Kevin Palermo

Hi there! What's that? You're looking for a coach? I'll be that coach! Oh, you need more information about my comedy background and experience? That's completely fair, I shouldn't have jumped the gun.

I've been doing improv and sketch comedy since 2014 and studying at UCB since 2016. I'm a member of the UCB Academy and recently took part in the "Feature Presentation" ASP (The Movie Form). I'm also a member of the PIT House Sketch Team Option 7, long-running indie sketch group Terrorbird, and indie improv group Kerrigan. At UCB I've studied under Anthony Apruzzese, Corey Brown, Lydia Hensler, Jeremy Bent, Billy Merritt, James Dwyer, John Timothy, Alex Dickson, and Jason Shebiro.

I'm a pretty heady improviser myself, but as a coach I specialize in getting you out of your head and playing with a sense of mischief and fun. My general philosophy is to think less about rules and more about tools (which rhymes, conveniently). I want you to think of concepts like framing and justification as tools to improve your scenes, not obstacles to overcome in order to do perfect improv. Before our session I'll get in touch to discuss what you want to work on and develop a specific plan around that. Some specific things I think I'm pretty good at coaching:

-Pattern Game
-Nailing down base reality
-Second Beats in a Harold
-Playing with an emotional point of view
-Sharing focus
-Playing with theatricality

If you're a sketch group looking for a director, I can do that too! Just be warned, I'm an absolute stickler for structure in sketch writing. Everything I just said about how fun I am as an improv coach? About "tools not rules?" When it comes to sketch, I'm all about rules. I will cut your favorite joke. With God as my witness, I will cut it. Because it makes no sense and it doesn't fit in the sketch. It wasn't going to hit. It was only funny to you. The rest of the group was confused by it too, but they went along because they like you. They are sheep. I will cut your favorite joke.

If you're cool with that, feel free to reach out! I love experimenting with different kinds of sketch shows, particularly ambitious concepts and big productions. If your sketch feels impossible to stage, I will find a way to stage it. My strength is finding the underlying structure in weird ideas and working through difficulty to get satisfying laughs from an audience.

Also, I come cheap as hell! Seems like people don't post their rates on here, so I won't do that, but uh...I'm not expensive.