Ben Cassil

Ben Cassil is a comedian, improv teacher, and actor in Los Angeles. Ben teaches improv classes at WE Improv and The Shared Experience including classes on Overcoming Improv Anxiety, The Monoscene, Tagging with Trust, The Pretty Flower, and Emotional Heightening. Ben is passionate about coaching improv teams to discover their unique group voice through targeted exercises and positive reinforcement. Ben structures classes and coaching sessions around the concept of gradual release of responsibility to make improv concepts and skills easier to digest and implement. In coaching, Ben emphasizes high reps (to put theory into practice, and make practice into instinct), and processing so that the individual and team voices get heard and shaped together. Ben coaches teams both in person (in the LA area) and online. Zoom improv has some huge pros—it makes it so immediate to carefully observe your scene partners non-verbal communication, and to heighten verbally (like an improvised podcast). Reach out if you’d like coaching for your online or LA-based improv team. Ben has been improvising since 2014, and can be seen performing with the WE Improv House team Cosmo, the Movie Team Hot Set, the trans-Atlantic team SIPS, and the Indie Team the Headliners. He is the co-host of “Live From the Big Apple,” a podcast where he and July Diaz play former cast members of a fictional version of SNL and invite comedian guests such as Izzy Roland and Dave Theune to improvise new characters in that world. Ben came to comedy after getting a Master's degree in theology, only to find the academic life curiously devoid of fart jokes. He grew up in Columbia, Missouri and loves Shakespeare's Pizza.