Improv 4 Teens Times Square NYC

Tag: books

  • Murder Mystery Events 4 Teens

    We have amazing shows for teens groups that get the creative and critical thinking skills firing on all cylinders. There are numerous themes, including shows that involve NON violent crimes. Full shows feature a team of professional actors as the suspects. Clue Parties get the teens acting as various characters in the story. And then there’s MADCAPPED MYSTERIES….

    Madcapped Mysteries

    The most original murder mystery show EVER, Madcapped Mysteries is. Huge hit with teens and tweens at birthday parties, libraries and other schoolw, community events, etc. Our top detective leads the attendees in creating a completely original crime story.

    The first few minutes is a live action MADLIBS style exposition. The detective’s opening monologue is completed with guests filling in the blanks. A true audience collaboration helps establish the crime – victim, location and means of the dastardly deed.

    THEN some or all (depending on size of crowd) of the audience become characters in the story, from friends and family, to colleagues at work or fellow students and miscellaneous towns folks (Mayor, police chief, CSI forensics, etc).

    THEN our detective names a few as their formal suspects and everyone else is deputized as a detective to interogate suspects, collaborate and solve the crime, usually in small teams.

    The show ends with our detective reading some or all of the final solutions. This is a common thread in just about every show, but the answers in a Madcapped Mysteries show are the most fun, and by far 💯 original. One team is named the winner. Prizes are also awarded to best actor, costume and more, as per audience votes.

    From a 2025 Westchester Birthday Party show, Detective Elise Ramaekers led the investigations with teens playing all the suspects.

    TRADITIONAL CLUE PARTY

    Madcapped Mysteries is an fully improvised clue party. The more traditional clue party show features some or all of the audience as characters that are given a set character biography upfront, and a set of clues that lead to a specific suspect as the culprit. .ost of our teen events are some form of a clue party.

    Our detective starts the show with a brief explanation of how the event works and then announces the crime, deputizing all as detectives for the day.

    Then, guests at the show mingle to learn about the various characters in the story, again played by the guests, and collect clues.

    Then, individually or in teams, everyone completes and turns in their answer sheets withbtheir best guess as to WHO did it, HOW, WHERE and WHY. Additionally, everyone votes for best actor, costume and more.

    The show ends with our detective reading many or all of the answers and awarding prizes. From time to time, our main suspect gets away with the crime. Either the red herrings through our detectives off the scent or the perpetual successfully steered away suspicion, in which case they win the final prize.

    MURDER MYSTERY DINNER THEATER

    We do have full theatrical dinner theater shows as well where four or more professional actors perform mini scenes, mingle with guests in character, stage a death or theft and play all or most of the suspects.

    Contact us today to book your next big event!

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  • New York City area High School Residency: Sketch Comedy – NYC DOE VENDORS

    New York City area High School Residency: Sketch Comedy – NYC DOE VENDORS

    Sketch Comedy is a popular source of entertainment with roots as far back as Ancient Greece. This course leads students from brainstorming ideas, developing ideas, writing a final sketch and performing a live show and / or producing original video. The purpose of this course is to get students excited about creative writing, story telling, collaborating with others, and confidence public presentation. Through the lens of this currently popular form of entertainment we introduce students to classical literature, comedic theater and more. EMAIL for more information on bringing our programs to your students. NYC DOE VENDORS (Improv Theater LLC)

    WHY SKETCH COMEDY?

    Sketch Comedy is a short play or film usually grounded in a singular comedy purpose. Topics for comedy are as endless, bound solely by the creativity of the writer(s). Sketch Comedy as a class combines cultural arts and language arts. We are basically ELA and THEATER but by presenting to the students as a classroom in Comedy, more students get excited about the process. The class provides a powerful experience and serves as a gateway for students to get excited for further study into literature, writing and public presentation. In this class students will:

    1. Study the history of comedy, from Ancient Greece thru early TV and Radio.
    2. Learn to write an original short play via brain storming exercises, collaboration, first drafts and rewrites, and a final script.
    3. Learn to produce and perform live show and video.

