Liverpool Comedy ImprovCast · Liverpool Comedy Improv, Iain Luke Jones

Rebecca MacMillan

·57 min·3 clips

Rebecca says improv communities let people go on to perform, teach, and build new scenes.

1. Liverpool Comedy ImprovCast episode 141 features Rebecca MacMillan talking about her route into improv and the UK improv scene. 2. Rebecca MacMillan is the guest, Ian Luke-Jones is the host, and both matter because the conversation connects local Liverpool improv to wider UK communities. 3. The episode asks how Rebecca moved from drama warm-up games to teaching, performing, and helping grow improv groups. 4. Rebecca says she has been improvising for over 20 years and first encountered improv-like games through drama at a youth group. 5. Rosemary and Norman, who ran that youth group, told her she should go into comedy because she was funny. 6. She describes arriving at Leeds University expecting a sketch-comedy-style group of friends, but finding auditions and societies that did not feel right. 7. After university, Rebecca moved to Manchester, then to Brighton with her now husband, and later saw a newspaper advert for a John Creamer improv class. 8. She says she went to the class, joined the May Day Players, and was performing within six months. 9. Rebecca says the May Day Players started performing in May 2004 at Brighton Fringe. 10. She explains that her early improv work was short form, and that long form became more visible later through Chicago training and imported teachers. 11. Rebecca says John Creamer had lived in America, which is why the classes used the word “improv” rather than “in pro.” 12. She describes her job as a historical interpreter for Past Pleasures, including work at Dover Castle in an English Heritage restoration project. 13. She says the job required research into the character, the space, the time period, the economy, the costume, and the objects in the room. 14. Rebecca recalls snowed-in downtime at Dover Castle, including drinking gin from a gift-shop brass goblet and playing hide and seek. 15. She says some visitors wanted deep interaction while others were scared and kept their distance, which shaped how she framed the history. 16. Rebecca connects her teaching career to the pandemic, when online improv classes with the Nursery Theatre and the Maydays helped her regain confidence. 17. She says she built new course ideas around music, silence, genre, Shakespeare, and less verbal physical improv. 18. Rebecca describes the tone as open, reflective, and practical, with detailed memories and frequent digressions into scene-building and community work. 19. Listeners who like UK improv history, teaching, and community-building should find this useful. 20. Listeners wanting a tightly edited celebrity interview or a short episode may skip it.

As heard by us

A warm improv story about community, lineage, and 20-plus years of practice.

Rebecca MacMillan's conversation with Ian Luke-Jones works best when it treats improv as a community practice, not a badge of expertise. The discussion moves through more than 20 years in improvisation, the 15-year run of her improvised soap opera, and the way Stroud has grown…

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Why you'd press play

You want a warm, generous tour of how improv scenes actually keep growing.

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