Ed Herbstman began teaching improv to organizations with SC Communications in Chicago while he was a member of the Second City National Touring Company. He was also a founding faculty member of IO West, the Los Angeles comedy theater and training center. Currently he teaches improvisation at Magnet, and for Syracuse University where he is an adjunct Professor of Drama in the School of Visual and Performing Arts for the Tepper Semester in New York City.
Ed loves the transformative power impov training can have on both groups and individuals, and is continually impressed by the creativity people reveal once they start to play.
He has written for Public Radio (The Truth, Here’s The Thing, This American Life) and was a contributing writer for HBO’s Da Ali G Show. He also worked in advertising, creating branded entertainment for P & G, Ford, L’Oreal, Cadbury, Lincoln Motor Cars, and Sun Life Financial. If you’d like to see some of it, we can’t stop you.
Ed has played an NYPD cop in a movie, a TV show, and in real life as an actual NYPD cop (70th Precinct). You may have seen him in The Big Sick, or in commercials for Milk, Cars, Phones, Cruises, Gum, Candy, Furniture, Burgers and Insurance.
Ed is a co-founder of Magnet Theater and lives in Hastings On Hudson, NY where he is also a volunteer Firefighter.