Our Method: Improv Empowerment

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I didn’t come to improv through comedy clubs or party games. I came to it on a bare stage in college, where a professor told me to speak as myself, then shift instantly into a new character at the clap of her hands. Ten characters. Three minutes. No script. No safety net.

Around the fourth shift, something in me broke open. My thoughts stepped aside and something deeper took over—instinctive, fearless, alive. It was the same energy I had as a kid, playing pretend with complete commitment and zero self-doubt. That moment rewired me. It was like finding a secret door back to myself.

That experience became the seed of what I now call Improv Empowerment: a training method designed not just to teach improv, but to return people to that powerful, playful part of themselves that knows how to create without fear.

My ethos is simple: improv isn’t about being funny—it’s about being free.

After years of performing and training in New York City—onstage, onscreen, and everywhere in between—I moved to the Hudson Valley and began teaching my own approach. I blended the core philosophies of Viola Spolin and Sanford Meisner with my own experience as a working actor, coach, and lifelong improviser. What emerged was a fast, immersive, emotionally intelligent form of improv that pulls just as much from acting technique as it does from theatre games.

Our work is high-energy, honest, and deeply human. It strips away the layers of performance we wear in daily life and replaces them with presence, play, and true connection. Students don’t just become better performers—they become more confident people.

Hudson Valley Improv isn't just a training center. It's a place to remember who you are before the world told you how to be. We don’t teach you to "act like" anything. We teach you to act from something—your instincts, your honesty, your weird, brilliant, wild self.

I've been doing this since 1993. I've taught ages five to eighty-five. I've taught actors and I've taught the military. I use my method in my work on TV, film and theatre. I practice what I preach. It's not just a skill. Improv Empowerment is a way of life. 

If you're looking for something deeper than just a laugh, something that reconnects you to your creative core and makes you braver in the process—welcome. This is why I teach. And this is why we play.

Samantha Jones

Founder, Hudson Valley Improv