Improv is the Greatest Magic in All the Universe: An Interview with Nate Brosy

By Ames Doyle

Ahh, the lure of improv: creative expression, freedom from overthinking, connecting with people, honing those comedic skills—what’s not to love? For newcomers, the idea of diving into a performance-based hobby can be intimidating, especially when everything you do is, well, improvised! Don’t you worry, rookie, because here at Dad’s Garage, we’ve developed a tiered system of classes to make sure you feel comfortable and confident throughout your entire improv journey.

This is the first installment in a series of deep dives into our improv classes for prospective and returning students who’d like a taste of what awaits under Dad’s tutelage. Today, we’re picking the brain of Dad’s Garage operations director, improv instructor, and all-around cool guy, Nate Brosy, about his experience with improv and the finer details of the level one improv class.

Hi Nate! Can you tell me about your role at Dad’s and how long you've been doing improv?

I am the operations director for Dad's Garage and I have been improvising since 2013. I was a member of the Kennesaw State improv group called Kennesaw Improv Society, Stupid or KISS for short.

I was in that group for four years. I taught improv alongside my other improv members, and we have a lot of KISS alumni here at Dad’s—like Maged Roushdi (Dad’s Garage education director) and some folks in the 2024 conservatory. I've been teaching at Dad's for a little over a year and a half.

What was your experience like when you first started taking improv classes and when you first started teaching?

I started taking classes at Dad’s in 2017 after college and I took it with some of my fellow improv members. I started in level two with some folks from college. It was focused on short form scenes, like the ones we perform in TheatreSports, and just thinking quickly on your feet—learning Dad's Garage style of improv.

Very soon after that, I immediately started taking level three, which focused more on scene work, character development, and choices made in scenes. I really enjoyed my level three class—it was with Jon Carr (Dad’s Garage co-artistic director), and we dissected scenes and talked about the choices made. I would only perform maybe twice per class session or class that week, but then we would talk about every choice made, why that choice was made, and other choices that could have been made to strengthen the performance.

I loved it just because we were really improvising the scene and just dissecting the hell out of it—and it was great. After that, we would just drill scenes every single week, and we wouldn't do the games we learned in level two because that was just the introduction to short form games that we do in TheatreSports. Level three was just all about the characters and scene building, and then level four was developing a show, which is really wonderful.

That's cool. So, do people who have improv experience skip level one, or was that just something you did?

They always have a conversation with Maged about it—they can tell us they've done improv at Groundlings or UCB or Second City, but it's hard to gauge anyone's skill regarding this craft.

Usually, we direct folks to start at level one to learn the Dad’s Garage style from the beginning because it's very different from Second City, UCB, and Groundlings. Dad’s Garage has a very particular style, which is somewhere in between short form and long form, but definitely narrative-focused and locked in on telling a good story.

When did you start teaching classes? What was your experience initially and how has it evolved?

So I started teaching for Dad’s Garage in January 2024. Before that, I shadowed Andy Coen, Ronnie Johnson-Lopez, Abel Arias, and Avery Sharpe-Steele. It was great. I loved teaching level one because it really just introduced this new art form to so many people from different walks of life. The first class, we always sit in a circle and just get to know each other.

We do improv a lot in the last half of the first class, but we're finding out why everyone's doing it. You might get similar responses from people, and they might become best friends, hopefully. You get all these different people for different reasons. Like they are an improviser in the city or they're new to the city, they're actors, they work in an office, they want to be the funniest friend in the friend group.

I had a student once who was awesome—she was a trucker and she ran half-marathons when she wasn't truck driving, but she wanted to learn a new skill and she had never seen improv, never done improv. She heard about Dad’s—it was recommended by a friend—and she started taking classes. She was incredible! So wonderful. She would come in with the craziest, wildest stories, like “I ran two half-marathons this weekend after I drove to LA and back in my truck.” She was so cool.

Amazing.

What kind of person is gonna take an improv class? 'Cause it's really for anybody.

I hadn't really thought about the kind of spectrum of perspectives and walks of life that get you to an improv class, and how they can all be really valuable and interesting no matter what.

My favorite part was just getting to know the students and why they're doing it. I did it because I did theater in high school and I liked being funny. And that's that. I feel like a lot of people have that same answer, but you never know. You never know.

So you talked about a little bit how level one students come in and a lot of the first class is get-to-know-you stuff. But what do they usually learn over the course of level one?

Definitely the basics. The goal of level one, from an instructors’ perspective, is to have your students fall in love with improv.

You don't know where every student is coming from or why they chose to take the class, but you want them to appreciate the craft and apply it to the performance—but also to their everyday lives.

I always tell my students that, as adults, we've been trained to not have that childlike wonder, and that, ultimately, my goal is to bring that wonder out of them again. Because when you watch kids in the backyard playing pirates, they're not pretending to be pirates. They are pirates. And there's no judgment in improv class. We tell everyone to fail gracefully because, ultimately, you can't fail.

