Articles​

The origins of improvisation on stage are often traced back to Commedia dell’arte , which became popular in Italy from the 16th century onward. The roots of the art form most widely known today as “improv” or “impro” can be traced to two main traditions: one associated with Viola Spolin in the United States, and the other with Keith Johnstone in Britain. In the 1930s, Viola Spolin worked in WPA (Works Progress Administration) programs that aimed to help immigrants adapt to Am

In the summer of 2013, I taught my first improv workshop at the LungA Art Festival in Seyðisfjörður. Only a few months earlier, I had taken my very first improv class at UCB in New York. Over the next three years, I attended numerous improv classes while living in New York and regularly flew home to Iceland to teach what I was learning. In 2017, I traveled to Chicago to study improv and sketch writing at The Second City. My goal was clear: to build a professional and sustai

It has now been ten years since Improv Iceland began hosting weekly shows, that are still running at the National Theatre Cellar in Reykjavík. To mark the occasion, I wrote a series of articles about improv and how the improv scene in Iceland came to life. The first post tells the story of how I discovered improv in New York and was almost too proud to sign up for a class. My very first experience with improvisation took place just before the turn of the millennium, at a thea