Instructor: Jacque Arend
Saturday, January 24th - 11 am-5:30 pm (showcase 6:30 pm)
Price: $120
The Deconstruction is a longform format built for the brain. This workshop dives deep into position play, a system of mechanics that provides clarity, direction, and strengthens world-building onstage. Packed with high-level improv skills and techniques, the Deconstruction is a complex but incredibly rewarding structure that trains you to absorb, think, and create with intention.
Practicing the Deconstruction strengthens instincts that elevate all of your improv; character and relationship choices, thematic and game play, and discovery-based, non-linear narrative control. It seamlessly blends satire, farce, and drama into one cohesive journey: exposition, rising action, and character arcs rolled into a single structure, fueled by deconstructing the material you create along the way.
This intensive will change how you approach improv; how you step onstage, how you track information, and how you absorb inspiration from the sidelines. You won’t just play scenes differently. You’ll think differently. Yes, it’s a format… and it’s also a brain upgrade, a plugin for the “power of position play”.
This workshop is recommended for advanced players: Prerequisite Improv 401(or equivalent)
Workshop Schedule:
Part 1 - Introducing the Format - 11 am-2 pm
Base Scenes
Deconstructing the Material
Thematic Character Driven Scenes
How it impacts the Base Scene
Lead into Commentary
Lunch Break (lunch included) 2-2:30 pm
Part 2 - Putting it Together 2:30-5:30 pm
Commentary and the Game of Absurdity
Pacing the Run
Finding the Arc
Final Run-Throughs
Showcase 6:30 pm
Jacque Arend learned the Deconstruction directly from Miles Stroth, the creator of Position Play, while attending the iO Theater Summer Intensive in 2005. Miles was a member of The Family, the ensemble that developed the Deconstruction as an alternative to the Harold and traditional organic openings, offering a more deliberate, position-driven approach to longform improvisation.
Jacque brought this work to Phoenix in 2006 with Light Rail Pirates and began formally teaching the Deconstruction in 2007 as part of the Torch Theatre curriculum, both within their core program and as an elective intensive. Over the years, she has evolved the format through her acting background, placing greater emphasis on its potential for a dramatic arc, blending comedy and tragedy into a structure that allows improvisation to unfold with depth, intention, and emotional impact.
Jacque has been teaching improv since 2007 and currently serves as Managing Director of Improv Utopia, Associate Artistic Director of Arizona Actors Academy, and Executive Director of SAVI FEST.