We've written for the show, bombed on stage, and spent years turning what we learned into a system anyone can train.
Live from the room
Everything here was tested in front of strangers.
We run Arizona After Dark, a monthly variety comedy show in Tempe — stand-up, sketch and improv in the same night. Every technique in the Encyclopedia has been dragged on stage there and either got a laugh or got cut.
Our only rule
Have fun.
Google went looking for the perfect team in Project Aristotle — 180 teams, every variable they could measure. Seniority didn't predict greatness. Team size didn't. Extroversion didn't. One thing did: psychological safety — people feeling free to move before they're told to. Which is, word for word, what an improv troupe has been running on since 1963.
Say yes, and.
Take the offer and build. Argue with the premise and the scene dies where it stands — same in a writers' room, same in a meeting.
Make your partner look good.
The instant you try to be the star, the scene starves. Feed the other player and the whole thing flies.
Leave your ego outside.
Nobody cares about your title in a scene. Status is just another costume.
Mistakes are information.
There are no wrong moves. Only offers nobody has used yet. The bomb isn't the failure — resisting it is.
Play in the present.
Be here now. Relationships, laughs, and callbacks only grow in the moment you're actually in.
Be specific and colourful.
The more exact the detail, the more human it is. Specificity is the whole trick.
Am I having fun?
It's the cheapest diagnostic in the building. When the fun drops out of a set, a job, or a room, the needle is telling you you're over-controlling it. Fun is the cheapest performance enhancer you'll ever find — that's why nobody's selling it.
Adapted from Our Only Rule, our field guide on improv, teams and not dying ordinary.
see funny→write funny→be funny→get funnier
That's not a slogan. It's the syllabus, the product roadmap, and the thing we ask you to do every day.