Improv Classes in Mesa:
What “Finding the Game” Actually Means
In a Process Lab workshop this spring, two students named Carlos and Gabe started a scene as ordinary people and finished it
locked in the most aggressive hand-holding this building has ever seen. Nobody planned it. One of them grabbed a hand a
little too hard, the other refused to let go, and thirty seconds later the entire scene was about that grip. What they found has a
name. It is called the game, and they found it by accident, which is how it almost always starts.
Finding the game is the phrase you will hear most very often in improv classes in Mesa.
New students tend to hear it as a note about being funnier. It is not. It is a note about paying attention.
Here is the plain version. Somewhere in the first minute of any scene, something slightly unusual happens — a word, a
gesture, a reaction that does not quite match the moment. The game is that thing, noticed, and the on purpose done again.
Carlos did not invent aggressive hand-holding. Gabe noticed it, kept it, and let the scene be about it. That is the entire move,
and once you can see it, it changes how you play.
The First Unusual Thing, Repeated on Purpose
Say two coworkers are setting up a conference room, and one of them apologizes to a chair. That is unusual. If the scene rolls
past it, it was a throwaway line. But if the other person says nothing and simply starts watching how their partner treats the
furniture, there is a game on the table: this person believes objects have feelings.
Now the scene has a shape. Each time the pattern comes back around, it gets a little bigger — the apology to the chair
becomes a whispered aside to the projector, becomes a full eulogy for a stapler. Nothing in that required a joke. The laugh
comes from the pattern, not from a punchline anyone wrote in advance. That is also why improv is repeatable as a craft:
patterns can be found every night, punchlines cannot.
Why It Is Harder Than It Sounds
The trouble is that finding the game asks you to do two things your brain does not enjoy doing at once — be fully inside a
scene, and stand slightly outside it, watching for the odd thing.
Most beginners solve that by adding. The scene feels slow, so somebody brings in a bear, a helicopter, a long-lost twin.
Everything gets busier and nothing gets deeper. The move that actually works is subtraction: stop adding, go back to the
strange thing that already happened, and do it again.
The second obstacle is trust. Repeating your partner’s odd choice means betting the next two minutes of stage time on it. In
week one that feels like a risk. By week five you learn the bet usually pays, because the audience has been sitting there
waiting for someone to notice the same thing they noticed. None of this is unique to us — it is how improv is taught from
Chicago to the Phoenix area. What differs is how quickly someone is standing close enough to correct you.
How Improv Classes in Mesa Teach You to Practice It
You do not learn this from reading about it. You learn it by running the same short scene over and over with a teacher
stopping you the second something interesting goes past.
In a Process Lab session this spring, a student named Carmen built a whole scene out of ignoring people. Not one beat of
ignoring — the entire scene. Someone would walk in, ask her a direct question, and she would carry on as though the room
were empty. It got funnier every single time, and it got funnier precisely because she did not change it.
That is the drill in miniature. At Level One you practice noticing. At Level Two you practice keeping. By The Harold, the top
of our five-level ladder, you are finding games inside other games and handing them across a thirty-minute set. Same skill,
more rungs. Classes meet in the annex at our Main Street building in downtown Mesa, AZ, a few minutes from the Mesa Arts
Center — close enough that people ride the light rail in from Phoenix and Tempe for a 7:00 PM start.
Bring a friend to your first class. Just do not hold their hand too hard.
This Week at NCT
On stage — downtown Mesa, AZ. Tickets →
Thu, Sep 3, 7:00 PM — The Bucket of Doom. Casting not yet announced.
Fri, Sep 4, 6:00 PM — Musical Improv Jam. Pay what you want. → nctphoenix.com/calendar/classes/
Fri, Sep 4, 7:30 PM — The Musical Catering Company. A fully improvised musical. Casting not yet announced.
Sat, Sep 5, 6:00 PM — Pick Up Jam. Pay what you want. → nctphoenix.com/calendar/classes/
Sat, Sep 5, 7:30 PM — Competitive Comedy Show. All-ages. Two teams, a scoreboard, and an audience who votes.
Where is NCT located?
NCT shares a space with The Sacred Pint Taproom in Downtown Mesa.
When head in and look for the secret door marked with our logo.
You’re exactly where you need to be!”
Can we get tickets at the door?
Yup, but its always way faster to buy them online.
Is there a drink minimum?
Nope, there is no drink minimum but supporting the sacred pint would be cool.
Where do we park?
There are over 5,000 FREE parking spaces available in Downtown Mesa every day!
Is there places to eat downtown?
Heck Ya! Here are some awesome restaurants in our Neighborhood.
Wanna learn more about NCT?
Check out all the cool live shows and Improv classes we do.