Washington Improv Theater

Founding and First Run (1986–1992)

Carole Douglis founded Washington Improv Theater in Washington DC in 1986. The company performed short-form and long-form improv in and around the city through 1992, when the original organisation disbanded.

Revival (1998–present)

Carole Douglis revived WIT on 27 November 1998 as a consensus-based collective, launching initial performances in the basement of Universalist National Memorial Church. In 2000, WIT established its own improv training programme. In 2004, the organisation hired its first full-time Artistic and Executive Director, Mark Chalfant (a Second City alumnus). WIT established an artistic residence at Studio Theatre, 1501 14th Street NW, and has since developed one of the most active improv training programmes in the US, with 1,728 students enrolled in fiscal year 2019.

WIT programmes both short-form and long-form improv and frames the practice as a civic and creative discipline extending beyond comedy into applied contexts. Its curriculum spans five levels, leading to house team placement. WIT at Work provides corporate improvisation training, and the organisation has programmed with the Kennedy Center and other DC arts institutions. The annual Improvalooza marathon and the Fighting Improv Smackdown Tournament are signature events that serve the local improv community as well as general audiences.

Harold Night is WIT's weekly long-form show in which resident Harold teams build fully improvised sets from a single audience suggestion, running on a pay-what-you-choose model since 2010. POTUS Among Us is a recurring election-year political satire show produced in a new version every presidential cycle since 2008, with recent editions under the subtitle Beyond Belief featuring journalist guests from The Washington Post, Slate, and other outlets. The Fighting Improv Smackdown Tournament (FIST) is an annual spring bracket competition open to new and veteran teams, modeled on tournament elimination structure and running since 2007. iMusical is a fully improvised musical theater show created by Travis Ploeger and developed through the Mead Theatre Lab program. Earlier signature productions include Scared WITless, an improvised horror show, and Citizen Blank, an improvised biographical play.

Carole Douglis founded Washington Improv Theater in 1986, producing short-form and long-form work before the original company disbanded in 1992. Douglis restarted classes in 1995 at the Institute for Policy Studies and in private workshops before the ensemble formally reinstated the organization on November 27, 1998, as a consensus-based collective, later hiring Second City alumna Catherine Weidner as interim artistic director. The troupe attended the 1999 Chicago Improv Festival, where most members encountered long-form improv for the first time, and by 2000 had launched a structured training program. Mark Chalfant became the first full-time artistic and executive director in 2004, overseeing growth that raised class enrollment from 200 students in 2004 to more than 1,700 by 2019 and expanded annual performances to more than 300 shows reaching roughly 20,000 attendees.

Notable alumni include Natasha Rothwell, who served as Director of Education and performed in iMusical during her 2003-2008 tenure before her writing and acting career on Insecure and The White Lotus; Aparna Nancherla, who studied at WIT before her work on Comedy Central's Corporate and as an SNL writer; Rory Scovel, later on Apple TV+'s Physical; and Zhubin Parang, head writer of The Daily Show. The WIT@Work corporate training program has served nearly 3,000 participants annually, including clients such as Google and the FBI. The Improv for All free workshop initiative has extended programming across all eight DC wards plus Maryland and Virginia, and as of 2026 the organization is pursuing its first permanent home at 1222 Third Street NE in the NoMa neighborhood, ending nearly three decades of performing in borrowed spaces.