Thursday, Friday & Saturday
SAVI FEST ENSEMBLE TEAM
Mainstage Saturday 7:00pm Opener
Preperation Schedule
@TBD Thursday 6:30pm-9:30pm
@TBD Friday 10:30am-5:30pm
Dedicated times are subject to change a little.
Group Dynamics:
Featuring the Kitchen Party
What to expect:
Open up new possibilities for your improv and overall performance chops through established techniques from the worlds of traditional acting and playwrighting! We'll focus on tools and concepts specifically geared toward narrative improvisation in large group scenes. This Ensemble workshop is built around one existential question: Is the person we are when we're alone the same personality that shows up to a group setting? Hot take: not very often. How others see you is often very different than how you see yourself. People are complex, and your characters can be too. Once we accept and recognize the elements of a personality, how they can be perceived, and how they affect a group dynamic, we get to play with them and turn that cognitive dissonance into fun, strong choices that define our characters more and more as we go. Build a new toolbox to take your improv to the next level!
Ensemble Team details:
The ensemble team is free to apply and $65 to participate.
Consist of 8-10 members
Includes:
about 8 Hours of instruction and direction
mainstage performance
times of rehearsals are subject to change slightly.
Requirements and restrictions:
At least one year of improv training and performance experience.
Not otherwise performing at SAVI FEST
SAVI FEST does not assist with travel or accommodations.
Participants will have to adhere to our SAVI FEST Code of Conduct.
Participants will need to be in Mesa, AZ by Thursday 6:30pm.
There is a $65 fee to accept your participation in our ensemble.
Process of acceptance: We are making our “solo rider” ensemble teams a highlight of this year’s fest to shine light on the impromptu and beautifully collaborative nature of our art form. We are looking for diverse and experienced improvisors and our acceptance process will be a balanced mix of lottery and curation to create teams that feature what we love most about our art form, the opportunity to learn and grow among peers and rise to the occasion of those that challenge us to meet them there.
Oliver Georgiou is passionate about unscripted theatre and the cross-section that exists between acting and improvisation. He runs SODA Impro and is one-half of Jan & George with Reid Janisse. Specialty course offerings have included: Viewpoints, Mindfulness, and Meisner for the Actor Improviser; Dynamic Scenes Toolbox; The Game In Narrative; and Intro to Viewpoints for Improvisation. He's a faculty member at Bad Dog Theatre and has worked as a coach with Duck Confetti, HinProv, and other troupes around Toronto. This past year he was a featured guest instructor at ImprovCon in San Diego, Camp Improv Utopia East, and Theatre Momentum's dramatic improv online workshop series. This year he's delighted to ahve been invited to teach at the Snow Day Improv Marathon in Detroit and SAVI Fest in Mesa, Arizona.
In 2026, Oliver worked on the Blockbuster Week debut of Deadline, an improvised journalism thriller, and followed it up with U UP?, a devised clown play directed by Ken Hall for Toronto Fringe. The award-winning film Vampire Zombies... From Space! is now available for streaming, starring Oliver as a chain-smoking greaser with a heart of gold. He's delighted to have worked so closely with Bygone Theatre in the past few years on live stage productions of The Rear Window, The Birds, Wayne & Shuster, Live!, and most recently a workshop of their next film-to-stage adaptation of Lifeboat. Oliver returns to Detroit biannually for the Snow Day Improvised Marathon for local cancer charities and the Detroit Improv Festival. He's an alumnus of Second City Toronto House Co, and can be found sporting a horrible pseudo-Irish accent in the Canadian Podcast Award-winning series Caverns & Comedians.
SAVI FEST EDUCATION
supported in part by a grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts,
an agency of the State of Arizona.
