This week on Yes But Why, I chatted with actor, improviser, and coach Karla Dingle.

Karla Dingle has spent her life on the stage. She is an actor and a voiceover artist. You can see her performing improv with Now are the Foxes Improv Comedy, Close Distance Improv, Charlotte Comedy Theater, and Background Noise Musical Improv. Karla’s passion beside performing is teaching and coaching. Currently, Karla is the Education Director and an Instructor at Queen City Comedy in Charlotte, NC in the US. She is also the Improv Director and an Acting Instructor at a local studio in Charlotte, NC. Over the last several years, Karla has instructed students from Peru, Israel, India, Canada, Japan, Europe, South Africa, the Philippines and beyond.

In our conversation, I learned that Karla is very community focused. From the neighborhood kids she grew up with in Atlanta to the theater kids she performed with at the Trumbull Youth Association, she found her crowd and she stuck with them. And now, as an adult, Karla builds and nurtures communities in Charlotte, NC and beyond. She really knows how to bring people together.

I first became aware of Karla during the pandemic when the communication amongst improvisers across the globe was at its peak. The hot spot for the international improv community was online jams hosted by Karla and the Queen City Comedy community. Everyone I was interviewing at the time was abuzz about working with Karla. And by golly, I eventually got brave enough to ask Karla to be a guest on this show.

Karla was a total delight. A real dream guest. She tells me how the Queen City Comedy online jams came to be and what it was like to be connected to so many amazing performers across the world. We talk about her recent visit to Improvfest Ireland and meeting so many of the improvisers she met online! Such an exciting experience and I am totes jealous!

Karla talks about how all of her work and all of her art is about building experiences. And I just think that that is the coolest way to look at what she does. Karla Dingle is an amazing force in our improv world and I’m glad to say now that I know her.

Support Karla Dingle by staying up to date with her happenings via her linktree -- https://linktr.ee/dingledrama and her instagram -- https://www.instagram.com/DingleDrama/

Take a class with her! Hire her to coach your troupe!
She has an upcoming intensive starting February 4, 2023: