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.

Student Grad Shows (term-end showcases culminating in the Jam-Balaya, a second-act open segment where instructors and advanced students join graduates in scenes), The Mash-Up (collaborative performances combining Improvolution students with performers from Pace University, Marymount, and SVA), and the Smart and Lovely Show (a recurring performance show running 2017 to 2020 featuring Education Director Mallory Kinney among its cast). Rob Schiffman, Improvolution's master music improv instructor and creator of Broadway's Next Hit Musical, leads music improv workshops at the school feeding performers into that long-running all-improvised Broadway parody show.

Improvolution was the first female-founded, female-owned, and female-operated improv school in New York City, established in 2002 by Holly Mandel, a six-year Main Company member of The Groundlings in Los Angeles. Mandel brought the character-development methodology of The Groundlings to New York, filling a gap for character-based long-form training at a time when most New York improv schools emphasized game-of-the-scene or pattern-based approaches.

Rebecca Stuard, who joined as Creative Director and co-owner in 2014 and became Executive Director in 2020, brought 19 years of background and rehearsal performance on Saturday Night Live to the school's faculty. Mandel also created the BFA Comedy Studies program at Pace University in New York and launched iMERGENCE, a corporate improv training company, in 2011, both drawing on frameworks developed at Improvolution. Graduates have appeared in Broadway's Next Hit Musical and on stages at UCB, The Magnet, and Gotham Comedy Club.