How to Improvise
Past Classes and Related projects

Open Cobra
(Part of the Room 101 Games Series)

Open Cobra was a participatory music event, based on John Zorn’s Cobra, created in collaboration with Joe Sorbara. It is an event where a famously difficult and inaccessible experimental music composition is turned into a participatory piece for nonmusicians.

Eye weekly called it “A cross between an asylum and the best carnival in the world.” Read about it here.

Read a one-page comic about Open Cobra and Room 101.

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How to be really Good at Playing Charades

This was an 8-week series of classes in how to play charades. There were charades drills and exercises. There was charades homework. This course led directly to “Games you Play Standing Up” and the Room 101 Game series.

You can read about charades in Broken Pencil magazine, listen to a story on Wiretap (8 min audio link), or see some pictures.

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Theatre Improvisation (Various classes)

The Immediate Gratification Players was a student improv group I started while I was studying philosophy at Harvard. Apparently they continue to exist without me.

For many years, in Toronto, I taught theatre improvisation as a participatory practice for non-actors. You can read some quotes from people who took the classes.

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Terrible Noises for Beautiful People

This was a series of sound-improvisation classes and events for non-musicians. Here’s what some people have said:

"Unfailingly entertaining and thought-provoking."
- Victor Bateman

"Very Cool!"
- Rob Clutton

"Misha Glouberman's noise-improv class is an absolutely unique experience, mixing the community choir of small-town North America with the Dada cabarets of Zurich. For a non-musician, it's like getting a magical pass beyond the backstage and straight into the avant-garde, without all the practicing. And for anyone who loves parties but hates small talk, like me, it's a way of having a raucous night out without bothering to speak a word of English, and instead mumbling and moaning, shrieking and jabbering one's way to a very, very good time."
- Carl Wilson

You can read the initial announcement for the class here.

Terrible Noises for Beautiful People: Cobra Edition

This was an eight-week introduction to vocal improvisation, organized around John Zorn's Cobra.

Rose Bianchini made a great 5-minute video about the class.

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Other Projects

For information on some of my other projects, visit www.mishaglouberman.com and www.schooloflearning.org

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