Skip to content
Tarot and Improv Together on Stage
Friday 13 March – auspicious perhaps…….., step into the unknown with In the Cards, a tarot and improv show. A live tarot reading inspires completely improvised scenes full of twists, turns, and cosmic chaos. You’ll laugh as the fate of the cards unfolds in hilarious, unexpected ways with improvisers Anna Kemp (This is Your Musical, Real Positive Poles, The Muses), Katie Northcott (The Bish Bosh Bash, Beansville, Pressure Cooker) and transformational tarot specialist and award-winning author Tiffany Crosara.
But how do tarot and improv align? Learn about the history of tarot and why it connects so well to improv.
A Brief History of Tarot
Despite their current associations with divination and mysticism, tarot cards started out as a fancy card game in 15th-century Italy. Noble families commissioned beautifully painted decks to play a game called trionfi (later called tarocchi). For a long time, tarot was a form of entertainment, similar to how we use regular playing cards today. As well as within Italian high society, tarot was played by merchants, traders, and seafarers on their long voyages.
In the 1700s, writers and mystics started looking at the symbolic images on the cards and began to assign deeper meaning. One of the first was Antoine Court de Gébelin, who claimed the tarot held ancient Egyptian wisdom. The idea caught people’s imagination, and soon the cards were being linked to astrology, Kabbalah, and other esoteric traditions. The first deck of tarot cards for divination was created in the 1770s by cartomancer Etteilla.
“The first documented Tarot cards were indeed in 15th century Italy, where there is a river called Taro. My husband is from there, and he jokes it’s the real reason I married him! Once a year people dress up as cards and parade along it. Now let’s think about that for a moment… Tarot isn’t something rooted to the spot like Stonehenge or Chichen Itzá. It’s paraded through the river of time… passed from pocket to pocket. How did it get there? You only have to look at the figures in the decks to see the worlds they travelled through: Egyptian and Greek myth woven together with Romani and Catholic imagery. Tarot breaks dogma. It’s a mirror as diverse as it gets, and I love that this modern revival is not just seeing that, but embracing it.” – Tiffany Crosara
By the 1800s and early 1900s, secret societies had adopted tarot as a spiritual tool. From this wave of interest came the famous Rider-Waite-Smith deck in 1909, designed by A.E. Waite and illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith. It was the first to give detailed pictures to all 78 cards, which made it easier for people to use them for readings.
Why a Tarot and Improv show?
Today, tarot is used as a tool not only for fortune-telling, but also for reflection, self-discovery, and creative inspiration. What began as a Renaissance card game is now a way for people to explore themselves and the stories they tell about their lives.
In the Cards relies on audience interaction. Through a live tarot reading, the reader draws meaning out of the cards in a way that resonates with the person listening. Our improvisers then build scenes based on the reading. Tarot cards don’t give fixed answers; they invite creativity, storytelling, and surprise. Improv thrives on the same principle: taking a suggestion, running with it, and seeing where the story goes in unexpected ways.
“When you shuffle a tarot deck, you don’t know which cards will appear. When you step onto an improv stage, you don’t know what your partner will say. In both cases, the magic comes from embracing surprise. Improvisers take random prompts and spin them into stories while tarot readers take archetypes and images and weave them into insights. The “truth” emerges through creativity, intuition, and presence.
And maybe that’s why they feel so powerful: they remind us that uncertainty isn’t the enemy. It’s an invitation. Tarot and improv both teach us to play with chance, to trust our instincts, and to discover that the unknown is full of possibilities.” – Tiffany Crosara
So, why an improv and tarot show? Because both art forms channel something through from nothing, making meaning out of the unknown.
“This is such an exciting show format to play with. Tarot reads can be both entertaining and lead you down a road of “what ifs” and interpretation. Tiff is a master of Tarot, and Katie is such a fabulous player, so I’m buzzing.” – Anna Kemp
“Working alongside Tiff and Anna – two brilliant women – has been amazing. The strength of the show lies in the intersection of improvisation, connection, and intuition found both in tarot and improv. It’s going to be an evening to remember!” – Katie Northcott
We hope you’ll join us on Friday 13 March for what promises to be a show of imagination, laughter, and exploration.
