Dear Annette,

(via The Apiary)

This entry kicks off a new, weekly feature for our blog, guest posts. To start things off with a bang, we are grateful to have Charna Halpern’s thoughts on how improv can change your life away from the stage.

My late partner, Del Close, used to say that in teaching improvisation, we are making better people. Teaching them our tenets, we were creating a “theater of the heart — a theater where people cherished each other to succeed on stage.” I have been interviewed a great deal about my successful IMPROV EMPIRE and I’ve been asked how I made it happen. My answer is that I follow the tenets of improv as rules for my life. The things that have happened to me in my life are certainly more interesting than anything I had planned. And luckily, my theater attracted folks who also supported that same vision — the idea of taking care of each other, helping each other and making each other look good. This on stage concept fell off the stage as well and created an incredibly large family of folks who never leave and have expanded to IOWEST in LA. The success of IO and IOWEST is due to the fact that that we have an army of folks who have saved our corner of the world by being good to each other. I also take some credit in the success of IO and IOWEST because I always said YES. I said YES to their ideas when they wanted to try out a new type of form or a new show. I said YES to their ideas when they wanted to teach and add direction to the theater. I said YES to their creativity and they found a place that they considered to be their home and not just a place owned by Charna Halpern And saying YES has also led to wild adventure in my life.

When I was asked by the American Embassy to come to Cyprus to teach improvisation to the Greek and Turkish Cypriots in an effort to take down the border between the two, I said YES. When the Embassy informed me that neither of the two spoke each other’s languages and neither of them spoke English and wanted to know if this could still be done, I said YES. (It was quite successful, I might add, and the border has been taken down. I guess I saved their corner of the world, too.) When I was asked to teach on The Real World, I said YES. When I was asked by Nuclear Physicists to come to CERN in Geneva, Switzerland to teach the physicists to improvise, I said YES. I could go on and on, but in short — things just don’t happen when you say NO.

So, enjoy the art of improvisation on stage. There is nothing more fun. But when you learn the main tenets that make improvisation work best — realize these are lessons to live by. If you are an improviser, you are already a cut above the rest. If you are an improviser, you are going to be a better person.

Charna Halpern runs iO Improv (formerly Improv Olympic) out of Chicago and co-authored one of the most influential improv books out there, Truth in Comedy. She can currently be seen teaching on MTV’s The Real World XX: Hollywood (can’t wait for season 30). You can read her own blog here.

If the Frankies represent official industry recognition, then the Annies are all about indie cred. As always, there are no actual prizes other than the satisfaction that some random blog thinks you’re cool. The committee was vinnyfrancois, b.j.swank and Smackles, the tie-breaking monkey.

The Beekeepers

Best Poster:The Beekeepers
There were some pretty great posters this year with an honourable mention to The Sputniks but the eye-poppingest posters came from The Beekeepers. With two different looks, each highlighting one of the two stars, the posters depict a troubled, desperate couple with more than a hint of madness. They stood out from the crowd by drawing the eye into a dark, dark place.

Best Title: Degrassi! The Musical
Succinct and effective. Take strong nostalgia and add “The Musical”. Give it a “!” for good measure. Let sit and watch every single person to pass their gaze over the name stop, process, and then let it be digested at the back of their head. Good or bad, you simply can’t ignore the name.

Best Website: montrealfringe.ca
Finally! They got it right this year and I couldn’t be happier. With up to date news, video from the 13th Hour, Video Buzz, Net Buzz appended to show pages, company vids added to show pages, and on and on. I don’t think they can top it. I’ll be happy if they simply maintain this level of service. Kudos!

Cody Rivers

Best Opening: The Cody Rivers Show: Stick to Glue
The Fringe had some very low-key openings this year; nothing really started with a bang. Our favourite opening, in fact, started with a whimper. The Cody Rivers boys emerged in slow-motion, talking in such tiny voices that you could barely make out what they were saying. It was a bit disorienting but it laid some important groundwork–when they returned to those characters later in the show, it was suddenly hilarious. Given that most of their show had a frantic pace, this change-up found the strike zone. Which lead directly to…

Best Energy: The Cody Rivers Show: Stick to Glue
They operate a delicate, geared pocket watch at double-speed. Their delivery is uber-hyper, hush-quiet/thunderclap-loud and impeccable. They reach into an audience and blow out their nerves one by one. It’s the most kinetic show I think I’ve ever seen without ever, not for an instant, losing control.

