Introduction

“So was that drunk talk or was that real talk?”



It was an honest question.

And really the only question to ask when, the night before, your student offers up his savings to help you fund an improv theater. So Armando Diaz went ahead and asked.

The winter of 2003 had been particularly harsh. Diaz, who had studied under luminaries Del Close and Charna Halpern in Chicago, found himself at a crossroads without a theater to call home.

He had moved to New York five years earlier, and was instrumental in forming the curriculums of both the Upright Citizens Brigade and the People’s Improv Theater. Now, unemployed, exhausted, and depressed about his recent split from the PIT, Diaz decided to offer up a free four-week class of his own. It was his Christmas present to New York.

That first class led to more independent classes, which in turn led to class shows in the basement of the Gene Frankel Theater. Word spread that Armando Diaz – the Armando Diaz ‑ was teaching again, and soon, classes were filling with students from UCB, the PIT, and beyond.

So, back to that night at the bar where Alex Marino, a 21-year-old transplant from Bakersfield, Calif., and Diaz are doing what they usually do post-rehearsal — sit, drink and talk about improv. The conversation turned, as it often did, to Diaz’ desire to start his own theater, so Marino made his offer.

Ten years later, the culmination of that conversation is very much a reality. Since opening its doors in April 2005, the Magnet Theater ‑ founded by Diaz, Marino and Chicago improv vets Ed Herbstman and Shannon Manning ‑ has become one of the premier comedy schools in the city.



Thousands of students and performers have come to Magnet to learn improv — and later, as the school expanded its curriculum — musical improv, sketch and storytelling.

To mark the tenth anniversary of the theater’s opening, and to celebrate its place in the growing New York improv scene, we spoke to those who helped shape the vision of the theater and the school, and those who continue to be part of its growth.