    Producing Final Sketch

    Working backwards, let’s discuss how powerful this training is to a student. While this course could lead to a student working at Saturday Night Live by age of 19 like Eddie Murray, Dave Chapelle, or Pete Davidson, most will benefit in more meaningful ways. Our final end product, a live sketch comedy show and/or produced video teaches students how to produce and present content of any kind

    The number one fear in his world is public speaking. Sketch Comedy class is possibly the closest scenario to working on a corporate team, whether in marketing, project management and even scientific labs. Creating a fun safe space we develop self confidence fierce and public speaking skills, as well as basic skills in acting for stage and screen.

    We work with corporate teams daily to teach presentation and collaboration from skills, using Improv Comedy. This course looks to teach those skills to high school and middle school students. While students share the laughter, they are preparing for be leaders in any industry.

    Students live on their devices. We can debate through pros and cons of teens using social media. But unless there is a total societal collapse, chances are, the future is now, and being able to use these devices for good is possibly the most powerful tool a student can learn for their future success.

    Developing Sketch Comedy Scripts

    Every TV show – Skech comedy, sitcoms, episodic dramas, soap operas, dramedies, etc – has a writers room. Every week a head writer, called a show runner, hears ideas, assigns writing projects for scenes and episodes. The ROOM is a place to bounce around ideas, read thru scripts, and discuss edits. The show runner greenlights a final script, and the greenlights for production.

    This mimics this process. In the early seeks we will have exercises to brain storm ideas and details. Later weeks, we will outline and write a rough draft. Eventually we will produce a final script to be produced live and or as a video.

    Along the way we will use the ROOM to discuss, improvise, read drafts, and otherwise work thru ideas to help writers produce a final script.

    Meanwhile, students develop a deeper understanding of creativity writing, story telling, characters, settings, plots, themes, and more.

    History of Comedy

    The history of comedy is the history of creative writing, philosophy, literature, theater and human civilization. Again, by using a popular form of entertainment, we are able to reach students and peak their curiosity in many areas of academic study. Students become better students of history, language arts and even the sciences. We give academic study a practical application with an end product that students can be proud.

    Bringing Sketch Comedy to your Students

    There are a few ways to bring this program to your students.

    1. Simply buy the book and run the class. The paperback is just $9.99. Buy 20 copies as text book for $200 and let the fun begin, anywhere in the world.
    2. Bring Walt Frasier to your school for a master class in comedy. $500 for up to 2 hours includes 20 copies of the book. Walt Frasier will lead the class in some improv games to launch the creative spirit, discuss his approach to brainstorming, hear some pitches, and set you off onto a successful session. We could also host this workshop at our Times Square NYC theater.
    3. THE FULL RESIDENCY Our team will drop by your classes up to 10 times, 20 hours. Walt Frasier himself at least 2-3 times, plus one of his teaching artist for all 10. As is, this will produce an entire show of live sketches and videos. Partnered with your la Guage arts teacher, develop into a full ELA or cultural arts elective, showing videos of classic sketches appropriate for all students, episodes of comedy TV and movies, discussing these works, as well as comedic short stories and going deeper into the history of comedy. You can also create additional collaboration and rehearsal time beyond our teacher attendance. $3000 include 10 sessions, 20 hours with one of our teachers, at least 2 sessions with Walt Frasier, 20 copies of the book, and optional online hosting of videos.
    4. THE FULL PROGRAM: Bring all of our programs to your school. Leverl 1 Improv Comedy. Level 2 Stand Up Comedy. Level 3 Sketch Comedy. Every class is designed to be self contained, with no experience necessary. In progression, the complete program delivers a population of confident creative powerhouses ready to take on the world in any profession.

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    Author, Artistic Director Walt Frasier has 25+ years of professional credits in comedy, Theater and music. He got his big break in TV performing comedy sketches on MTV’s Stankervision, Late Nite with David Letterman, TruTV’s Friends of the People, and most recently on HBO’s Pause with Sam Jay. As an actor, Frasier has appeared on NBC’s Blacklist, CBS’s Blue Bloods, USA’s Royal Pains (Filmed in Puerto Rico), Netflix’s Lilyhammer (filmed in Norway) and NICK’s Naked Brothers Band. In addition to 1000s of live performances around the world, Frasier has also appeared in numerous commercials, industrials, webisodes and reality TV shows. Frasier has written many books on comedy performance and more.

