PHENOMENAL game!! Just played this as a one-shot with some friends and we had a great time staging our play/heist. SCENE THIEVES' rules are lightweight and were really easy for us to pick up.
I want to specifically shout out the rules for resolving scenes, and how these change between Act I and Act II. In our game, this created a fun balance between random chance and the ability for players to exert control over the story. The result was a very tense final few scenes as we all scrambled to rescue our heist from a string of failures, all while the characters onstage bumbled their way to a happy ending. Playing this game feels like watching an under-rehearsed comedy careen wildly out of control on opening night. Highly recommend!
I come from a theatre and improv background myself! I didn't want to just include conventional theaters in the list, so I included a number of improv troupes as well. They're ALL real, and I LOVE it whenever someone recognizes one. Earlier this month someone from Woolly Mammoth saw their company in the list and brought the game in to show coworkers, haha.