I doubt if you are taking students away from other Improv companies. You are merely providing an impetus for students to get off their duff and do what they always said they would do...eventually. Without your offer, they would still be at home and be less spontaneous for it. I would be very interested to hear of any follow up to see what conversions you get. At least Impatient is doing what it does best, train improvisers. We could all do with a bit of that.

Great post. I must admit that I googled Sabrina Lloyd and found her less than stellar. Am I missing something?

I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying here, because parallel universes are a pretty odd thing to have a concrete opinion about (and my opinions tend to be pretty squishy at the best of times), but think about this: imagining an alternate universe for every possible human decision is, yes, completely arrogant, irrational, and anthropocentric. But what if there’s a different universe for every possible quantum state — not just human choices, but those ‘random’ particle interactions that seem to both happen and not happen? It gets a whole lot harder to think about, but at the same time, more plausible.

If you’re into big, brick-like speculative fiction books, I recommend one called Anathem, by Neal Stephenson. This whole deal (particularly the idea of ‘wakes’ and ‘crossing currents’) is a pretty major theme.