Method & philosophy
The body before the idea
Impro Supreme comes out of twenty years of practice, research and teaching – built on physical acting, improvisation, clown and mime.
It is a precise training framework that reconnects the imagination and the body.
Rather than knocking out “good” improvisations, it is about clarifying what you perceive, what you do and what you choose. The goal is to build a lasting, autonomous practice.
The visible effects – presence, ease, readability – are consequences. Not what we aim for.
The four axes
Together they run through the entire training and beyond – in the studio, in rehearsal, on stage.
1. The body is the source
The body is not a vehicle for the imagination. It is the source. Everything on stage begins with physical reality – a posture, a move, a tension, a rhythm, a breath. Before an idea arrives, something is already being done.
What you do comes before what you think.
When the imagination leads, the body is reduced to illustrating decisions already made. Impro Supreme takes the opposite path – from sensation, from contact, from movement, from presence in space. The work follows one line:
sensation → emotion → imagination → action
Not as a theory, but as something observable. Precision, clear choices and presence follow from it.
2. Choice is the craft
Improvising is not constant reaction to whatever turns up. It is more than quick wit. It is composing, in the moment.
You compose with what you do – and with what you don’t. With what appears, and with what you let go.
On stage nothing is neutral. A posture, a silence, a look, a step: it all counts. The work is to recognise that and commit to it through action, not commentary. Not to find “good ideas” or plan a story in advance – but to make clear choices and let them do their work.
That is what makes your acting readable, lets your partners account for you, lets the audience follow. Improvising is not avoiding the consequences of your choices. It is working with them.
3. Clown is a tool, not a style
In Impro Supreme, clown is not a genre, a world, or a specialty of its own. It is a precision tool – for relating directly on stage and offering yourself. This work comes directly from the teaching of Ira Seidenstein.
Clown sharpens presence by removing the usual protections: the roles we play, the given circumstances, the psychology, the “well-built character.” It forces you to appear as you are – acting, here, now.
It is work on accepting what shows: what you do, how you do it, and the effect it has. It engages the person before the character, preference before strategy, will before intention.
We don’t chase humour as an effect – we read it as a signal. It marks a place that is honest, exposed, owned. Clown is in the method as a lever for courage, readability and presence.
4. Attention is the practice
Attention is trained as a skill, not an inner state. It is a fine perception of what is there while you act – space, movement, rhythm, relation, duration, shifts of state. The raw material of live performance, seen and felt and taken into account in real time.
This attention is not passive or contemplative. It is engaged, turned toward action. It lets you perceive what is actually happening, stay with it, and act from there.
The work draws directly on the Six Viewpoints of choreographer Mary Overlie. It is not about producing, interpreting or commenting – but about learning to see what is being done, and letting that perception guide the action.
The method in practice
The training brings together four complementary sources: the clarity of physical acting, the exposure of clowning, the intelligence of improvisation, and the perception of dance and mime.
The aim is clarity: a body that drives the imagination, an imagination connected to physical reality, and a presence readable moment to moment.
The same training runs through four distinct areas – each with its own demands, its own questions, its own challenges:
Why I teach this
I teach this work because I love it. And because I need it.
It creates meaning in the simplest and most direct way. Not through ideas or predefined narratives, but right where we are: in how we move, what we notice, and the choices we make in response to what is happening in the space.
Theatre begins before performance. It begins in the body, in what we pay attention to, in the willingness to be present without knowing what comes next. That is how most things worth doing begin.
Training the body sharpens the imagination. Training perception deepens expression. And learning to choose – clearly, physically, without hiding – produces a kind of freedom that no technique alone can give.
That is what the training is for.
Explore the training
→ Workshops – train in person, in a live setting
→ My story – how the training took shape
→ Articles – reflections on improvisation, physical acting and clowning