities can only be discovered through experience, through relationship and in community with others. These are the very capacities that help us adapt, connect, create and find our way forward when life doesn’t go according to plan.
Play gives us a place to practice them.
Impossible Improv gets us out of our usual patterns and invites more of ourselves into the experience: mind, body, instinct, imagination and emotion. And because so much of this happens in relationship with others, we also practice listening, connecting and responding in real time. Instead of simply talking about being more confident, adaptable or present, we get to experience those qualities for ourselves.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
— Albert Einstein
Growth doesn’t have to feel like work to be worthwhile. Play gives us a chance to practice valuable skills while we’re having fun. These are skills we can carry into our relationships, work and everyday lives.
The approach itself is, fittingly, improvised.
There’s no one-size-fits-all script here, and that’s intentional. I come in with a framework, a toolkit of exercises and a clear intention for where we’re going. But the experience itself is alive.
My background as an actor, director, teacher and coach has trained me to read what’s happening in the room and create with it. An unexpected response, a moment between participants, a new idea or even something that isn’t working can become material for what happens next. Sometimes I adapt an exercise. Sometimes I create one in the moment. Sometimes the group takes us somewhere I never could have planned.
There’s structure, but there’s also discovery. I bring my experience, you bring yours, and together we create something that can only happen with those people, in that room, in that moment. No two experiences will ever be exactly the same.