Improvolution

Holly Mandel trained and performed with The Groundlings in Los Angeles for more than a decade, serving as a Main Company member and instructor, before founding Improvolution in New York City in 2002. The school opened at 115 Macdougal Street in Greenwich Village and was the first improv school in New York founded, owned, and operated by a woman. Improvolution's curriculum centred on character-based improv, distinguishing it from the Harold-focused programmes at the contemporaneous UCB Training Center. The school offered a performance track, corporate training, and personal development programmes. Holly Mandel sold Improvolution in 2024 and relaunched her corporate improv business as iMergence Corporate Improv. The school continues to operate at its Macdougal Street address under new ownership.

Improvolution teaches character-based improv in the Groundlings tradition: performers develop distinctive characters with a strong point of view and find the game of a scene through character rather than through the edit-focused structures of the Harold tradition. This positioned Improvolution as a deliberate counterpoint to the Harold-centred training infrastructure that UCB and Magnet represented in New York from the early 2000s onward.