The Magnet Theater is an improvisational comedy theatre and improv school in New York City. It has shows seven nights a week, many of which are consistently selected as editor's pick of the week in Time Out New York and The Onion.
The Magnet Theater was founded in March 2005 by Armando Diaz, Ed Herbstman, Shannon Manning and Alex Marino. Diaz, Manning and Herbstman were friends from Chicago where they studied under improv guru Del Close at Improv Olympic. Diaz also founded the Peoples Improv Theater (P.I.T.), where Herbstman and Marino taught. Diaz, Herbstman and Marino currently own Magnet Theater.
The Magnet offers performance and writing classes to people of all experience levels. The faculty is headed by Diaz and features The Second City and Improv Olympic alumni Abby Sher, Jean Villepique, Rachel Hamilton and The Annoyance Theatre alumnus Gary Rudoren. Also teaching are the adept Mark Grenier and Megan Gray. The Magnet Theater's shows are made up of performers who have completed their training program. The training program consists of four levels - Level 1 The Principals of Improv, Level 2 Intro to Long Form, Level 3 Long Form Intensive and Level 4 Senior Project - making up the theater's core curriculum. The theater also offers two conservatory classes, which prepare students for performing on Magnet House Teams if they make it through the audition process. The classes are Improv Revue and Team Performance Workshop.
Famous quotes containing the words magnet and/or theater:
“It has lately been drawn to your correspondent’s attention that, at social gatherings, she is not the human magnet she would be. Indeed, it turns out that as a source of entertainment, conviviality, and good fun, she ranks somewhere between a sprig of parsley and a single ice- skate. It would appear, from the actions of the assembled guests, that she is about as hot company as a night nurse.”
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)
“The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)