Listening in Performance - with Robin Fry

Robin Fry is running a session on listening in performance on Monday 5 October, here in Brighton. It's not a show in the usual sense — you're not just sitting in the dark watching something unfold. Instead, it's a practical session that works through improv exercises, with the whole thing built around the idea of listening as a performance skill.

If you're not familiar with the name, Fry has been performing and teaching improv across the UK since 2003. He's a long-standing member of two of Brighton's improvised comedy troupes, The Maydays and Off the Cuff, so he's well-known in the local scene. The session takes that experience and turns it inside out: rather than focusing on the punchline or the joke, it looks at the listening that has to happen before any of that can work. It's about paying attention to what's actually happening in the room, and how that changes what you do next.

The exercises are the main thing here. You'll be working through them in person, so it's a hands-on session rather than a lecture. The focus is on how listening functions as a tool for performance, and how it shapes the way a scene develops. If you've ever watched improv and wondered how a group of people can build a whole story out of nothing on the spot, this is a look at one of the main things that makes it work.

It's a session for anyone interested in the mechanics of performance, whether you're already doing improv or just curious about how it's put together. Robin Fry leads it, and the session runs on Monday 5 October in Brighton.