A lot of people in the Bay Area are taking improv classes right now. That’s not surprising. Improv has exploded over the last decade, and for good reason. It gets you out of your head, puts you in front of other people, and gives you a taste of something that feels alive. Therapists recommend it. Life coaches recommend it. Corporations even use it for team building. It’s a genuine outlet, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

But if you’re someone who’s been in an improv class and felt yourself wanting more – or if you’re standing at the crossroads trying to decide which direction to take your training – it’s worth understanding what each approach actually builds, where they overlap, and where they don’t.

What Meisner Training Actually Builds

If I had to say in one sentence what the Meisner technique builds in a person, it’s this: a healthy freedom from the hypercritic.

The hypercritic is the voice inside all of us that judges, monitors, and evaluates while we work. It’s the kiss of death for any art. And most actors drown in it. They focus on the audience, on how it’s going, on how their partner’s doing. They play director and critic inside their own heads while they’re supposed to be living the scene.

Sanford Meisner understood that nothing believable or interesting happens between two actors until they’re genuinely present with each other – not focused on themselves. So the technique is an intentional, brick by brick process designed to get us out of our heads and into our gut, our instinct, our intuition. It’s not therapy. But as Meisner himself said, it’s incredibly therapeutic not to care what people think when you’re working.

That kind of presence is a gift – not just as an actor, but as a human being.

What Improv Builds

Improv has been around for a long time, from the Groundlings to Second City. For decades, Saturday Night Live has served as a feeding ground for brilliant improv-trained performers. The form is real and the craft behind it is real.

What improv builds, at its best, is a beginning of that same freedom. Getting up in front of people, facing down performance anxiety, learning to respond quickly and stay in the moment – these are all genuine skills. If you’ve ever watched something like “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” when it’s firing on all cylinders, you know how impressive it can be. Quick, sharp, genuinely alive.

And here’s something that often gets overlooked: improvisation isn’t just an art form or a class you take. It’s an element of all creative work. Painters do it. Musicians do it. Life itself has an improvisational quality. The class called “improv” is really a contained version of something much bigger.

Where They Meet – and Where They Part

The parallels between improv and Meisner are real. Both forms center on presence – on actually listening to the other person in the moment rather than performing at them. And both push you away from self-consciousness and toward something that feels true.

In fact, I’d say the Meisner technique is the closest thing to improvisational work in formal actor training – by design, not by accident. In our early exercises, nobody knows what’s happening next. It can be funny, unexpected, surprising. We’re building moment to moment.

But here’s where they part ways: in Meisner training, we don’t play characters. We earn them. That takes weeks and months. The work isn’t about thinking quickly on your feet and reacting to an audience suggestion. It’s about depth – about turning a cold piece of paper into a believable human being.

Improv, at its most common, stays more on the surface of character and situation. That’s not a criticism – it’s just what the form is designed to do. It’s surface in service of entertainment. Meisner is depth in service of truth.

The place where this distinction really matters is scripted material. In improv, the words emerge from what’s happening in the moment. In film and television, you already know what the next line is. Working moment to moment when you’ve already memorized the script – staying genuinely present when you know exactly what’s coming – that’s a whole other level of skill. That’s what Meisner training is built for.

Watch “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and you’ll see it done at a high level. Those performers are working from a script but leaving enough room to breathe, to pick up real moments, to let something genuine happen. That’s the spirit of what we do, applied to the reality of how film and television actually work.

Who Comes to Us From Improv

I get students all the time who’ve taken improv classes and loved it – and then reached a ceiling. They’ll say: “It’s fun. It’s a great outlet. But it’s not real serious. People come and go. I want to take this to the next level.” Some of them have realized they want to work in film or television, which means they need a script – which means they need the craft to turn that script into something real.

Those students often make excellent Meisner students. The improv background has already given them something. They’ve started down the road toward presence and freedom. What we do is take them deeper.

Which One Belongs in Your Training Right Now?

Here’s what I tell people who ask me this: get clear on what you want.

If you want to face down some stage fright, get more comfortable in front of people, and have a fun outlet – both improv and what we offer can give you that. Neither requires you to be heading to LA or committed to a professional acting career.

On the other hand, if you want to go deeper – if you’ve already tried improv and found yourself wanting more, if you’re drawn to film and television work, or if you want to understand how to actually build a character from the inside out – then Meisner training is likely the next step for you.

Our introductory classes don’t require a huge commitment. You’ll experience the foundation of the technique: getting out of your head, working from your gut, learning what it means to truly listen and respond. In short, all the things improv points toward, Meisner builds systematically – and then applies to scripted material.

The first thing I say to anyone I interview is: we want the same thing. You’ve reached out for a reason. You don’t want to waste time and money. Neither do I. So the clearer you can be about what you’re looking for, the easier it is to figure out whether we’re the right fit.

If you’re curious, the best thing you can do is check things out – websites, reviews, the ability to meet with instructors or audit a class. Then make the decision based on what it is you actually want.

That’s true whether you’re choosing between improv and Meisner, or choosing between any two programs. Ultimately, the question isn’t which one sounds more impressive. It’s which one can give you what you’re actually looking for.