Theatresports

How to Explain It

"TheatreSports works like an athletic competition. Two teams perform scenes for a panel of judges. Judges award points for strong improv and can call fouls for blocking, hedging, or running down the clock. Teams must accept the call. The game ends when time runs out or a team reaches the agreed point total."

Scaffolding

Groups new to TheatreSports should begin by learning the foul categories before performing competitively. Understanding why a foul is called -- blocking, canceling, low energy, reliance on cliché -- orients players to the format's improvisational values before they experience the competitive pressure.

The challenge system can be introduced gradually: begin with a small menu of five to ten well-known challenge formats and expand as the group's facility with specific games improves. Teams that attempt challenges they have not rehearsed will fail to execute them under competitive pressure.

Common Notes

The most common teaching challenge is managing the relationship between competitive energy and collaborative scene work. Teams that become focused on winning at the expense of scene quality produce performances that the audience does not reward. Johnstone's design intention -- that the scoring system reinforces quality rather than mere competitiveness -- requires players to internalize the paradox that the best strategy for winning is to support the scene rather than to win it.

Coaches note that foul calls must be consistent and credible to maintain the sporting frame. An audience that believes the refereeing is arbitrary will disengage from the competitive structure entirely.

Cast Size

Two teams of three to six players per team. Formats with fewer players (duos or trios) produce a different competitive dynamic than larger ensembles. The International Theatresports Institute documents recommended team sizes for different venue scales.

Roles

The Referee or Master of Ceremonies manages challenges, calls fouls, and announces scores. This role is distinct from the competing players and is typically held by an experienced performer or the company's designated host. In Maestro, the Maestro serves a combined directing and playing function.

Team Captains issue challenges on behalf of their teams. In some configurations, any team member may issue a challenge; in others, the captain holds exclusive challenge authority.

Key Skills

TheatreSports rewards performers who thrive under constraint and competitive pressure. The format specifically develops: the capacity to execute a specific game or style on demand, the ability to recover from fouls without losing ensemble focus, and the skill of performing for audience approval rather than internal aesthetic satisfaction. Julia Leep notes that long-form improv requires celebration of the form itself, while TheatreSports trains performers for the heightened energy and audience-driven evaluation of the competitive context.

Technical Requirements

Stage: An open stage visible to the full audience. No set pieces required. Teams should have designated areas on stage or in the wings between challenges. Lighting: Blackouts are used between scenes. Individual scenes are played under standard wash. Sound: A bell, buzzer, or whistle is used to signal fouls and end scenes. Some productions use a scoreboard. Scoring materials: Score cards, electronic scoreboard, or designated audience voting mechanism.

TheatreSports combines the immediacy of sports fandom with the surprise of live improvisation. Audiences are not passive observers but active participants: they score scenes, witness fouls, and invest in team performance in real time. The format is accessible to audience members with no prior exposure to improv because the competitive structure provides an immediate interpretive frame.

Taglines used by affiliate companies: "Improv as a Competitive Sport." "Two Teams Enter. One Team Wins. Everyone Laughs."

The format's global reach -- with licensed companies on six continents -- provides producers with an established brand and a network of reference performances for promotional use.

Keith Johnstone created TheatreSports at the Loose Moose Theatre Company in Calgary, Alberta, in the 1970s. Johnstone had been developing his improvisational pedagogy since his work with the Royal Court Theatre in London in the late 1950s and early 1960s, where he directed writers' workshops and developed the status and spontaneity concepts that would underpin his approach. He established the Loose Moose in 1977, and TheatreSports emerged as its signature format.

The format was designed to solve a specific problem: audiences watching improvisation often had no framework for evaluating or engaging with what they were seeing. By embedding improvised performance within the familiar conventions of athletic competition -- teams, scoring, fouls, challenges -- Johnstone gave audiences an immediate participatory role and a structure for investment. The competitive frame also raised the stakes for performers in ways that pure scene work did not.

Johnstone documents the full system of rules, scoring, fouls, and format variations in Impro for Storytellers (1999), which functions as the definitive technical manual for TheatreSports, Maestro, and Gorilla Theatre.

The format spread internationally through licensing. Impro Australia, founded in 1985, became one of the first TheatreSports licensees outside Canada. Bay Area TheatreSports (BATS Improv), founded in 1986 at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, became one of the longest-running TheatreSports companies in the United States. The International Theatresports Institute (ITI), founded in 1998, now administers the format worldwide, licensing the TheatreSports name to affiliated companies.

Lynda Belt and Rebecca Stockley of BATS Improv co-authored Acting Through Improv / Improv Through TheatreSports, which became a widely used training manual integrating Johnstone's competitive format with classical acting technique. Lyn Pierse published Theatresports Down Under, a manual for short-form players that is considered an excellent reference for the format's execution in the Australasian context.

TheatreSports has also been performed competitively in formats documented by Julia Leep in Theatrical Improvisation, which situates the format within the broader landscape of competitive improv alongside the Canadian Improv Games and ComedySportz.