    A division of Improv Theater LLC

    The New York Improv Theater is a one stop edutainment center for corporate team building, office / holiday parties and more. Our comedy shows and workshops deliver high impact results. Clients include Google, Mercedes Benz, META /Facebook, TikTok, JP Morgan Chase, Accenture, Morgan Stanley, Twitter, Roblox, Rimowa, EI Digital, Accenture, Datadog HQ, Milbank, BING/Microsoft, Band of America – Merrill Lynch, Home Depot, Ernst & Young, Johnson & Johnson, Louis Vuitton, Coach, UBS, BDO, AMEX, Master Card, Macy’s, 360i, IBM, GM, Kraft, UNILEAVER, HBO, Prudential, Convene, Conference Board and many more… (NYC DOE VENDORS)

  • Improv 4 Teens – Murder Mystery, Minute to Win It, Trivia & More

    Improv 4 Teens – Murder Mystery, Minute to Win It, Trivia & More

    In addition our improv comedy shows and workshops, we offer a number of interactive immersive options for schools, camps, libraries, community centers and family events. We can also host at our Times Square NYC theater. This article focuses on our mystery programs, but we also have trivia, minute to win it, and other programs. EMAIL for more information.

    WHODUNNIT?

    True Crime Dramas are more popular than ever, and so are mystery events, murder or otherwise. We have been regularly working with library teen nights, summer camps, schools and family gatherings. If murder is not the perfect fit, how about WHO STOLE THE SPIRIT CUP, WHO STOLE OUR MASCOT, THE CASE OF THE MISSING (insert anything relevant to your school/community). Not li mm ited to crime family drama, we also can accommodate any style, period of history, etc – Billionair Mystery Mansion, Disco Fever, 1980s, 1950s, 1920s, Greco Roman Antiquity, and more. We have dozens of scenarios from previous shows or can write an original show, or even better, let YOUR teens write the show, completely improvised on the spot.

    • The Full Show: we send our team of four improv comedy players to become characters. A murder happens right in front of your eyes, as the victim falls mid speech. Everyone is a witness and suspect and deputized to help solve the crime in teams of 3-10.
    • CLUE PARTIES Basically one of our detectives serves as EMCEE and lead investigator. In these parties some or all of the participants are suspects. They receive some simple information about their character and relationship to a victim. Everyone has opportunity, means and motive. But the clues lead to one perpetrator. Everyone is deputized to solve the crime.
    • MADCAPPED MYSTERIES: Our unique show, is also the most original show ever created, because it is completely created by your group at the time of the show.

    Imagine a live version of Mad Libs, or our popular Improv Game Columns (aka Call ’em’s, Human Mad Libs).

    Our lead player, the detective, arrives moments after the discover of a crime/victim. The first few minutes are just like Mad Libs. Our detective tells the story of the crime by promoting your guests to fill in a few blanks. “We just found (points to audience member), you know their name is (points), right, yes, Frank. (From this point on its all improvised) Frank is known in town for (points to audience member), you know his job or (points), right, yes, Frank is the operator of an ice cream truck that everyone loves and cherishes, except at least one of you apparently.”

    After the basic crime is established, we meet the towns people. For smaller groups (under 20ish) everyone becomes a character, from friends and family of the victim, strangers that witnessed the some aspect of the crime, and pillars of our community – mayor, chief of police, deputy, Coroner, district attorney, school board, park ranger, specialist from the university, etc.

    Now we establish some suspects. Our Detective pics 3-5 characters to join the line up of usual suspects. After a brief interrogation, basically summing up each characters part in the story and relationships, motives and means to commit the crime, the rest of the crowd decides into teams to interrogate suspects, spending 3-5 minutes with each (suspects rotate from team to team).

    Finally, teams deliberate and solve the crime, who did it, how they did and why. Also teams pick a best actor award. Once the detective collects all the answers, we have some fun reading the solutions to the crowd. Ultimately one team is picked as the winning solution. The criminal mastermind(s) is identified. We award prizes to the winning team(s). Lastly we award a best actor prize and hear their oscar/Tony award winning speech.