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Archive for the ‘business’ Category

Mar
12

Improv for Everyone #SXSW

My friends Jordan and Amanda (TEAM HIRSCH!) are running another improv session at SXSW Interactive next week. If you are in Austin on March 15th you absolutely must crash this workshop.

From Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink to articles in Fast Company and the New York Times, improvised comedy is gaining recognition as an art form with valuable lessons for professionals of all stripes.

Come learn how improv can help you hone essential business and life skills like: communicating more effectively; responding constructively to change; making decisions; and trusting your gut instincts.

A clip from the 2010 Improv for Freelancers session:

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Jan
31

Charitable Comedy Takeover

As Executive Producer and Artistic Director of the NC Comedy Arts Festival, I want to personally welcome you and invite you to enjoy the largest comedic event in the South.

DSI Comedy Theater works yearlong to produce the most thrilling festival possible and we are dedicated to supporting the local comedy scene so that the very best comedians in the country want to play here. I’m enormously proud of what this festival has accomplished since 2001 and I hope everyone reading this will have an opportunity to witness the immense amount of talent we’ll have in the Triangle during the month of February, to experience the community and, most importantly, to laugh.

If this is the first you’ve heard of the NC Comedy Arts Festival, let me take a moment to tell you what we do. For the last decade, NCCAF has welcomed comedy acts from across North America to showcase improv, sketch and standup comedy right here in the heart of North Carolina.

Each week the festival showcases a different comedy genre. This year we open with sketch comedy and film. Week two boasts some of the hottest up-and-coming standup acts on the road today and week three closes with a return to our roots with 26 incredible improv comedy shows featuring acts from New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Toronto and North Carolina.

If you are returning as an audience member or participant, welcome back and thank you. Its dedicated comedy fans and artists like you that make this festival possible year after year.

And for the 2011 festival my company has decided to donate 10% of ALL proceeds to the Chapel Hill-Carrboro YMCA We Build People Scholarship Campaign.

If we Sold Out our Festival shows we could raise $10,000 for the YMCA! So buy a ticket TODAY for you and a family member, buy a block for people at work or click around the festival site and suggest shows for your friends to go see. Laugh Out Loud and help DSI make a difference in the community.

NCCAF Sketch Comedy (February 2-5), http://nccomedyarts.com/sketch

NCCAF Standup Comedy (February 9-13), http://nccomedyarts.com/standup

NCCAF Improv Comedy (February 16-20), http://nccomedyarts.com/improv

Thank you.

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Nov
26

DSI, “A Comedy Temple”

“Located in Carrboro, this 100-seat, black-box theater is basically the city’s comedy temple – and people flock to it.” (Full Article)

I just came home from a relatively quiet holiday to a great FLOOD of supportive messages and notes about the article in the News & Observer. THANK YOU! Thank you for the very opposite of #inboxzero.

In fact, the picture above I stole from Laurie Ruettimann, who posted a candid frontpage “over the sofa” shot on Facebook. I used to be amazed at the accolades and support DSI would receive, but over time that has transitioned to healthy pride. I am extremely PROUD of my company, the funny people who have worked to help build what the N&O calls a comedy temple (with the church of improv, I’m happy with “temple”).

My company has taught more than 1000 students since we started teaching classes in 2003, a program that truly turned into a multi-faceted Comedy School. And hundreds of those very students continued with DSI to become active members of our performing company. They are the reason we are open today.

They are who I give thanks for Every Year.

Also, I’m HONORED to share the DSI stage with Del Close, our inspiration and guru of modern improv.

Anyway, I just wanted to post a short Thank You. Now I’ve got to run and get myself to the theater. Despite the incredible Turkey Hangover, The COMEDY Must Go On — We have shows at 730pm and 930pm!

But first, a personal thank you to CARRIE GORN, our ROCKSTAR publicist! YOU’RE AWESOME!

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