Sunday June 29th 2025 12pm-3pm

Prerequisite: Montreal Improv Longform 2 (or equivalent) or 2 years performance experience. Email classes@montrealimprov.com if you’re new to Montreal Improv and aren’t sure where your experience level fits!

Looking to break through to the next level of your improv? Nicole and Sara bring over 25 years of performance and teaching experience to this advanced, heart-centred workshop designed for improvisers who are ready to be challenged, surprised, and creatively stretched. 

This dramatic improv workshop is inspired by their emotionally-charged format, All Request Heartache, where Sara and Nicole create love stories—and break each other’s hearts—each show. They will challenge you to develop nuanced relationships, play with emotional truth, and get comfortable taking bold risks in character and narrative. Their style is both rigorous and ridiculously fun—expect actionable feedback, warm encouragement, and deep-dive exercises that stick with you long after the workshop ends.

Whether you want to find more emotional connection in your scenework, explore dramatic improv, or just bust through a plateau, this session will help you draw on your emotional instincts, deepen your presence, and find new ways to say yes to the unknown. Let’s get weird, get connected, and get good. Sign up as an individual performer, with your duo partner, or with some players from your team.

Workshop will be in English. 

Nicole Zylstra (she/her) is a core performer in Calgary’s improv scene, Nicole spent 16 delightful seasons with the improvised soap opera Dirty Laundry, and 10+ years with the longform company the Kinkonauts. She’s guested at Loose Moose and international festivals, performed in film and television, and teaches storytelling and public speaking at Mount Royal University.

Sara Simpson (she or they) is a dynamic performer, director, and producer of innovative improv. She served six years as Artistic Director of the Kinkonauts, Calgary’s spontaneous theatre laboratory, and developed their equity, diversity and inclusion program. She has appeared at Paper Street Theatre in Victoria, Loose Moose, Vancouver International Improv Festival, Big City Improv Festival in Toronto, Prairie Bowl, Calgary International Improv Festival, and Reactor Festival. She graduated from Rosebud School of the Arts in 2001 with an FRSA in acting.

This is an in-person workshop located at 3716 rue Notre-Dame Ouest. The space has a stairwell with handrails on both sides and the bathroom is not wheelchair accessible.

Registrants will receive an email with instructions on where to go the day before the workshop. If you have any access needs you'd like to share before the class begins please email classes@montrealimprov.com.

Sunday, June 29 2025 12pm-3pm / 3 hours / $50 CAD plus applicable taxes / ages 18+