Why study improv?

It’s fun! And improv skills are life skills: listening, connecting and collaborating with partners, maintaining flexibility, telling a story, embracing risk, building resilience. Whether you dream of the spotlight or just want to get more comfortable making small talk, you can develop your skills, and we can help you.

Our program can take you from novice to the stage, or you can stop anywhere in between. And as your improv skills grow, so will you as you become more confident, carefree, and comfortable in your own skin. Frankly, we can think of no higher form of education.

Why BATS School of Improv?

Our world-class coaching faculty is second to none.
Students come from around the globe to study story-driven improv with our staff of 20 seasoned coach-performers, many of whom helped shape the Bay Area’s improv scene and the forms and formats of improvised theatre today.

We tell stories, not jokes.
We don’t teach you to “find the funny” or give you a bag of one-liners. When you learn the BATS style of improv, you’ll learn to connect with your partners (and make them look good), listen hard, and say yes to what comes next. By focusing on the story, and the all-too-human characters in it, BATS-style improv delivers a rich humor that is naturally hilarious and funnier than a joke ever could be. 

Our broad curriculum covers all levels of study.
BATS School of Improv empowers you to focus on the areas and levels that you find most interesting and valuable — from beginner to advanced, across short and long forms, and including individual skills such as acting, accents, status, stagecraft, physicality, and singing. (For younger students, we also offer youth classes in the summer and after school.)

BATS gives back.
As a nonprofit and San Francisco institution, we feel strongly about giving back to the broader community that sustains us as we build an improvised theatre community from the grassroots. Through our Community Outreach Programs (like Laughing Stock, which offers free classes to people with life-threatening illnesses and their caregivers), BATS brings the skill and delight of improvised theatre to people throughout the Bay Area.