Acting Theory & Practice

### Drop-In Improv Class — Beginner Friendly **Improv for good people.** Join us for a fun, beginner-friendly drop-in improv class focused on play, laughter, and connection — in a supportive, no-pressure environment. You don’t need performance experience, improv training, or a “funny personality.” You just need a willingness to try. *** ### What to expect Each session includes: * Friendly introductions * Easy warm-ups * Guided short-form improv games * Lots of laughter in a small, welcoming group The exercises are inspired by shows like *Whose Line Is It Anyway?*, but the focus is on participation, not performance. *** ### A few important reassurances ✔ You don’t need to be “funny” ✔ You don’t need improv experience ✔ You *do* need curiosity and a willingness to play Everything is explained clearly, and you’re never put on the spot. *** ### Who this class is for This class is a great fit if you: * Are curious about improv but a little nervous * Want to meet new people in a genuinely welcoming space * Enjoy playful learning and low-pressure activities * Want a break from overthinking and daily stress Many people arrive unsure and leave smiling. *** ### How Meetup fits in Many participants first discover Laughy Place Improv through Meetup, attend a class or two, and then decide whether they’d like to continue by booking future classes directly through the website. There’s no pressure — Meetup is meant to be an easy, friendly way to try things out. *** ### Location & logistics 📍 **Theatre on the Run** 3700 S Four Mile Run Dr, Arlington, VA Parking and entrance are on the opposite side of the building from Four Mile Run Drive. Use the door labeled **“Arlington Cultural Affairs – Main Entrance.”** Ring the doorbell to be buzzed in. Sunday classes are usually in room 174 and Wednesday classes are usually in room 147, but you can check the class list by the concierge desk to be certain. I’ll be in the room about 20 minutes early to set up and meet folks as they arrive. If you can, please come a few minutes before the scheduled start time so we can kick things off together. *** Looking forward to laughing with you!

No Fooling. Agricultural Research Center Toastmasters is holding a meeting on April 1, 2026 at 5:00-6:30 pm. Come join us as we get a little silly. \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- ARE YOU READY FOR A LIFE-CHANGING, CAREER-ENHANCING EXPERIENCE? The Agricultural Research Center Toastmasters in Beltsville, Maryland meets on the first and third Wednesday of each month to practice our communication and leadership skills. We follow the educational program of Toastmasters International. We have great success individually and as a group. Our members are from different cultures and backgrounds. Several of us are scientists for the US Department of Agriculture. Others work at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center. Our members also are tax preparers, translators, and teachers. Each year in the spring we hold a beginners class. The next class will be in March 2026. Visit our webpage at http://arc.toastmastersclubs.org/ .

At this event you'll discover how to better understand and control your subconscious mind, helping you overcome doubts and fears. If you have anger issues, depressions and anxieties. this event will show you how to overcome them.

At this event you'll discover how to better understand and control your subconscious mind, helping you overcome doubts and fears. If you have anger issues, depressions and anxieties. this event will show you how to overcome them.

