Caspar Schjelbred

Performer, teacher and founder of Impro Supreme.

Background

Caspar Schjelbred was born in Denmark in 1979, grew up in Sweden, and moved to Paris in 1999. He lived and worked there for more than two decades – the formative years in which he began working with improvisation, physical acting, mime and clowning.

He started improvising in the early 2000s, in the city’s English-language scene. Over time his interest moved away from verbal games and narrative formats toward presence, physical clarity and choice.

Alongside the artistic work, he completed a Master’s degree in History of Science at the Sorbonne, on late-19th-century theories of emotion. The habits of close reading and methodical analysis carried into how he approached acting and improvisation: observing behaviour, questioning assumptions.

Performance & direction

PLAN C is Caspar Schjelbred’s solo improvisation project, created in 2012 and performed more than seventy times across four continents.

He performed with The Improfessionals in Paris for almost twenty years and was their artistic director from 2008 to 2014. In 2018 he co-created and directed AVANT-GARDE with HaHaHa Impro Theatre in Sofia.

He has also performed Beckett – Act Without Words II and Catastrophe in Luxembourg (2016–2017) – and done some screen and movement work.

Teaching & transmission

Teaching entered Schjelbred’s work very early. He has spent more time teaching than performing throughout his career. Teaching became a place of experimentation: testing ideas, observing what actually helps people change, seeing what holds up over time.

For more than twenty years he has taught primarily in Paris, and internationally across five continents. His teaching ranges from long-term work with actors and improvisers to theatre schools – and a maximum-security prison in Perth, Australia.

In 2010 he founded Impro Supreme to gather and continue this work – not as a brand, but as a framework for sustained training, with students who would return over time, question the work, and stay in practice. For Schjelbred, teaching has always been individual at its core, even in group settings.

Training & influences

The decisive influence on Schjelbred’s work is his training with Ira Seidenstein, ongoing since 2008. Through repeated training periods, including five Quantum Clown Residencies in Brisbane, Australia, this work gave him a rigorous reference point for physical acting – and a framework against which he has tested and refined his own.

A later influence came through Mary Overlie (2019), whose work on perception, space and non-hierarchical composition shaped how Schjelbred understands stage reality, sharpening his attention to what is already present.

He also took regular classical ballet classes for many years (2010–2024). The discipline developed precision, balance and endurance, and still informs how he moves on stage.

His training includes a range of mime and movement workshops, which grounded a practical understanding of how meaning appears through the body – not through explanation or narrative intention.

Schjelbred lives in Copenhagen. He teaches internationally and continues to develop his work through training, writing and selective performance.

A longer version of this story is told on Impro Supreme website.