Hollywood stars like Johnny Depp, Robert Downey jnr, Sacha Baron Cohen and the late Robin Williams have improvised their way through films; and hit TV shows like Whose Line Is It Anyway? and Australia's own Thank God You're Here and SlideShow have brought improvised comedy into the living room. Many people take it up as a hobby to develop their communication skills or ability to act in the moment.

Starting tomorrow, Canberra audiences will be able to see leading performers from around the world at the week-long Improvention, Australia's premier festival dedicated to the art of improvisation.

"Audiences can expect to feel more engaged by improv than they might watching something fully scripted," says Nick Byrne, who is, with fellow actor P.J. Williams, co-founder of Improvention and artistic director of Impro ACT, which runs courses, workshops and shows throughout the year.

"In the improvised realm, their focus is on the anticipation of what might happen next out of the myriad of possibilities – which nobody knows, on or off stage. So in a sense, the audience and performers are on the same ride."

Byrne and Williams started the festival, then known as the Canberra Impro Challenge, 11 years ago after realising that improv organisations in Australian cities weren't coordinating their activities or sharing international guests as well as they could.

As the national capital, Canberra seemed like a logical place to have an event that was both a performance festival and an opportunity for all the Australasian improv organisations to share their craft.

Byrne and Williams grew the festival to the point where it was the go-to-event for the greatest improv artists in Australia. In 2010, they renamed it Improvention and invited international directors.

This decision set it apart from other festivals, which invited troupes to present their particular style or show structure to an audience.

"All the other improvisers," Byrne says, "would applaud politely, learn something from it, and then move on."

At Improvention, however, directors workshopped and then cast their shows with attendees.

"For the first time," Byrne says, "international players were playing with each other, rather than for each other with their own troupe. This was very attractive to them; they went back to their countries of origin and said, 'You've got to get to this festival in Australia.' That was heartwarming, and it's brought the world's improv community together in a much more familial way than was the case."

Improvention's model was so popular that other festivals, most recently Hawaii's Improvaganza, adopted it.

Over the week of the festival, 34 performers from around Australia and every continent except South America and Antarctica will appear in 30 shows at the Street Theatre.

Shows range from a daily sketch comedy tournament, the Canberra Impro Theatre Challenge, to serious psychological drama in the style of Strindberg.

The festival also includes the Improvention song contest, silent shows, spine-chilling works inspired by Edgar Allan Poe and Inuit legends, documentaries, puppet shows, and plays about relationships and dating – all, of course, improvised.

"It's a very eclectic festival," Byrne says. He is particularly proud of two shows that display aspects of different cultures. Indigenous and Reunion Islander artists will collaborate on a work using traditional storytelling, while another show translates the audience's suggestions into Taiwanese culture.

In Byrne's own Parallels, which he will tour in Sweden and Estonia this year, six people simultaneously onstage tell three overlapping stories.

Two other Canberrans will present shows. Catherine Crowley and Melburnian Kate Weaver's Love Makes the World Go Around examines the languages of love, while Reid Workman's comic Undecagon challenges players to incorporate eleven random elements in their act.

The variety and immediacy of improv means audiences will find something that appeals and to which they relate.

"When you watch improvisation, with its stumbles, its pitfalls, its dangers, its risks, it's much more like life than something that has been prepared," Byrne says. "Rather than seeing superheroes and glamorous stars, people who watch it are more able to see themselves in the situations that arise."

For those who want even more improv, "secret" late night shows will be held at the Digress Cocktail Bar and Teatro Vivaldi, while the National Film and Sound Archive will screen two improv films, one filmed in five European capitals and the other an Australian feature film based on a previous Improvention.

Improvention 2016. July 2-9. Full listing and booking information: improvention.com/shows-and- booking. Phone bookings: 6247 1223.