These classes are practice for us. There's no judgment because there's not an audience here who paid money—you paid money to learn this skill! Go with big, bold, specific choices and I will be there on the sidelines helping you and cheering you on along the way.

Try anything, I'm here to teach and give you the tools to pull from. Put them in your tool belt; just go for it.

So what would you say to someone who's interested in improv but has no performance background or struggles with social anxiety?

I would say go see shows, and not only in person, but online. It's really hitting the mainstream right now. There's shows on Netflix, there's Dropout TV…there are live shows, obviously at Dad's, but also all over the city. You can find some really great improv on YouTube.

Also, we've been developing this program with Maged and hosting preview improv classes. We just did one recently that was great. We had sixty people show up, and me and another teacher split the group up and gave them a free, two-hour workshop. Kind of the first two days of a level one improv class, just trimmed down. Like, this is what you're getting into. This is what it's like in the eight-week class.

When we taught the most recent preview class, I had thirty people and we all knew each other's names by the end of the day after two hours. That's a huge feat! We all knew each other's names. We knew one fun fact about everybody, how everyone laughed, and what they laughed at—and it was so wonderful to see that in action.

I don't think that happens to us as adults as often as it should, and that's the beautiful thing about it.

Hell yeah. What are the next steps for students who move on from level one?

It's really what you decide to take away from it. I'm always gonna encourage folks to continue their improv journey. They can take level two at Dad's or they can look at one of our specialty classes that we offer from time to time—Improv for Roleplaying, which is designed for people that play D&D and other tabletop roleplaying games, was a really great class that we offered a while back.

Improv for Anxiety is another one. It uses the basic improv tools and applies them to social anxiety or internal anxiety. Improv to Sketch is a new specialty class we're offering, and so is Improvised Action Movie. There's a lot of specialty classes that might fit a certain person's interests.

Level two is always a great step up. And I would say, go to jams as much as possible. There's an open jam for improv pretty much every single day in Atlanta and that's not an exaggeration. There's an Instagram page run by one of our musical improvisers, Sam Aluyon—@atl_improv—he posts what jams are happening each day for folks to come and see. So come to the Dad’s Garage Community Jam on Tuesdays, but also go to the ones all across the city and meet other improvisers.

I think that's the one thing that really helps—playing with performers. I learn more every time I jam because I never know who I'm gonna get partnered up with. They could be a seasoned improviser with 20 years under their belt, or it might be that person's first ever time doing improv. You don't know what's gonna happen and you gotta think on your feet and really get tested. It’s a really welcoming and warm community.

What does a jam usually entail?

You show up and, depending on where it's at, you might put your name in a bucket or you might get numbered off in a group. If you're numbered off in a group, usually someone who's been there before takes the lead. It's very loose. Normally I would say the most common form of a jam is a group scene with 7-10 people doing a montage, which is a collection of scenes that aren't necessarily related to one another, happening in about 10 minutes.

There's definitely some editing tips that the host will likely go over at the top of the show, but if you're not comfortable editing scenes, you will likely have other improvisers in your group that can edit scenes for you.

There are other jams around town that use different formats. Abel just started running a jam every other Thursday, I believe, where they do two person scenes and then they dissect the hell out of it. So if you're looking for more note-specific or dissection of scenes, go to that jam. There's the jam at Bibliotech and Limelight where it's also very loose. And then the one at Dad’s, I know they've been having a lot of fun with their jam crew by setting themes. Like, “today we're focusing on musical improv” or “today we're focusing on environment building” or “today we're focusing on characters.” So Dad’s has recently introduced themed jams, which is really fun, but they don't announce it until you get there, so you never know what you're getting into.

Do people who don't do improv go and watch those?

They do, totally. And that's really fun. I tell my students, there's value in observation. So if I have a student that just isn't feeling well, or this game isn't vibing with them just yet, I'm like, hey, if you wanna sit down and just observe, there's value in that.

So don't feel ashamed if you're like, I'm gonna take a seat and just watch. I tell them that's the same philosophy to have in jams. Go and watch your first one, get a feel for the room and if it's a jam you vibe with, come back the next week or the next time they're hosting the jam. If you feel like playing, great! If you don't, just watch. It’s fine.

There’s something valuable no matter what you do! That's all my questions unless you have anything else you feel like I should include?

Improv is the greatest magic in all the universe.

There you go. That's the subject line right there. Interview over.

If you’re ready to experience the greatest magic in all the universe, the next round of sign-ups for classes at Dad’s Garage open on May 2 at noon! Set a reminder for yourself and join us—you might just discover your new favorite hobby and make some new friends while you’re at it. What could be more magical than that?