OVERVIEW
If you want to bring an enriching and wildly fun experience to your school group, improv troupe, or corporate setting, we would love to work with you.
Baby Wants Candy is the world’s original and most celebrated musical improv comedy group. We’ve done workshops for thousands of students over the years, at all age ranges and experience levels. We’ve lead workshops at high schools, colleges and universities, in a variety of corporate settings, and for improv comedy groups around the world.
In our workshops, we’ll give your group the tools you’ll need to improvise your own comedic musical. We’ll work on comedy basics, song forms, narrative structure, performance elements, and the improv techniques required to put on a made-up musical. Students will learn the fundamentals of musical comedy improvisation in a fast paced, fun, supportive environment. It’s a ton of fun!
Baby Wants Candy teaches musical improv workshops to beginners and pros alike. We are available for single 2-3 hour workshops, weekend intensives, as well as longer artist-in-residency programs. If we visit your school for both a workshop and performance, your students can join BWC on stage during the performance! This is very enriching for both the students and our performers.
If you're an educator/teacher wondering "Why improv?" for your students- there are many great reasons. Improvisation by its nature is about support, listening, and the confidence that comes with having your spontaneous ideas "yes-and'ed" by their fellow students. Improvisation gives students the freedom to express themselves positively and have their choices 100% supported.
For schools with strapped budgets, improv provides an excellent gateway into the dramatic arts- no set or costumes are needed, and almost any room can become a rehearsal or performance space.
Baby Wants Candy has honed their musical and non-musical improv courses to be challenging yet guaranteed for students to succeed. Students leave our workshops energized and bubbling with laughter and confidence.
Beginner & advanced sessions available. For beginner sessions, no experience/musical background needed. If you're interested in booking BWC for a workshop and/or performance, go to our Contact page.
SAMPLE COURSES
Beginning Musical Improv
Jump into musical improv comedy with a fun, fast-paced workshop in a challenging yet supportive environment. Students learn the fundamentals of longform improv scenework and basics skills for improvising clever songs: a strong idea, an identifiable structure, and lyrical tricks like rhyming and metaphor. Students will put then these skills to use by improvising full comedic scenes and songs along with a partner.
Shamilton! Improvised Rap/Hip-Hop
Freestyle Rap in Improv: what y'all know about improv rap? Probably nothing! Based on our smash hit spinoff show Shamilton, The Improvised Hip-Hop Musical, this workshop will teach you the basics of setting up killer rhymes to the beat and how to pull characters from improv scenes and let them loose with the glory of hip-hop. Learn to let rap fuel your scenes and scenes fuel your rap. Experience? Not necessary. Mad swagger? Definitely required.
Creating Musical Comedies
Members of BWC created and led a semester long course as part of Princeton University’s Atelier Program. We developed a unique and high quality instruction in creating scripted musical songs and musicals, and we have distilled highlights of the course down to its essence in a 2-3 hour workshop.
Advanced Musical Improv: The Game of the Song
Discover the simple joy and comedic power of game-driven songs. Using two fundamental structures (verse/chorus and lastline tagline), participants will explore the ridiculous fun that comes through effortlessly heightening the lyrical, emotional, physical, situational and musical patterns that present themselves in the moments leading up to a song. We’ll play with the emotional and reactive scenic building blocks that lead to the best improvised songs. Experience how the success of the song is virtually guaranteed before the first note is even sung.
