Kimberly Faubel

Faubel's career reflects the growing importance of improv educators who build and systematize training programs at emerging theatres. Her work creating the full comedy curriculum for Dallas Comedy Club contributed to the professionalization of improv education in markets outside the traditional New York and Chicago centers. Dallas's improv scene expanded significantly in the 2010s, and Faubel's curriculum development helped establish institutional infrastructure for training performers in the region.

Her founding of Socially Distant Improv in March 2020 placed her among the earliest practitioners to address the pandemic's disruption to live improv. The shift to digital performance represented both a technical and an artistic challenge, requiring improvisers to adapt skills developed for in-person ensemble interaction to the latency and framing constraints of video platforms. Faubel's initiative demonstrated that the improv community's collaborative instincts extended to building new performance infrastructure when established venues went dark.

Faubel's Approach to Dramatic Improv classes reflect a conviction that improvisational comedy benefits from the same character depth and emotional grounding that traditional acting demands. By drawing on her acting background, she teaches students to build scenes from genuine character motivation rather than from attempts to generate laughs, arguing that comedy emerges more naturally and more sustainably from authentic human behavior onstage. Her curriculum work at Dallas Comedy Club extended this philosophy into a comprehensive training program, structuring skill development from introductory levels through advanced performance.

Faubel's contribution to improv lies in her curriculum development work and her bridging of acting technique with improvisational practice. Her Dramatic Improv class series at The PIT offers an alternative pedagogical approach for students whose artistic goals align more with character-driven scene work than with comedy-game-focused training. The distinction matters because many improv training programs emphasize game-of-the-scene mechanics or comedic heightening, while Faubel's approach prioritizes the emotional authenticity and character commitment that traditional acting training cultivates. Her founding of Socially Distant Improv during the 2020 pandemic contributed to the broader movement that kept improv communities connected during the longest disruption to live performance in the form's history. Her forty-plus original sketch comedy pieces, comedy pilot, and docu-series demonstrate that the skills she teaches translate effectively into professional scripted content creation.