Adam Meggido

RolesWriter

Adam Meggido (born 1970) is an English writer, performer, director, and teacher based in London who co-created Showstopper! The Improvised Musical, the first improvised show to win an Olivier Award. He has served as Artistic Director of Extempore Theatre, Head of Foundation at LAMDA from 2007 to 2016, and directed for Mischief Theatre including the West End and Broadway productions of Peter Pan Goes Wrong. He produced and directed the London 50 Hour Improvathon beginning in 2008 and holds an unofficial world record for directing long-form improvisation, a 55-hour Soapathon in Toronto in 2013. His book Improv Beyond Rules: A Practical Guide to Narrative Improvisation was published by Nick Hern Books in 2019.

Career

Meggido founded Counterpoint Theatre in 1994, directing the company through 1999. In 2001 he founded The Sticking Place, an improvisation company that he renamed Extempore Theatre in 2008, serving as Artistic Director and leading what he has described as a revival of improvisation in the United Kingdom. The company became a vehicle for his sustained work in long-form improvised performance.

From 2004 to 2008 he worked closely with theatre director Ken Campbell on a series of ambitious productions. These included Shall We Shog? at Shakespeare's Globe in 2005, Decor Without Production at the Royal Court in 2005, In Pursuit of Cardenio at the Edinburgh Festival in 2006, and The School of Night, which played Shakespeare's Globe, the Royal National Theatre, Soho Theatre, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Oxford Playhouse, and Bristol Old Vic. Campbell's influence on Meggido's approach to theatrical experimentation and narrative innovation was substantial.

In 2007 Meggido joined LAMDA as Head of Foundation, a position he held through 2016, during which he shaped the foundational training of hundreds of acting students at one of the United Kingdom's most prominent drama schools. He also became Associate Director of the National Youth Theatre.

In 2008 Meggido co-created Showstopper! The Improvised Musical with Brian Gilligan and the ensemble. The show, in which audience members suggest titles, genres, settings, and song styles for a complete improvised musical performed in real time, became one of the most celebrated improvised productions in British theatre history. It played over one hundred venues across the United Kingdom and eleven countries worldwide, ran for ten weeks in London's West End at the Ambassadors Theatre in 2015, broadcast as a BBC Radio 4 series in 2011, and performed at the Royal Albert Hall. In 2016 Showstopper! won the Olivier Award for Best Entertainment and Family, making it the first improvised show to receive the honor.

Also in 2008, Meggido produced and directed the first London 50 Hour Improvathon in association with Die Nasty, the long-running Canadian improvisation company. The Improvathon, a continuous improvised performance that runs for fifty hours, has taken place every year in London since its founding and is considered the longest annual improvised show in the world. In 2013 he directed a 55-hour Soapathon in Toronto that constituted an unofficial world record for directed long-form improvisation.

Beginning around 2015, Meggido directed for Mischief Theatre, the company founded by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields. He directed Peter Pan Goes Wrong in London's West End at the Apollo Theatre from 2015 to 2017, on Broadway in 2023, and in productions in Canada, Italy, New Zealand, and Australia. He also directed Magic Goes Wrong in the West End from 2019 to 2021. Peter Pan Goes Wrong received Drama Desk and Critics' Circle nominations and a BBC film adaptation.

Meggido has also composed and co-written musical theatre works. His musical Burlesque, with co-writers Roy Smiles and Terry Johnson, won four Off West End Theatre Awards in 2012 including Best New Musical. The Tailor Made Man played the Arts Theatre London in 2013.

His book Improv Beyond Rules: A Practical Guide to Narrative Improvisation, published by Nick Hern Books in 2019, documents his approach to long-form narrative improvisation. He has also written numerous plays.

Historical Context

Meggido is historically significant as the primary architect of Showstopper! The Improvised Musical's rise from Edinburgh Fringe phenomenon to Olivier Award winner, a trajectory that established improvised theatre as eligible for the United Kingdom's most prestigious theatrical recognition. That achievement changed the status of improvisation in British theatrical culture in ways that continue to affect how improvised work is programmed, funded, and reviewed.

His founding and directorship of the London 50 Hour Improvathon, and the world record long-form directing event in Toronto, extended the boundaries of what long-form improvised performance could encompass in terms of duration and sustained narrative complexity. These events demonstrated that improvisation could sustain coherent theatrical worlds across timescales that had no precedent in the mainstream tradition.

His LAMDA appointment brought his improvisation practice into formal conservatory training at the highest level, giving the methods he developed with Extempore Theatre and Showstopper! institutional legitimacy within the British actor training establishment.

Teaching Philosophy

Meggido's book title, Improv Beyond Rules, signals his core pedagogical commitment: improvisation becomes more powerful when practitioners develop genuine narrative understanding rather than following rule sets. His approach emphasizes narrative structure, character investment, and theatrical craft rather than the permission-granting framework that characterizes much introductory improv pedagogy. At LAMDA, where he taught as Head of Foundation for nine years, he brought improvisation into formal actor training as a craft discipline continuous with other theatre skills rather than as a separate comedic technique. His work with Showstopper! requires performers to manage harmonic structure, genre convention, character continuity, and live narrative coherence simultaneously, and his teaching reflects the sophistication those demands require.

Legacy

Meggido's legacy is anchored in Showstopper! The Improvised Musical, which demonstrated that improvised theatre could achieve the highest levels of institutional recognition in British theatrical culture. The Olivier Award it won in 2016 changed what was imaginable for improvised work in the United Kingdom and gave the country's growing improv community a landmark to point to when arguing for the legitimacy of the form.

The London 50 Hour Improvathon, which he founded and has directed annually since 2008, created a distinctive long-form institution that has no direct equivalent elsewhere in the world and that has sustained a community of long-form practitioners in London for more than fifteen years.

His book Improv Beyond Rules contributes a British long-form practitioner's perspective to the global pedagogical literature on narrative improvisation, complementing the North American texts that have previously dominated the field.

Early Life and Training

Meggido was born in 1970 and grew up in north London. His parents were both dancers and choreographers, giving him an early formation in physical performance and collaborative artistic work. He studied at Birmingham University and trained at Webber Douglas. He cited his collaborations with theatre director Ken Campbell and mime teacher Claude Chagrin as among his most formative early influences. He was a member of the National Youth Theatre as a teenager in the 1980s.

Personal Life

Meggido was born in 1970 in north London to parents who were both dancers and choreographers. He trained at Birmingham University and Webber Douglas. He has been based in London throughout his career.