Amey Goerlich

Amey Goerlich is a New York-trained improv performer, director, teacher, and co-founder of Chaos Bloom Theater in Denver, Colorado, where she serves as Training Center Director and Co-Creative Director. A long-form improviser at UCB New York from 2001 to 2016 and co-creator of the Krompf form, she subsequently founded Improv Training Hub and E-MPROV.COM, an early online improv training platform, before relocating to Denver and building Chaos Bloom into one of the city's most recognized independent improv venues. The theatre won Best Intimate Improv Club in the 2024 Denver Westword Best of Denver awards.

Career

Goerlich began studying and performing at UCB New York in 2001. Her teachers included Armando Diaz, Ian Roberts, Kevin Mullaney, Michael Delaney, Billy Merritt, and Owen Burke. She performed in a wide range of UCB ensembles over fifteen years, including the Harold team FILTH, the Maude teams Mix Tape 98, The Skuntz, and 27 Kidneys, and the independent ensembles Lucy, Wicked Fuckin' Queeah, and Fart Police (which held a monthly show at The Treehouse Theater in New York). She also performed with Chica Go Go and Lights Out Shirley at The People's Improv Theater and with Nit Wits and Film Noir at the Annoyance Theatre.

In 2001, Goerlich co-created the Krompf form with Neil Casey, Ryan Karels, and Joe Wengert at UCB. Krompf strips long-form improvisation down to its essential mechanics, emphasizing fast and bold choices and ensemble connection over elaborate game structures. Directors of the form over subsequent years included Chris Gethard, Ptolemy Slocum, Owen Burke, and Armando Diaz. Krompf has been described as one of the longest-running and most significant independent improv groups in New York City's history. Goerlich has taught the Krompf form at festivals and theatres across the country.

From 2011 to 2016, she produced and hosted the Indie Cage Match at UCB Theatre's East Village location, a long-running showcase that placed independent improv ensembles in head-to-head competition before audience vote. She co-taught 'The Documentary' class at UCB with Billy Merritt.

Parallel to her performance career, Goerlich taught film, television production, theatre, animation, and improvisation at New York City elementary schools from 2001 through 2014. She directed and coached more than five hundred improvisation groups, sketch teams, and off-Broadway productions over her New York period. She was also a producer at large at Treehouse Theater in New York City.

She founded Improv Training Hub, an independent multi-teacher training platform, and E-MPROV.COM, an early online-only improv theatre platform that predated the pandemic-era shift to virtual instruction. In April 2017, she co-created and launched the 'Humans Being' improv card game with Dennis Zavolock via Kickstarter, designed to make long-form improv techniques accessible to non-practitioners.

Goerlich relocated to Los Angeles in November 2016, where she taught at M.I. Westside Comedy (Westside Comedy Theater) and performed in the Faculty Show and other monthly productions.

She subsequently relocated to Denver, Colorado, where she joined Chaos Bloom Theater at 70 South Broadway in the Baker neighborhood as co-owner, Training Center Director, and Co-Creative Director. Chaos Bloom had held outdoor alley shows during the summer of 2020 before formally opening in mid-2021. Goerlich designed the theatre's original curriculum, built its five-level game-based long-form improv program alongside Sketch and Clowning offerings, and contributed to the venue's aesthetic design. The theatre won Best Intimate Improv Club in the Denver Westword Best of Denver awards in 2024.

Television credits include appearances on 'Raising McCain' (Pivot channel) as an improv expert, 'Giving You the Business' (Food Network), and short-form content for UCB Comedy, Funny or Die, and IFC. She created the web series 'Upton Abbey' for UCBcomedy.com in 2012.

Historical Context

The Krompf form, which Goerlich co-created at UCB New York in 2001, represents one of the earliest ensemble-specific long-form structures developed within the UCB system to persist as a named and teachable form over more than two decades. Where UCB's Harold and Maude formats were institutionally managed, Krompf was created and maintained by its founding ensemble and subsequently transmitted through workshops and festival residencies, giving it a peer-taught rather than institutionally administered distribution.

Goerlich's career arc from UCB New York to early online improv instruction to Denver co-ownership tracks the decentralization of American improv training that accelerated through the 2010s. Her founding of E-MPROV.COM as an online-only improv theatre predated the pandemic-era proliferation of virtual improv by nearly a decade, making it an early experiment in what online improv instruction could become. Chaos Bloom's opening in 2021 and its subsequent recognition as Denver's best intimate improv venue situates her later career in the growth of regional improv infrastructure outside the established coastal training centers.

Teaching Philosophy

Goerlich's stated approach to curriculum design centers on inclusivity and game-based long-form technique. Her comment on joining Chaos Bloom identified access for women in improv as a specific priority: she described the opportunity to 'create an entirely new curriculum that was inclusive' as rare and significant in a field where women have been underrepresented in curriculum leadership. Her Krompf teaching emphasizes fast choices and ensemble connection as foundational principles, stripping back the structural complexity of longer forms to develop improvisers' instinctive responsiveness before adding structural scaffolding.

Legacy

Goerlich's co-creation of Krompf in 2001 produced one of the more durably transmitted independent long-form forms from the first generation of UCB New York's ensemble culture. The form's persistence over more than two decades, its touring presence at festivals across the country, and its association with directors including Chris Gethard and Armando Diaz document its reach within the long-form tradition.

Her founding of E-MPROV.COM as an early online improv platform and the subsequent nationwide distribution of her teaching through festival residencies and virtual coaching established her as a practitioner who worked actively to extend improv training beyond its established institutional centers. Chaos Bloom Theater's recognition as Denver's best intimate improv venue in 2024 is the most concrete measure of her regional institution-building impact.

For the archive, Goerlich represents the generation of New York-trained improvisers who carried UCB-tradition long-form practice into regional markets and built independent infrastructure in cities that had limited improv training before their arrival.

Early Life and Training

Goerlich grew up in Nashua, New Hampshire. She studied at the University of New Hampshire and at Humboldt State University, where a professor who had trained under Del Close in Chicago introduced her to long-form improvisation. She completed a Bachelor of Arts in Directing at Marymount Manhattan College. Her introduction to long-form improv at Humboldt State through Del Close's lineage oriented her toward UCB New York as the next institutional context for that tradition.

Personal Life

Goerlich grew up in Nashua, New Hampshire, and spent fifteen years based in New York City before relocating to Los Angeles in 2016. She subsequently moved to Denver, Colorado, where she has been based since. She has spoken publicly about the particular challenges facing women in improv leadership and curriculum design.