For a teenager who has ever sat at a table with dice, a character sheet, and a dungeon master spinning a world out of thin air, the skills being used are not so different from what happens on an improv stage. Both require listening hard, saying yes to whatever the other person offers, and committing fully to a character who does not exist yet. That overlap is the premise behind the Youth RPG Improv Workshop, a two-hour session for tweens and teens ages 11 to 16 at the Creative Alliance Creativity Center, 3137 Eastern Avenue, on Saturday, October 17, 2026.
The workshop is run by Highwire Improv, a Baltimore nonprofit whose stated mission is to steward a community of artists committed to growth, collaboration, joy, and justice, in Baltimore and around the world, through improvisational theater. Highwire's motto is Community First, and the organization describes improv itself as the process of a community coming together to make art in real time. The group produces shows, workshops, classes, community meetups, and training programs across the Baltimore area and online. Its class catalog ranges from free introductory improv workshops, supported in part by a Maryland State Arts Council grant, to multi-week Foundations courses and advanced skill modules.
What makes this particular session unusual is its framing. Rather than teaching improv as a path toward comedy performance, it teaches improv as a path toward better tabletop role-playing. The description promises participants will learn core principles such as "Yes, and...", active listening, and character work, then practice improvised storytelling and develop the ability to think in character and find a point of view. The pitch to young people is direct: the important part of any game you play is you. The stated goals are building self-confidence, developing creativity, and expressing personality through characters. No experience is necessary, and the workshop is explicitly designed as a safe environment for trying out improvised role-play.
The facilitator is Dave Hill, a name that carries more weight in film and television than in the local improv scene. Hill is the founder and CEO of Gumption Pictures, a production company he built around the idea of creating exceptional entertainment in the authentic voice of its creators. As an executive producer, he brought the pilot Bootstrapped to the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Television pilots he has produced have appeared at festivals around the world, including Cinequest, where they won the program, Pilot Light, where they also won, the Catalyst Content Festival, and the Nashville Film Festival. In 2015 he wrote, directed, produced, and starred in the comedy The Night is Young alongside Matt Jones, which premiered at the Austin Film Festival. As an actor, he has appeared in television shows including Great News, Modern Family, and American Dad. He is a graduate of Princeton University.
That background is worth noting because it explains the angle Hill brings to a room of eleven-to-sixteen-year-olds. His professional life has been spent finding stories from new voices and elevating them. The workshop's emphasis on character point of view and improvised storytelling reads less like a beginner's icebreaker and more like a working professional's distillation of what actually makes a scene, or a game session, come alive.
The setting matters too. The Creative Alliance is one of Baltimore's anchor arts organizations, operating out of two locations in Highlandtown. Its historic Patterson Theater at 3134 Eastern Avenue houses galleries, a 200-seat flexible theater, a classroom, live and work studios for eight artists, and the Marquee Lounge. The Creativity Center across the street at 3137 Eastern Avenue opened in November 2022 and holds a dance studio, a professional kitchen, and education classrooms. The workshop will take place in that newer building, which was purpose-built for exactly this kind of hands-on teaching. Creative Alliance sits one block from the southeast corner of Patterson Park, and the organization describes itself as striving to be an accessible and welcoming space for all audiences.
For families in Highlandtown, Canton, and the surrounding east Baltimore neighborhoods, the event is a short trip. The Creativity Center is on Eastern Avenue, within walking distance of Patterson Park.
The broader trend the workshop taps into is real. Tabletop role-playing games, long the province of basements and hobby shops, have moved into the mainstream over the past decade, and the skills they demand, collaborative storytelling, quick thinking, and sustained character embodiment, are the same ones improvisational theater has been teaching for decades. Programs that bridge the two have begun appearing at gaming conventions and community theaters alike. What is less common is a version built specifically for young teenagers, in a neighborhood arts center, taught by someone with Sundance and network television credits, and offered with no experience required.
That last point may be the most significant. Improv has a reputation for being intimidating, a fear of being put on the spot with nothing to say. The workshop's structure, two hours, ages 11 to 16, explicitly beginner-friendly, is designed to lower that barrier. The promise is not that participants will become performers. It is that they will become more comfortable being themselves in front of other people, and more capable of building something together with them, whether the setting is a stage, a classroom, or a table with a map and some dice on it.
The Youth RPG Improv Workshop runs Saturday, October 17, 2026, at the Creative Alliance Creativity Center, 3137 Eastern Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21224. It is intended for ages 11 to 16, and no prior experience is required. More information about Highwire Improv and its classes is available at highwireimprov.com.