Photo by Kevin McShane Cog, a Los Angeles-based improv troupe, performs at last year’s comedy festival.

The top improv comedy festival in Phoenix has grown to include national troupes. The three-day event returns next month. Smile ‘til it hurts.


From April 16 to April 18, Phoenix will likely have the highest concentration of funny people per capita in the Western Hemisphere. On those dates, improv performers from around the country will be descending on the city to participate in Phoenix Improv Festival 8 at Herberger Theater Center. Those with an aversion to laughter are advised not to attend.

If you associate the word “improv” with simply watching comedians tell jokes, you should know that the Phoenix Improv Festival is something completely different. The festival features improv troupes that create and perform totally unscripted scenes on the spot, usually based on suggestions from the audience.

At a Phoenix Improv Festival benefit held in December at the tiny venue Space 55, local improv troupe The Remainders created an entire musical out of the suggested title Pickled Amnesiac. The opening number, in which five performers danced around staring blankly at each other and singing, “What? Huh? Who?” brought howls of laughter from the crowd.

But Bill Binder, executive producer of the Phoenix Improv Festival, is quick to note that improv isn’t just about being funny.

“We know improv has a connotation of only being the comedy, and that’s a wonderful part of it, but we try to bring Phoenix a chance to see all kinds of improv,” says Binder, adding that, at last year’s festival, one of the troupes improvised Chekhov.

When the Phoenix Improv Festival began in 2002, it featured three local troupes and was held on one afternoon at the now defunct Metro Theatre in Scottsdale. The festival has grown in size and scope each year since and has included troupes from Los Angeles, Seattle, Detroit, Chicago, Austin, New York, Miami and Salt Lake City. This expansion is what triggered the 2008 move to the Herberger Theater – an unusually large venue for an improv festival.

“Every group that comes to Phoenix is dumbfounded because most festivals play for a venue with 60 seats,” Binder says.

The rapidly growing popularity of the Phoenix Improv Festival is mostly due to the intense effort Binder and the festival’s other organizers have made to be as friendly and accommodating as possible to troupes outside the Valley.

“We invented the ‘Den Mother’ program, which is starting to pick up in other cities now,” Binder says. “We assign a local performer to be available 24 hours a day for one visiting troupe. The den mother is there to pick them up at the airport, get them to restaurants or other events in town and make sure they get to the theater on time. I think we do a good job of making improvisers welcome in this town.”

The end result is three straight nights of high-quality performances. For more information on this year’s performances and to purchase tickets, visit herbergertheater.org.