Monday, November 14, 2011, 7pm
@ the Asian American Writers’ Workshop
112 West 27th Street #600
New York, NY 10001
$5 at the door
Improvising is the basis of all creativity—acting, music, dance, writing, art, and beyond. In this panel, Radhika Vaz, Holly Mandel, and Nadia Manzoor will read and perform excerpts of their work, followed by a discussion about the craft of improv and the specific issues that women performers face as artists and improvisers. Join our panelists as they entertain and answer your questions about creating something out of nothing!
Radhika Vaz is a comedian born and raised in India. In 2002, she took her first improv class at Improvolution and believes that without it, she may not have found the courage to write her own comedic material. Her one-woman comedy show, Unladylike: The Pitfalls of Propriety, has enjoyed a sold-out run in New York and a sold-out tour in India. Her show has been covered by the Huffington Post and TimeOut Mumbai.
Holly Mandel is well known on both coasts as a performer and teacher of improv. She is an alum of the Groundlings Theater School in Los Angeles and is now the artistic director and founder of the school Improvolution based in New York City, which operates on the theory that anyone can improvise. Holly began teaching women-only classes after years of noticing that women have their own specific hurdles to address and overcome when doing improv. Her workshop, titled “Good Girls Aren’t Funny,†both informs women on the habits we have inherited that inhibit our creativity and provides ways to form new habits.
Nadia Manzoor is a South Asian woman raised in London and is now a writer, dancer, and improviser in New York City. She is part of the executive committee and a teacher at Improvolution, and performs in the all-female troupe Thirteen Degrees. Her memoir, Burqas and Boobtubes, is about the cross-cultural conflict of growing up in a strict Muslim family while living in the West.