Marcus Sams

Marcus Sams has been in the film and TV industry for over 2 decades and has been improvising for over 26 years. In that time, he has been a co-owner and creative partner of Crux Jinx, has had professional representation through MDT Talent, and has sat on the board of the Improv Network. He is the co-founder of the Bay Area Film Mixer, where he received the prestigious Jefferson Award for Public Service for bringing the Bay Area filmmaking industry together since 2001. He is also the Artistic Director of the San Francisco Improv Festival and the founder of Moment Improv Theatre, one of the first African American owned improv theatres and training centers in the United States, established in 2014.

Sams has been in 70+ national improv festival shows, including the “Secret Show” at the Chicago Improv Festival, where he opened for BassProv with his duo Liss n’ Sams, featuring Joe Liss of Second City. He was a “Master Teacher” at the Alaska State Improv Festival in 2017 and has been a headlining act and instructor at the KC Improv Festival, Out of Bounds Comedy festival, and Seattle Festival of Improv Theatre, among others.

During the 2020 pandemic, Marcus transitioned from in-person improv training to online improv training in 5 days and to date has taught well over 4000 hours of online improv instruction between 2020 -2025 alone. He pioneered the online improvisational style known as the Teleprov and the F.L.I. Technique and has been producing cutting edge online improv shows since September of 2020 that push the bounds of what is possible in online improvisation.

Marcus has taught improv to companies such as Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Airbnb, & Ebay to name a few in a long list of happy clients. Marcus believes that improv skills are life skills and that anyone can participate in this magical and transformative art form. He has a systematic and heart-centric approach to improv that breaks down improv concepts to their core units and delivers usable tools to the working player. Marcus was originally trained as a stage actor and brings this respect for stagecraft and training to the improv world. He believes that improv is not a crap-shoot and that once one learns the craft of improv, it frees them up to experience a deeper level of play.