Dan O'Connor

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Dan O'Connor is a Los Angeles-based improviser, director, teacher, and author who co-founded BATS Improv (Bay Area Theatresports) in San Francisco, co-founded LA Theatresports in Los Angeles, and founded Impro Theatre, a critically acclaimed company specializing in fully improvised, genre-specific long-form narrative productions under the format titles Shakespeare UnScripted, Jane Austen UnScripted, Chekhov UnScripted, and Sondheim UnScripted, among others. He trained with Keith Johnstone, Phelim McDermott, and Lee Simpson, and has been performing and teaching improvisation professionally since 1986. He co-authored Life UnScripted and Ensemble!, both published by North Atlantic Books.

Dan O'Connor has been performing, directing, producing, and teaching improvisation professionally since 1986. His formal theatrical training includes study at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London and at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. He subsequently trained directly with Keith Johnstone, the founder of the Theatresports format; with Phelim McDermott; and with Lee Simpson, developing deep roots in the Johnstonian tradition of competitive and narrative improv.

In San Francisco, O'Connor co-founded BATS Improv, Bay Area Theatresports, establishing the Johnstone Theatresports format in the Bay Area before relocating to Los Angeles. In 1988, he co-founded LA Theatresports in Los Angeles with Ellen Idelson and Forest Brakeman, bringing the Theatresports format to the West Coast's major metropolitan improv scene. He has also performed with The Groundlings and The Second City.

O'Connor subsequently founded Impro Theatre in Los Angeles, serving as Producing Artistic Director. Impro Theatre creates fully improvised, full-length plays in the styles of major authors and composers, a model he developed into a series of productions including Shakespeare UnScripted, Jane Austen UnScripted, Chekhov UnScripted, Fairytales UnScripted, The Western UnScripted, Sondheim UnScripted, and Sherlock Holmes UnScripted. The company has performed at major Los Angeles venues including the Broad Stage in Santa Monica and the Garry Marshall Theatre in Burbank. He co-directed Jane Austen UnScripted and has sustained the company's production schedule across multiple seasons.

His television and film acting credits include Seinfeld, Malcolm in the Middle, Raising Hope, VEGAS, and Starstruck. He directed episodes of Sons and Daughters (ABC) and Campus Ladies (Oxygen), and co-created and starred in World Cup Comedy for NBC/PAX. He performed in Pulp Playhouse at the HBO Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen and hosted the long-running improv show Wrought Irony at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles. He also performed at Murphy's Cat Laughs Festival in Kilkenny, Ireland, as a Second City guest.

As a teacher, O'Connor has worked at the University of Southern California, Duke University, and UCLA Extension, and has served as an adjunct professor for USC's BFA program and in the MBA program at the University of Texas McCombs School of Business. Corporate teaching clients have included DreamWorks, Disney Animation, and Cirque du Soleil. He has taught globally, with festival appearances at Auckland and Oslo.

He co-authored Life UnScripted: Using Improv Principles to Get Unstuck, Boost Confidence, and Transform Your Life (North Atlantic Books, Penguin Random House) and Ensemble!: Using the Power of Improv to Forge Connections in a Lonely World (North Atlantic Books, Penguin Random House), both written with Dr. Jeff Katzman. He has co-taught and co-performed with Wayne Brady at Impro Theatre.

He is married to actress Edi Patterson, known for her role in The Righteous Gemstones on HBO.

Historical Context

Dan O'Connor's founding of Impro Theatre and its genre-based UnScripted format represents one of the more significant formal innovations within the Johnstonian tradition's development in North America. Where Keith Johnstone's original Theatresports format organized improvisation around competitive game structures, Impro Theatre's model reorganized the same underlying improvisational discipline around literary-genre narrative production. The company's ability to sustain improvised performances evoking the specific language, character conventions, and narrative patterns of Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Chekhov, and Sondheim demonstrated that genre literacy combined with improvisational training could produce experiences audiences recognized as coherent within specific literary traditions.

His co-founding of both BATS Improv in San Francisco and LA Theatresports in Los Angeles during the late 1980s contributed to establishing the West Coast infrastructure for the Johnstonian Theatresports tradition at a period when the Chicago-originated Harold tradition was simultaneously spreading through iO Chicago's expansion. His presence in both the Bay Area and Los Angeles during this formative period gave the West Coast improv scene access to the competitive Theatresports format before it was widely available in those markets.

His training with Johnstone directly, alongside study with Phelim McDermott and Lee Simpson at the lineage's European nodes, gave him access to the tradition's sources in a way that distinguishes his practice from American improvisers who encountered the form primarily through secondary transmission. His application of that lineage to long-form literary narrative at Impro Theatre produced a model that has influenced how narrative improv is produced and presented at major West Coast venues and has been replicated by other companies internationally.

Teaching Philosophy

Dan O'Connor's documented pedagogical principles center on presence as the foundational condition of effective performance and connection. His formulation 'If you're interested, you're interesting' anchors his teaching in authentic listening rather than performed engagement, identifying attention itself as the primary tool of the improviser.

He has articulated relationship as the engine of narrative: 'Everything in narrative emerges from our relationships onstage, our connection to each other, to the space, to the audience, and to ourselves.' This framing makes scene relationship primary over plot or game mechanics, requiring performers to generate content from genuine connection rather than from structural formulas.

His emphasis on economy of language, making bold and meaningful choices with fewer words, and allowing character and story to emerge through presence rather than exposition, reflects the Johnstonian tradition's preference for demonstration over explanation. His work in the genre-based UnScripted format requires genre literacy, deep immersion in the style, language, and structure of a literary world before improvising within it, as a precondition for performers to inhabit generic conventions spontaneously.

He has described narrative improvisation as 'a set of processes: skills you can reliably bring into the immediacy of the moment,' distinguishing content-without-relationship from emotional engagement as the difference between data and narrative experience.

Legacy

Dan O'Connor's Impro Theatre has sustained a multi-production repertory of genre-based improvised theater in Los Angeles across more than two decades, establishing a model for literary-genre narrative improv that has been adopted by companies and practitioners working in the Johnstonian tradition beyond the institution. The UnScripted format's commercial success at major Los Angeles venues demonstrated that fully improvised long-form narrative, when organized around recognizable literary conventions, could sustain audience engagement comparable to scripted productions in institutional theater settings.

His two co-authored books with Dr. Jeff Katzman, Life UnScripted and Ensemble!, extended improv principles into the applied domains of personal development and organizational communication, contributing to the applied improvisation literature from a practitioner deeply rooted in performance improv rather than corporate training exclusively. Both titles from North Atlantic Books (Penguin Random House) placed his practice within the mainstream applied improv publishing tradition alongside similar works from the Chicago and New York traditions.

His teaching at USC, Duke, the University of Texas McCombs School of Business, DreamWorks, Disney Animation, and Cirque du Soleil placed the Johnstonian performance tradition within corporate creative organizations at the highest professional levels. His work at Disney Animation represents a documented instance of the Theatresports tradition's improvisational methods being applied within one of the dominant animation studios in the industry.