Lunchtime Lecture Series

Andrews | Doorneweerd-Perry | Mead | Witoelar

🏢 Online course
🕥 Thurs 17th September - Thurs 5th November 2026, 12-12:50pm (UK time)
💰 £85

Step inside the minds of four of improv's top teachers with the Pretend Lecture Series, an 8-week deep dive into how great improvisers think. Join Rick Andrews, Laura Doorneweerd-Perry, Chris Mead, and Aree Witoelar as they let you behind the curtain and unpack shows in this online series.

Each teacher brings a show they love, breaking down choices, patterns, and instincts. Then, all four tackle the same performance, giving students four completely different perspectives on one piece.

Discover new approaches, sharpen your instincts, and transform how you watch and play improv.

Note: Each lecture will be recorded and made available to students for one week following the lecture, meaning folks from more timezones can access the course.

Rick Andrews

Rick Andrews has been performing and teaching improvisation since 1999. He began improvising with Improv Boston, and continued with a stint in Saint Louis, MO, and has been with The Magnet Theater since 2009, where he performs in Kornfeld and Andrews as well as The Armando Diaz Experience. He teaches at The Magnet, and at festivals and companies across the globe.

Laura Doorneweerd-Perry

When Laura is not traveling the world, she can be found cycling the Amsterdam canals between her jobs as a trainer, performer, entrepreneur, and cat mom. Together with her spouse Gael, she founded Flock Theatre. These two improv nerds found each other through improvisation and are now teaching and producing theatrical improvisation. Laura has a background in scripted theatre, dance, business studies, training design, directing plays and entrepreneurship. With her 20+ years of teaching experience, she also teaches other improv teachers.

As a performer, Laura has been featured in dozens of international improvisation festivals and conferences, including Improvaganza by Rapid Fire Theatre (Canada), The Cairo International Gathering for University Theater (Egypt), Improfestival Karlsruhe (Germany), Unexpected Productions Seattle (USA), Beijing Improv Festival (China), Dad's Garage Atlanta (USA), Würzburg International Improv Festival (Germany), The Upfront Theatre Bellingham (USA), Slapdash London (UK), MOMENT (Austria), SPUNK Zurich (Germany), Stumptown Portland OR (USA), ITI Conference Milan (Italy), ITI Conference Vancouver (Canada), ITI Conference Trondheim (Norway), The Somatic Research Gathering (Corfu), WISE (France), and many more.

Chris Mead

Chris Mead is a renowned improv director, performer and teacher from the UK. He is a senior teacher at Hoopla, London’s largest improv school, where his classes regularly sell out months in advance. He is also the founder of The Pretend Company which teaches theatrical improv and stage craft to both, improvisers and actors. Internationally, he is one of the European circuits most in demand practitioners – visiting festivals in over 25 countries to teach, coach and perform.

He wants improv to be evermore compassionate, theatrical, playful and fun. He is known for his thoughtful teaching, joyful stage presence and absolute commitment to pushing the art form forward.

Aree Witoelar

Aree Witoelar is a Norway-based improv teacher, director and performer from Indonesia. I am director of Oslo Impro Festival 2025 and the founder and former artistic director of Impro Neuf International, Norway’s most inclusive international improv community with over 1,000 members.

PWYC Places

One of the benefits of zoom based improv classes is that we can connect with folks from all over the world. We are pleased to offer five Pay What You Can (PWYC) places for this class, intended for participants based in countries where currency exchange rates make the standard £85 fee prohibitive. If this applies to you, we warmly encourage you to send us an email at hello@thepretendcompany.com

Scholarships

As well as the PWYC places, if you'd like to take this course but can't currently afford the full fee, we'd love to hear from you at hello@thepretendcompany.com - we will strive to make the course available to you, either by reducing the fee or giving you a fully-funded scholarship place. We particularly encourage you to do this if you feel that you have a perspective or life experience that is under-represented on improv stages.

Refund policy

We regret we cannot refund tickets once bought. We will gladly help you find another improviser to sell them to, but we can't take responsibility for actually reselling them. So please factor this policy in before you buy.