Asaf Ronen

RolesWriter

Asaf Ronen is a New York and Austin-based improv director, teacher, and author who began performing improvisation in 1990 and subsequently worked with NY Theatresports and NY ComedySportz before developing a long-form practice rooted in Annoyance Theatre methodology. He founded YESand.com in 1999 and published Directing Improv: Show the Way by Getting Out of the Way in 2005, one of the few books in the improv literature specifically addressed to directors and coaches rather than performers. He relocated to Austin, Texas around 2006, where he served as Education Director of The Institution Theater for approximately eight years, as Conservatory Director of ColdTowne Theater, and as Producer and Education Director of the Out of Bounds Comedy Festival. He subsequently founded The Seed, his own Austin improv training studio. He produced Trust Us, This Is All Made Up, the 2009 documentary about improvisers TJ Jagodowski and David Pasquesi, which premiered at South by Southwest.

Career

In New York, Ronen directed several productions including goga (an all-female improv group), Ka-Baam!! (an improvised comic book adventure show), Death in the City (a dramatic long-form piece presented at the NY Fringe Festival), The Mock, and The Sickest F***ing Stories I Ever Heard. He also taught at New York City public school arts programs through LEAP (Learning through an Expanded Arts Program) and New Horizons, and worked with the Weist-Barron ACTeen program for young performers. In 2000 he worked as a talent scout for Cirque du Soleil, evaluating improvisational performers.

In 1999 Ronen founded YESand.com, an online resource dedicated to improvisation, and served as its Editor-in-Chief. The site also became the publisher of his 2005 book, Directing Improv: Show the Way by Getting Out of the Way. The book, 154 pages, was among the first improv publications to address direction and coaching as a distinct discipline rather than treating the director's role as incidental to performer training. It covers techniques for giving notes, sidecoaching, working with children, and managing ensemble dynamics, and features interviews with Armando Diaz, Michael Gellman, Kevin Mullaney, Mick Napier, Dan O'Connor, Shira Piven, Gary Schwartz, and Todd Stashwick. Its stated premise is that the director's primary job is to get out of the way of the performer.

Ronen relocated to Austin, Texas around 2006 or 2007 after participating in the Out of Bounds Comedy Festival and finding Austin's improv community collaborative and supportive. He became Education Director of The Institution Theater, a role he held for approximately eight years, and subsequently served as Conservatory Director of ColdTowne Theater. He has served as Producer and Education Director of the Out of Bounds Comedy Festival, Austin's annual international improv festival, on an ongoing basis.

In Austin he directed the Confidence Men, a long-form ensemble performing improvised plays in the style of David Mamet, alongside Tom Booker, Troy Miller, Ceej Allen, Michael Ferstenfeld, and Jeff Britt. Their production The Suitcase received a B. Iden Payne Award, Austin's major theater honor. He also co-directed imp, a mostly non-verbal improv duo with Karen Wight, and Spirited: Improvised Dreamscapes, an experimental performance.

Ronen produced Trust Us, This Is All Made Up (2009), a documentary directed by Alex Karpovsky about long-form improvisers TJ Jagodowski and David Pasquesi, recorded at Barrow Street Theater in New York. The film premiered at South by Southwest in Austin.

He subsequently founded The Seed (theseedatx.com), his own Austin improv training studio, where he serves as Founder and Dean. He is also Director of Programming and Services at the Austin Creative Alliance. He has taught improv and directing at festivals and theaters in Canada, Great Britain, Norway, and more than twenty-eight U.S. states, including master classes at BATS Improv in San Francisco, Improv Cincinnati, the Hideout Theatre in Austin, and multiple Out of Bounds editions.

Historical Context

Ronen's 2005 book Directing Improv appeared at a moment when the improv literature was expanding from performer-centered instruction manuals toward the wider institutional infrastructure of training schools and ensemble management. Its focus on the director as a distinct role, with a specific set of technical and relational responsibilities separate from the performer's scene work, addressed a gap in the existing canon that had not been systematically treated in the publications produced by the Second City, iO, and UCB traditions. The book's framing, getting out of the way rather than imposing a directorial vision, articulated a facilitative model of ensemble leadership that stood in contrast to more directive models inherited from scripted theater direction.

His production of Trust Us, This Is All Made Up placed an improv documentary in South by Southwest's programming, connecting the Austin improv community to national film festival attention. The film's subjects, TJ Jagodowski and David Pasquesi, were at the time the most studied practitioners of duo long-form improvisation in the Chicago tradition, and the film became a significant document of that performance mode's possibilities.

Ronen's eight-year tenure at The Institution Theater and his subsequent founding of The Seed established him as a sustained architect of Austin's improv training infrastructure, a city that in the 2010s developed one of the more active regional improv communities in the United States outside the major metropolitan centers.

Teaching Philosophy

Ronen has developed and named several pedagogical concepts. Power improv, rooted in Annoyance Theatre methodology, centers the performer's trust in their own instincts as the primary resource in ensemble work. His concept of the F***-It Switch, documented in writing for ColdTowne Theater, describes the internal permission structure through which performers override self-censorship to make bold choices: the moment of releasing habitual self-evaluation in favor of action.

His directing philosophy, as articulated in Directing Improv and in workshops, frames the director's role as facilitative rather than prescriptive. The director's job is to show the way by getting out of the way, creating conditions for the performer's best work to emerge rather than shaping it toward a predetermined result. He draws on the Annoyance Theatre tradition's emphasis on total commitment and performer agency as the conditions of genuine ensemble discovery.

His teaching practice at The Seed includes Improv Diagnostics, a course focused on identifying and developing individual performers' natural strengths, and Fundamentals of Directing and Teaching, reflecting his conviction that direction is a learnable discipline with its own technical vocabulary separate from performance skill.

Legacy

Ronen's Directing Improv (2005) is cited in the Improv Encyclopedia as a reference work and is one of the few publications in the improv canon to address the director's role systematically. Its interviews with Armando Diaz, Mick Napier, and other major practitioners of the period preserve a documentary record of directorial approaches that had not previously been collected in book form.

His production of Trust Us, This Is All Made Up (2009) remains the most prominent documentary treatment of duo long-form improvisation and its subjects, TJ Jagodowski and David Pasquesi, whose work the film documented before either had received widespread national recognition. The film's South by Southwest premiere connected improv-specific documentary work to mainstream American film festival contexts.

His founding of The Seed and his extended roles at The Institution Theater and ColdTowne Theater contributed to Austin's emergence as a regional improv center in the 2010s. The Out of Bounds Comedy Festival's development as an international festival under his producing and educational direction extended Austin's improv network to practitioners in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Europe.

Early Life and Training

Ronen began performing improvisation in 1990 while in college. His early career in New York placed him at NY Theatresports and NY ComedySportz before he transitioned to long-form improvisation. He directed his own long-form troupe, Hiatus, in New York and also served as a resident teacher at The People's Improv Theater (the PIT). His training lineage traces through the Annoyance Theatre's approach to improvisation, which he later described as power improv, a framework centered on performers trusting their instincts and fully valuing their potential contributions to a scene.