PHELIM McDERMOTT
Phelim is the co-founder and an Artistic Director of Improbable. He has been performing and making Improvised shows since 1985 when he first worked with Keith Johnstone. Since then as a director he has been working on getting Improvisers to be theatrical and people who work in theatre to use Improvisation. Improvised shows include: Improbable Tales, Animo, Lifetime and The Still. He jumps between doing small Impro gigs and directing large scale shows at the Metropolitan Opera.
The focus of his work has often been on making connections between forms that didn’t exist before. For example puppetry/Improvisation (Animo), or Opera/Juggling (Ahknaten). He directed the impro devised show Shockheaded Peter, has two Olivier awards and was made an honorary doctor of Middlesex University in 2007. He is a co-founder of the International Institute of Improvisation.