This is a VIRTUAL FREE event every week. To get access details please [click here](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-recharge-fill-up-sis-tickets-1984961497272?aff=oddtdtcreator) If you’ve been pouring into everyone else and quietly running on empty… this space was created for you. There comes a moment in a woman’s life when she realizes she has been pouring into everyone and everything else… while quietly running on empty. The responsibilities. The expectations. The emotional labor. And somewhere in the middle of holding it all together, she forgets what it feels like to be **fully supported, fully resourced, and fully seen**. **The Recharge: Fill Up Sis** is **a sacred weekly virtual meetup** created for women who are ready to pause, recalibrate their energy, and reconnect with themselves in powerful community. This is not a motivational talk. This is not surface-level inspiration. This is a room where women gather to **release what they’ve been carrying, restore their energy, and remember the power of being in [intentional sisterhood](https://thewombsauna.com/wcoe "https://thewombsauna.com/wcoe").** ## What Happens in The Recharge? Each session is a guided experience where women come together to: * **Release** stress, emotional weight, and the pressure of carrying everything alone * **Restore** their energy through meaningful conversation, reflection, and grounding practices * **Rise** into clarity about what their next level of life and leadership requires * **Radiate** with renewed confidence, alignment, and direction This space allows you to experience the tone, leadership, and sisterhood that define the deeper work we do together. ## The Integration Lab: Where Knowledge Becomes Embodiment Many women spend years gathering wisdom. Books. Podcasts. Workshops. Spiritual insight. Therapy. Coaching. At a certain point, the question is no longer: **“What else do I need to learn?”** The real question becomes: **“Where am I actually practicing the life I say I want?”** The **Integration Lab** is the weekly coaching and practice space inside our **[1-Year Self Development Program](thewombsauna.com/programs)**. It is where women stop circulating knowledge and begin **embodying it**. Inside the Lab, we work in real time with the patterns, decisions, emotions, and relationships shaping your life right now. Awareness becomes action. Insight becomes discipline. And personal growth becomes a lived lifestyle. Women gather weekly to: * apply what they know to real-life challenges * strengthen emotional regulation and self-leadership * practice accountability in sacred sisterhood * build the consistency required to live differently This is not a space for passive listening. It is a space for **active personal development and sacred community life.** ## Who This Space Is For? This gathering is for women who: * are tired of carrying everything alone * know they are capable of more but feel stretched thin * value personal development and emotional growth * desire a circle of women who are serious about their evolution * are exploring whether they are ready to invest in a **year of intentional growth** Many women who attend **The Recharge** are preparing themselves to decide whether they are ready to step into the deeper commitment of the **[1-Year Self Development Program](https://thewombsauna.com/programs "https://thewombsauna.com/programs")**. ## What You Should Know This experience is **free**, but it is intentional. Women who attend are often exploring what it would look like to: * prioritize their personal development * practice emotional and spiritual growth consistently * participate in a high-level community of women committed to living consciously Come with curiosity. Come with honesty. Come with the willingness to pour back into yourself. ## Hosted By ## **[Thema Azize Serwa](https://thewombsauna.com/thema "https://thewombsauna.com/thema")** Founder of **[The Womb Sauna](https://thewombsauna.com/ "https://thewombsauna.com")** and creator of transformational spaces where women gather to **release, restore, rise, and radiate**. After overcoming eight years of infertility and PCOS, Thema devoted her life to helping women reconnect with their bodies, their emotional wisdom, and the sacred power of intentional community. Through her work in womb wellness, self-development, and spiritual leadership, she has guided women around the world in creating lives that are rooted in clarity, healing, and self-mastery. ## Final Invitation If you’ve been gathering insight for years but feel ready to start **living differently**, this space will resonate deeply. Because transformation does not happen through inspiration alone. It happens through **consistent practice, honest reflection, and community that supports your evolution.** **Come recharge.**

**AI-Supported Creative Exploration** *For Unassuming Intuitives & Practicing Creatives* (Please note that this event has not been organized or endorsed by The Writer's Center.) This meetup is part of AI as Creative Partner — A Practice Group, a set of open, non-sequential creative labs you can join at any point. We use AI as a thinking partner—not to replace your ideas, but to help surface and shape them without overthinking or pressure. You bring fragments—ideas, impulses, unfinished concepts. With AI as a supportive collaborator, we explore how those fragments can become clearer, more coherent, and ready to share if and when you want to. No technical background is required. If you can talk or type, that's enough to work with AI here. This session is intentionally low-commitment and flexible: * Arrive late or leave early * Work quietly or observe * Ask questions, or simply watch the process unfold There's no presentation and no expectation to finish anything. Showing up as you are is enough. **CREATIVE WORK, GENTLY - AN OPEN PRACTICE NIGHT** This is not a workshop or a class. It's a calm room where people show up to work creatively—without urgency, performance, or pressure—using AI as a thinking partner. Come for 20 minutes or stay the whole time. Work quietly, observe, or ask questions. This space adapts to how you arrive. **HOW TO FIND US** Look for the room with the door open on the lower level. Look for the guy with the screen projector and ambient light and sound. Feel free to just walk in and settle. **(*This is an independent meetup using rental space at The Writer's Center. The Writer's Center has not organized or endorsed this event.*)**

**THE POWER OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS OVER YOU** You are welcome to arrive 15 minutes early for refreshments! At the lecture "The Power of the Subconscious", the speaker will clearly and understandably explain topics such as: What is the exact definition of the Subconscious Mind? How does it inflict unwanted feelings and anxiety in you? What determines how much pressure it exerts on a person? What exactly is the goal of the subconscious? This is not just a lecture where you sit quietly and listen. It's interactive and LIVE, so you can ask questions at any time. And the most important topic: **HOW DO YOU TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR SUBCOUNSCIOUS!** This group is sponsored by the Dianetics Life Improvement Center.

Nervous about reading for others? Or just want to learn how? Do you want an opportunity to practice in a supportive environment? Join Gypsy Dervish as he leads us through the basic practice of reading the Tarot. Ask questions , participate in group readings, and read for other participants. For those of you taking the Tarot 101 classes, this will also be a chance to put into practice what you learned there. ($5 discount on this class, if you take both, making a $10 total discount. Remember to register for both classes individually. You do not need to take Tarot 101 to participate in the practicum.)

