Mick Napier

Mick Napier (born December 12, 1962) is an American director and improvisational theater teacher. He is the founder and artistic director of the Annoyance Theatre and a director at The Second City. He has directed Stephen Colbert, Tina Fey, Rachel Dratch, Horatio Sanz, Nia Vardalos, Andy Richter, Jeff Garlin, and David Sedaris

Napier directed the Comedy Central Cable Ace nominated show Exit 57 and the Troma film Fatty Drives the Bus which also featured notable Chicago improvisers and actors still living and working there today, including Susan Messing, Joe Bill and Mark Sutton. In 2008, Fatty Drives the Bus landed on several cult top ten lists such as Liberal Dead which wrote, "...a weird cross of 70’s era exploitation and comedy rolled up in a nice little blasphemy laced package."

He founded The Annoyance with the philosophy that training improvisers to be individually powerful is the best way to support those with whom one improvises, an answer to the Yes, And philosophy, which he found led to weak, polite improvisation more often than powerful, good improvisation, a subject that he elaborates on in his book, Improvise: Scene from the Inside Out.