Paul Killam

Nationalities

San Francisco Seattle Calgary Canada United States

Paul Killam is an American improviser, teacher, and actor from Davis, California who has been a member of BATS Improv in San Francisco since 1989. Holding a degree in Dramatic Arts from UC Davis, he came to improv through Theatresports in Seattle in the mid-1980s before joining BATS's main stage company. He helped form True Fiction Magazine, a San Francisco improv ensemble, and has toured with the San Francisco Mime Troupe. He teaches improv at the College of Marin and has taught thousands of students over more than thirty years, emphasizing an approach grounded in character, emotion, sense memory, and theatrical realism.

Killam was born in Stanford, California, and grew up in Davis, where he later earned a degree in Dramatic Arts from UC Davis. After graduating he moved to Seattle, where he became involved in Theatresports, the competitive improv format developed by Keith Johnstone and spreading internationally during the 1980s. He played his first Theatresports match just before BATS Improv was created in San Francisco in 1986.

Killam moved to San Francisco in 1989 and became a member of the BATS Main Stage Company, then called The Varsity, joining one of the Bay Area's primary long-form improv institutions. He also performed with Pulp Playhouse and helped form True Fiction Magazine, an ensemble-based San Francisco improv company. He has toured with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, the Bay Area political theater company known for its outdoor performances, and has worked as a film and commercial actor.

In parallel with his performance career, Killam developed a sustained teaching practice. He has taught improv at the College of Marin in Kentfield, integrating improv instruction into the community college curriculum of the Bay Area. He has also co-taught summer improv classes at Bay Area colleges. His teaching approach focuses on theatrical foundations, emphasizing character work, emotional commitment, sense memory, and realism as the basis for improvisational performance rather than primarily comedic or games-based approaches. He has taught thousands of students over more than thirty years of instruction. Killam's teaching at BATS's training program and his College of Marin position place him among the West Coast's longest-tenured active improv instructors. He has taught generations of performers in the San Francisco Bay Area, contributing to the training pipeline that has supplied BATS Improv and the broader West Coast improv scene with trained long-form performers over more than three decades of consistent institutional presence.

Historical Context

Killam's connection to Theatresports in Seattle in the mid-1980s placed him within the early international expansion of Keith Johnstone's competitive improv format, which had been developed at Loose Moose Theatre in Calgary and was spreading through trained practitioners to cities across North America during the early years of its global dissemination. His arrival in San Francisco in 1989 and his membership in BATS, which had launched in 1986, positioned him within the Bay Area's developing long-form improv community. BATS has been one of the longest-running improv companies in the United States, and Killam's thirty-plus-year membership makes him one of its most tenured performers.

The San Francisco Mime Troupe connection added a dimension to Killam's career that most improv performers do not share: the Mime Troupe's tradition of outdoor political theatre differs substantially from the venue-based improv format, and touring with it exposed him to a performance discipline with different ensemble, text, and audience-relationship conventions than iO-style or BATS-style improv.

Teaching Philosophy

Killam's teaching at BATS Improv and at the College of Marin draws on his deep formation in the Keith Johnstone tradition through Theatresports and his three decades as a member of BATS, one of the longest-running ensemble-based improv training institutions on the American West Coast. His background in Dramatic Arts from UC Davis and his early Theatresports work in Seattle gave him the theatrical and improvisational vocabulary that has anchored his teaching across both performance and academic contexts.

His position at the College of Marin, where he has taught improv as part of the formal community college curriculum, represents an unusual institutionalization of improv pedagogy within higher education. Where most improv training occurs in theater-based training centers outside the formal educational system, Killam's academic position requires him to articulate improv principles and outcomes within the frameworks of college-level instruction, translating the experiential learning model of improv training into the pedagogical documentation and assessment structures of community college curriculum.

At BATS, Killam's teaching is embedded in the ensemble culture of one of the country's most distinctive long-form improv institutions. BATS's format-agnostic approach to long-form, which has consistently prioritized ensemble investigation over adherence to specific long-form structures, informs a teaching practice that treats format versatility and scenic truthfulness as more fundamental than structural technique. His decades as a BATS performer give his teaching the authority of direct, sustained ensemble practice within the specific culture of San Francisco improv.

The Keith Johnstone tradition that shaped his early training at Theatresports emphasized status, spontaneity, and the acceptance of offers as the fundamental moves of theatrical performance. These principles remain visible in his pedagogical approach, particularly his emphasis on genuine responsiveness to partners over the projection of prepared ideas.

Legacy

Killam's three-plus decades with BATS Improv place him among the longest-tenured performers in American improv theater outside of Chicago and New York. His teaching at the College of Marin, integrated into the formal community college curriculum, represents an unusual institutionalization of improv instruction within the public higher education system of the Bay Area. His emphasis on theatrical foundations in improv teaching, grounding the practice in character work, emotional commitment, sense memory, and realism, reflects a continuity with the dramatic arts training he received at UC Davis, and positions his pedagogy within the tradition of theater-based improv instruction that preceded and coexists alongside the games-and-technique approach more commonly taught in independent improv training centers. The True Fiction Magazine ensemble, which he helped form, contributed to San Francisco's independent improv sector alongside BATS.