Details Location: Crimson Whiskey Bar (Either the downstairs whiskey bar, or main floor bar, TBD) The purpose of Thinkers and Drinkers is to facilitate casual but meaningful and interesting conversations with other people in a face-to-face setting. The topics cover a wide variety of issues and are different for every meeting. While conversations may get heated at times, we ask that all members be respectful of each other and refrain from personal insults. \*\*\* **Contemporary True Crime & Storytelling Most Often Spotlights the Villains:** ***Is there a meaningful difference between understanding a killer and being fascinated by one? Where's the line?*** True crime has always been with us — penny dreadfuls, tabloids, In Cold Blood — but has something shifted in the recent decades. Podcasts like Serial and My Favorite Murder, docuseries like Netflix's Making a Murderer, and entire cable channels dedicated to murder-as-entertainment have turned real suffering into a booming content industry. Is that something to celebrate, scrutinize, or just sit with uncomfortably? Is this part of a larger trend of glorifying the villain? **Some angles worth sitting with:** * The content boom has made this a business — and families are often the last to know. Crime Junkie, Netflix docuseries, Patreon true crime pods — someone is profiting every time a family's worst chapter gets a new season, and several have spoken publicly about learning a docuseries existed the same day the trailer dropped. * The killer gets the marquee, the victim gets a footnote. Dennis Rader (BTK), Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Edmund Kemper — household names, all of them. The people they killed, largely not. * Villains prominent in other entertainment: Sports, movies, videogames etc. * Today's media villains are yesterday's killers. You, Dexter, (some other villain). The world is seen through their eyes and psychology, giving the viewer a sympathetic lense. * Who gets covered is not random. Missing white woman syndrome is documented and measurable; the cases that become cultural touchstones say a lot about whose suffering we've decided is worth dramatizing. * Not every famous case even has a killer to blame. JonBenét Ramsey has been a media fixture for nearly 30 years with no one ever charged — which raises the question of what we're actually chasing when there's no monster to pin it on. **Questions to Consider:** * Does true crime content actually make people safer, or is "awareness" mostly a guilt-free justification for what is really just entertainment? * How many serial killers can you name? Can you name that many victims? * Should producers and platforms be required to involve victims' families — or at minimum, notify them — before releasing content? * Why do you think women make up the majority of true crime consumers, given that women are disproportionately the victims in these stories? * Is the JonBenét phenomenon different in kind — or does an unsolved case just reveal more honestly what's driving the interest all along? * Dahmer merch. Kemper fan accounts. At what point does documenting a killer's story tip into something more troubling? **Major Survey’s include:** **[https://www.edisonresearch.com/the-true-crime-consumer-report-by-edison-research-and-audiochuck/](https://www.edisonresearch.com/the-true-crime-consumer-report-by-edison-research-and-audiochuck/)** **[https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/06/20/true-crime-podcasts-are-popular-in-the-us-particularly-among-women-and-those-with-less-formal-education/](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/06/20/true-crime-podcasts-are-popular-in-the-us-particularly-among-women-and-those-with-less-formal-education/)** **[https://www.bw.edu/academics/bios/cv/article-brian-monahan-timeless-kills.pdf](https://www.bw.edu/academics/bios/cv/article-brian-monahan-timeless-kills.pdf)**

This month, we'll be looking at the Court cards. Remember to bring a Tarot deck and something to write with. If you want a chance to put into practice what you learned in this class, you can sign up for the Tarot Practicum, which follows immediately after. ($5 discount on this class, if you take both, making a $10 total discount. Remember to register for both classes individually.)

**THE POWER OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS OVER YOU** You are welcome to arrive 15 minutes early for refreshments! At the lecture "The Power of the Subconscious", the speaker will clearly and understandably explain topics such as: * What is the exact definition of the Subconscious Mind? * How does it inflict unwanted feelings and anxiety in you? * What determines how much pressure it exerts on a person? * What exactly is the goal of the subconscious? This is not just a lecture where you sit quietly and listen. It's interactive and LIVE, so you can ask questions at any time. And the most important topic: **HOW DO YOU TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR SUBCOUNSCIOUS!** This group is sponsored by the Dianetics Life Improvement Center.

