Workshops for adults | Maidstone Improv Festival

About

Want to sharpen your improv skills, boost your confidence, and have a blast? As part of Maidstone Improv Festival 2025, we're offering a fantastic improv workshop with two of the best improv coaches in the UK at The Exchange Studio, Hazlitt Theatre on Saturday 20th September—open to all experience levels!

Katy Schutte will be leading a workshop on time travel and sci-fi in improv, and Seamus Allen will be running a workshop on dynamic staging. Your ticket includes both workshops!

Whether you're a seasoned performer looking to refine your craft or a complete beginner ready to take the leap, this workshop will help you develop spontaneity, storytelling skills, and stage presence—all in a fun and supportive environment.

Spaces are limited, so grab your ticket now!

About the Workshop Leaders

Katy Schutte makes her own work including award-winning storytelling/stand-up show Schutte the Unromantic and acclaimed semi-immersive folk horror play Let's Summon Demons. She is a contributing writer for Cards Against Humanity, was resident singer/songwriter on Sean and Robot's Comedy Circuit podcast and co-creator/improviser for Dead British on Union Jack Radio. She is a writer, improv director and performer with XR creative studio FANDCO.

Katy has performed and taught improvisation in twenty-something countries across five continents. She is a Head Teacher at Hoopla, the UK's biggest improv school. Katy authored The Improviser's Way: A Longform Workbook, published by Nick Hern Books. She was an artist in residence for The Arctic Circle Project in 2022 and wrote a cosmic horror play for a three-week run at Omnibus Theatre in 2024.

Katy won eight awards in 2022 for her screenplay Coming of (Middle) Age and web series pilot Sideliners.

Seamus Allen trained in his hometown, Dublin, at the Conservatory of Music and Drama. After graduating he toured nationally with some of Ireland's premier children's theatre companies, as well as developing and performing clown performances for Barrabbas, and magic shows for Cahoots N.I. Since moving to the UK Seamus has appeared in The Tempest, As You Like It, A Comedy of Errors, Macbeth and Robin Hood (Creation Theatre Company), Quest (Folklore Presents) The Disappearance (The Sticking Place),and Where's My Desi Soulmate? (Rifco Arts).

Seamus is also a skilled improviser, training with Ken Campbell's School of Night and is a core cast member in the annual London 50 Hour Improvathons, and performs with "Austentatious, The improvised Jane Austen Novel". Seamus was the director of the Young Company at the Watermill Theatre in Newbury. He established Reading's only Improvisation comedy club, "What's the Game?! Improv", hosting shows as well as coaching professional performers. Seamus was Head of Acting at Read College, a course which he wrote, and which became one of the most successful Foundation courses for getting students into the top acting degree programmes in the UK. Most recently he has been Head of Year at Drama Studio London and gained an MSc in Performance Psychology focusing on excellence in actor training