The Full Story
About the Director
My passion for affecting audiences through comedic performance is deep. I am most interested in creating something new, fresh and better.
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I am an aggressive producer, a friendly director and a humble father of three.
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I paid for a four-year degree in theater by producing and performing plays off-campus while simultaneously playing lead roles in plays on the University main stage.
After college, I began training with the Second City Improv company in Chicago where I would perform and learn from many inspirational improv comedy directors. Mick Napier & Martin Demaat were my favorites.
During that time, I performed with a dozen other improv groups. We practiced all day and into the nights for years in order to find new and better ways of performing and delivering improv.
I lived in a loft in Chicago with other directors from Second City. We had a stage in our loft where actors constantly experimented with new and original improv formats. After training intensively for professional improv comedy shows eight hours per day during the week and performing improv shows at Second City and at other improv venues almost every night, I would drag myself home after midnight only to be reinvigorated by 30-70 actor-friends who would be in my loft experimenting, partying and practicing improv comedy on our stage, until almost dawn every night of the year.
I also began a theater magazine in Chicago which would allow me press passes to most every show in the city for years. Learning how others created and staged their many shows provided me with invaluable lessons as a producer and director. If I wasn't performing, I was watching and learning from others.
The first show I directed in Chicago was nominated for a Joseph Jefferson Award the same week I was accepted into the Second City improv company.
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Just before moving to Atlanta in 1993, I spent six months living in a tent on the beaches and in the jungle of Kauai. I would do yoga and meditate daily. This is when I developed a vision for what would become the Whole World Theater and a new way of performing improv.
In 1993, I founded the Whole World Theater. I trained every student intensively (over 2000 students in my career to date). We sold out hundreds of shows in-a-row for years by casting only the best of our actors each week.
Mission
I sold the show rights for a five year period to one of the Turner South Networks in Atlanta. We aired regularly for five years, garnered high Nielsen ratings and I won a Southeastern Regional Emmy Award for a related project.
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We were sold out three weeks in advance for years with 5 shows per week. I employed many Second City improv games and forms for our show and invented new games or variations of games each week to keep my audience and my actors excited.
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"The novel" is a format of improv I created which follows a cast of characters through an entire improvised cinematic play. This was the audience favorite. We were rewarded with hundreds of standing ovations, my record was 43 standing ovations in-a-row during the run of over 1500 sold out shows.
For 20 years, I have experimented in my own improv film and TV studio with various styles of improv on camera. I am gaining new and exciting insights employing a green screen to our work, discovering which games/scene-types are safe but sharply cutting-edge for "live tv" and creating an even more real storyline improv format out on-location as a conventionally ground breaking episodic.
I teach a method of approach which delivers a deep hard-hitting type of improv performance audiences find most rewarding. Great actors crave depth and power within each moment of comedic performances and this format delivers to them just that.
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I find it incredibly rewarding to train actors to be absolutely excellent at breaking ground with a project that could bring them national recognition on TV. I also believe actors deserve a salary from TV which allows them to live and thrive for the good of us all!
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Each week, the cast would consist of only those improv comedians who had fought their way to being clearly recognized as the best of a very large group of improvisors (over 100) in our three nights of rehearsals that week. After Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday's four-hour nightly rehearsals the entire cast voted on who they believed was most impressive presently. That way every show was a knock-out.
We made a TV show by developing our own production company and practicing the art of video until we were good at it... and now we are doing it again in Marietta.
We also have a great new group beginning in Portland, Maine. We have weekly classes & Jam sessions as well as live shows at the Groove Cat Comedy stage in the lower level of 77 Free St. in Downtown Portland.
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Testimonials...
Working with David Webster will simply raise your game. Regardless of the medium, sketch, improv or film, David delivers notes to the actor as an individual that is so personal it makes a great impact. I had the pleasure of working with him in Atlanta and NYC and each time I came away with a great performance. David Webster is and has always been, the most legitimate coach (director) in any market he is in. I very much look forward to working with him again.
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--Derek Mize
Actor/Student
Been with David Webster since November 1st 2022 and couldn't be any happier with my training. I've now booked a tv show and a commercial since starting with him and the knowledge he shares within his training really helped me prepare for these auditions!
--Ali Pagan - current student
“Since taking improv classes with David Webster and Una, I’ve lost fifteen pounds, grown three inches and increased my IQ by 17 points! It’s a miracle!
But seriously, I have been acting for many years, and I’ve studied almost every technique there is. But Improv always intimidated and scared me. But after learning about Web’s approach and reading his philosophy on acting and improv, I jumped right in. I was new to Atlanta and at a minimum, I thought, I’ll meet more actors in the community and maybe shake up my career a bit. I’ll give it a month, I thought, and if I don’t like it I’ll quit. Well, I’m going on five months now and I love it. Web’s approach is based in positive, truthful acting, making honest connections with your partners and keeping your feelings real, even if the scene takes you to the most outrageous places. For me the work just keeps getting better and better. I’ve noticed all my Film/TV auditions are greatly enhanced by using the techniques I’m learning and practicing weekly. I’m more confident, and getting positive feedback and more callbacks on my submissions. And I’ve met dozens of really great people who also take the work seriously and know how to have fun at the same time. David is an inspiring teacher. If you have the opportunity to be a part of his work I highly recommend it. Maybe your IQ will increase too!”
--Noel Olken (Current Student/Actor)
Decatur GA
"Webster coming back to Atlanta is the most exciting thing that has happened in Atlanta improv in 20 years!"
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---Bob Wood (Owner of Relapse Theater)
"...a genius gift of instruction, direction and resoluteness...He is the most accomplished person in his craft."
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--Maxemillian Corkum
Actor NYC/ Student
"...I have come to know David as an incredible artist and master teacher. I have watched him take actors of various abilities (including myself) and lead them through stages of development that inspire them to reach new depths in their acting ability. I have witnessed first hand the incredible growth that all of us have experienced under his direction. David Webster has and imparts to others a limitless knowledge of the many facets of acting and filmmaking. The confidence, passion, exuberance and love that he brings to his art is infectious and inspires all of us."
-- David Ferreira
Film Actor/Student