About Us
Nick has been improvising and teaching in Denver, his hometown, since 2010. He has an MFA in Ensemble-Based Physical Theater from Dell’Arte International, and a BA in Geography from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
He has performed and taught at Rise Comedy since 2012. From 2019 on, he has been an adjunct professor in theater at CU Boulder (Improvisation), MSU Denver (Improvisation), and Community College of Denver (Improv, Theater History, Maskmaking and Puppetry), where he was also a writing tutor from 2013-2020. He has created and taught improv for businesses through Rise, its predecessor the Voodoo Comedy Playhouse, and They Improv.
He plays guitar and percussion (Blues, Ragtime, Old Time and Celtic) and learned much of what he knows about improv from those disciplines. He’s a veteran hiker, backpacker, snowshoer and fly fisherman; listens to a lot of Jazz, Acid Jazz, classic Country, and Punk, and enjoys gardening and cooking (i.e., playing in the dirt, playing with his food. Y’know. Improv.)
Nick Trotter, Principal Consultant
Kat is an improviser, storyteller, and sales trainer with well over 20 years of experience as a facilitator for groups of all sizes. She loves bringing people together to learn how to become better communicators in a fun, inclusive, and safe space. Kat loves seeing breakthroughs occur. She loves seeing obstacles overcome and challenges met. She thinks that with corporate improv training, people get the chance to learn more about themselves in playful ways. Kat finds the gamification of life skills oftentimes allows us breakthroughs that we wouldn't otherwise experience, and is grateful to have the opportunity to do this work.
Kat Atwell, Associate Instructor
Saladin Thomas, Associate Game Designer
Saladin Thomas is a Black performer, writer, and elementary educator currently teaching in Aurora, Colorado. He is originally from Los Angeles, where he fell in love with all types of performing, and moved to Denver in 2010 (or 2008, he’s not sure). He holds a B.A. in Creative Writing and an M.A. in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Education, both from the University of Colorado, Denver. He is the drummer for Denver bands To Be Astronauts and Soy Celeste, performs improv with the Circo de Nada production group, performed for 5 years as a cast member in the Dinner Detective Murder Mystery company, raps under the alias J.M. Blackfriend, and is the 3-time (2020, 2022 & 23) Denver Regional Air Guitar Champion. He is also funny.
In his spare time, he plays Magic: The Gathering and other needlessly complex games and is working on creating a few of his own. He believes games are gateways to almost every emotion, and when done correctly, bring out the best in people. You can find Soy Celeste on Spotify and Bandcamp and To Be Astronauts and on Spotify and tobeastronauts.bandcamp.com. He plays competitive air guitar as dreadflanders_usag on TikTok.
The Backstory
I have been doing theater since I was a kid; the stage has always been where I was happiest. I was accepted and trained for two years in undergrad Drama at Tisch School of the Arts, at New York University. But education was a complicated path for me, and since I had always been fascinated by maps, travel, and a keen sense of place, I ended up with a Geography degree from CU.
Along the way, I did an Alpine Mountaineering course with the Colorado Outward Bound School. This life-changing course taught me about taking risks, stepping out of my comfort zones, but above all, being prepared for the unexpected. Mountaineering reminded me a lot of theater, actually: the dependence on our physicality; the need to open our senses and really take in our surroundings; the fact that every single step, every technique, every action counts in both getting us where we need to go, and in keeping us safe. Teamwork and finding calm in the face of challenges were paramount — and always use your map and compass, event the metaphorical ones! Then, the places we could get to were surprising, and profoundly beautiful.
Through a lucky set of accidents, I found myself working as a cartographer at Frommer’s Travel Guides in New York in 1999, and I worked for them and other tourism-related businesses until 2023. I loved how maps were a perfect fusion of art and science: how they could help people understand unknown places and get around safely and accurately, but also how the maps had unique ways of giving the feel of the place, of helping the world unfold for a traveler. Saturated with history, maps can really give us a sense of our own humanity, and how we truly are on this planet!
But the stage kept calling, and when it came time to leave New York and head back west, I enrolled in the MFA program at Dell’Arte International in the Redwoods of Northern California. Here I got world-class training in comedy, design, and working in ensembles: the school emphasized the role of the actor-creator, who didn’t simply let directors and playwrights tell us what to do. Rather, we learned to rely on our partners and our own instincts to work — or rather, play — together and discover new worlds than none of us could have predicted on our own. The school also emphasized connection with the environment, and playing with a sense of place. The Redwoods were far more than a backdrop, there: they were intimately connected to the very air we breathed, and at times even became characters that we acted with. It really was a theater-based version of what Outward Bound had taught me years earlier: Be here. Be together.
This sense of land and place is absolutely critical in my work: it is the basis of our communities and our economy, and when I talk about being “grounded” in the work, I honestly mean this ground. Right here. Under our feet!
When I moved back to Denver to continue my career, I realized that there was one set of skills that had been expected from us at Dell’Arte, but they didn't really teach us how to do it: improvisation! Like a lot of theater schools, they sort of assumed that improv skills were a form of talent — we either had them, or we didn’t. But this is clearly wrong. The book that became my map for the work, Keith Johnstone’s Impro, made it clear that with grounding, gentle encouragement, simple sets of games and practice, anyone can play like a great comedian in what seem like instantaneous acts of creativity! So I continued my training at local Denver theaters and eventually became a regular on the improv stages, and a teacher in the classrooms of comedy clubs and colleges alike.
So this is “where I come from” in this work: learning self-trust and incremental steps to vigorous play. It’s a lifelong journey, and we’re lucky, at this time and place in history, to have lots of good guides out here.
My goal in becoming one of those guides for businesses in this region is to show that we all have everything we need to be great teammates, creative partners and wise risk-takers. We have so much information and skill right here in ourselves, our neighbors, our community; we can be in there here-and-now, in Colorado and the West, and we don’t have to look to the coasts or any other “authority” for answers and direction. Everything and everyone we need are right here.
Let’s play!
— Nick