Join us as we get together for an Arthouse Movie Friday event to see the A24 dark comedy /romance / psychological-thriller, THE DRAMA! The film stars Zendaya and Robert Pattinson as a happily engaged couple whose relationship is challenged when one discovers unsettling truths about the other. Here are details, a trailer and our plan for this event: DESCRIPTION: The film follows a happily engaged couple whose relationship is put to the test when an unexpected turn sends their wedding week off the rails. The film comes from A24, is written/directed by Kristoffer Borgli stars Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Mamoudou Athie, Alana Haim, Hailey Gates and Zoë Winters. QUICK WORD OF WARNING: The film hasn’t screened for critics yet and most of the details are being kept tightly under wraps. But, early buzz (possibly promotional) says the film is a brilliant psychological thriller/romance but also provocative, twisty and some contains occasional uncomfortable viewing! I love the cast and trailer, so look forward to seeing for ourselves! ZENDAYA-PATTINSON TRIFECTA CHALLENGE: Robert Pattinson and Zendaya will star in THREE movies together this year, including THE DRAMA, Christopher Nolan’s THE ODYSSEY this Summer and Denis Villeneuve’s DUNE: PART THREE at Christmas! TRAILER: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zmKcUa4Xxk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zmKcUa4Xxk) PLAN: We’ll plan for 7pm-ish showing and will meet in the lobby area about 30 minutes before showtime! Advance ticket purchase not required for this theater but early arrival is advised. Possibly post-movie get-together at the nearby Rusty Bucket! Complete details will be confirmed/announced as the date gets closer. Take care and look forward to seeing you there, Dan

**How to take control of your subconscious and harness its power!** Join us for an eye-opening lecture where the speaker will break down complex ideas in a clear and practical way. You’ll gain insights into: ✅ The true definition of the subconscious ✅ How it generates unwanted emotions ✅ Its real purpose and function ✅ What determines the pressure it exerts on you And the most important topic: **How do you take control of your subconscious!** But this isn’t just another lecture where you sit and listen passively. It’s interactive and engaging—you can ask questions at any time. 📅 Reserve your spot now! Seats are limited, so don’t wait too long to sign up. Location: 1266 Dublin Rd, Columbus, OH 43215 Hosted by the Hubbard Dianetics Foundation

Whether you've never done improv before, or you've done it for so long you knew Del Close on a personal level, or anywhere in between, come join us! Swing by *Gresso's* for the **Columbus Improv Comedy Meetup** for some fun and games! The idea behind improv is to create entire scenes from scratch based on a suggestion from the audience. This can be done in game form, like *Whose Line Is It Anyway*, *ComedySportz*, or *Wild 'n Out*; it could also be done to tell stories, like *Middleditch and Schwartz*. Our meetup, which is central Ohio's longest running (and free!) weekly comedy event, brings the games (and occasionally different forms) for you to play in a safe, supportive, and compassionate environment. Not only is it a lot of fun, but you get to work on thinking faster on your feet, plus it's an excellent way to meet new people and make friendships that'll last a lifetime! Ask yourself if you want to join the **Columbus Improv Comedy Meetup**, and say "Yes, And" that you'll have fun!

**Confidence & Connection: Using Your Authentic Truth to Find Your People** Confidence isn’t just about believing in yourself, it’s about knowing where you belong and who you can grow alongside. In this April Confidence Lab Happy Hour, we’ll explore how living in your authentic truth helps you find your people, build meaningful collaborations, and create spaces where vulnerability is met with respect rather than risk. Together, we’ll reflect on what it looks like to advocate for yourself with clarity and care, and how confidence deepens when it’s rooted in connection rather than comparison. Featured speaker **Lachandra Baker**, founder of **[LBB Edutainment](https://www.lbbedutainment.com/)** and author of *Your Own Biggest Cheerleader*, will share reflections on authenticity, psychological safety, and the power of community over individual achievement. Drawing from personal stories—including the significance of turning 53—Lachandra will invite us into a conversation about showing up fully, being seen, and choosing relationships that support who you truly are. Expect a warm, welcoming atmosphere with space for reflection, shared insight, and intentional connection—plus drinks, light bites, and the kind of conversations that remind you you’re not meant to do this alone. Come as you are. Leave feeling clearer about your voice, your people, and the confidence that grows when both are aligned. **What is Confidence Lab?** Confidence Lab is a monthly community experience for bold, thoughtful leaders building confidence from the inside out. Whether you’re launching a business, leading a team, navigating change, or simply striving to show up more fully—you belong here. Our work demands clarity, courage, and conviction—but the pace of daily life can erode our sense of self. Confidence Lab creates space to reflect, reconnect, and grow with others doing purpose-driven work. It’s designed for entrepreneurs, nonprofit leaders, creatives, corporate professionals, activists, and anyone ready to lead with authenticity and impact. ***Please note:*** *All are welcome! If cost is a concern, please use promo code PUBLIC to access a free ticket—we want you to join us.*