Best Sketch: Cops Find A Body [Blastback Babyzap]
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It’s Uncalled For hitting uppercuts and hooks with line after line. It’s an impossible streak of sublime build, perfect folly and crushing hilarity. You’re getting comedically beaten to within an inch of your life and loving it. Mistaken identities, secret motives and brilliant forensics come together in Blastback Babyzap’s awesome opening sketch.

Best Costume: Wheels [Degrassi! The Musical]
This was Wheels before the fights with his grandparents and the drunk driving. This was Wheels at his innocent, short short-wearing best. The actress threw on a goofy smile for good measure, and presto, we had a winner.

Best Moment: Charades [The Cody Rivers Show: Stick to Glue]
The code-breakers scene is bewildering at first. It’s a mess that is mesmerising because the actors are delivering these nonsense lines at West Wing speed, it’s a trick that amuses until your brain starts parsing these jumbled sentences. Then the scene becomes an encrypted sketch that is funny in its own right once you find the decoder ring. The next scene is a game of charades and as soon as you find the connection between what you’re seeing and what you just saw, you understand that these guys have thought the whole show through. It was one moment among many that revealed this was not an ordinary sketch show.

Best Song: Ich Nicht Ein Roboter (I am a Lion) [Die Roten Punkte (Super Musikant)]
From the synth chorus, to the three notes you need to make a song, Die Roten Punkte take an already great song, set the volume to max and rip out the knob. They jump and roar and claw at you with their pure rock power. They are not robots, dammit, they are lions!

The Sputniks

Best One Person Show: The Sputniks
There were many fine one-person shows this year. Some were funny flights of fancy, others were ingenious bits of storytelling and yet others were character-driven slices of life. The Sputniks was all of that. And it broke our hearts.

Best Closing: The Sputniks
Elison Zasko deftly laid and set the trap. We all became better people for falling into it. Checkmate.

Best Show: The Cody Rivers Show: Stick to Glue
Do we need to rave about this show any further? In just about any other year, Blastback Babyzap would have been a shoo-in but Stick to Glue went to twelve. We didn’t even know there was a twelve.

MVPs: The Volunteers
Once again, the Fringe would be a melted pile of ice cream without the sugar cone of the volunteers. Thank you!

Past Annies: Year Two, Year One

Bad Dog performance part II. Sean, Nick and I took to the stage again tonight. Sean ended up giving both monologues tonight (what a guy!). The first was about arsonists and the second was about, Skara Brae, a Scottish town in the Orkney Islands. The first monologue inspired a story about a man, newly arrived in Goofytown, who was only interested in normal things, but on the advice of his wife decided to try to broaden his horizons. The second story was an epic one, indeed. Two cousins, one a roman senator, the other an outcast rebel, both bent on destroying all the glass in Rome. The last story, inspired by the second monologue, was multi-tiered. It started with two brothers in wind-swept Scottish cottage enjoying Mother’s Soup debating the legitimacy of words. Next, the story moved to a graffiti-ist carving a name onto the statue of Ste-Brunhilde. Swiftly, we moved to the story of Ste-Brunhilde who, we discovered, produced potions to bring sinners into God’s Flock. We moved back to the carver and then back again to the brothers who were really quite peeved that their day of boardgames was being interupted by the fact that they had to punish graffiti artists. We had a lot of fun, and the show was an interesting challenge.

Hey Gang!



We’re having a blast here in Toronto at the Bad Dog Improv Summit. Without Annette performed last night and our stories were full of wisps, trolls and the God of the Jews. We’ve been seeing some awesome improv too. Last night we saw two Harold teams from Bad Dog perform and tonight we witnessed Vancouver Theatre Sports and Unexpected Productions from Seattle. VTS did a great shortform set and Unexpected Prod did a two-man longform that they call Campfire.

So long!
Marc Rowland

PS. Nick and I went on a tour today at the Steamwhistle beer factory.

Immediately following the Montreal Fringe and right before the Toronto Fringe, there’s the Bad Dog Improv Summit taking place in Toronto. Without Annette was invited to perform and we’ve sent Marc, Sean and Nick out to play. Everyone else in the troupe is at home, preening.

Note: Marc is also running a workshop on non-verbal communication. I’m not 100% sure but I think it mostly involves making farty sounds with your hands (that’s what I would do).

The first show was last night and it seems to have gone well. There’s already a review up.

…the really interesting thing is that different cities really do have different performance styles. Toronto seems to be more about ‘big’ performers and structured scenes, while the Montreal crew was subtler, favoured props, and had a more relaxed approach to scene construction.

So if you have the time and exist in the Torontospace manifold, go put fun in your eyes and ears.

Check out the June 21, 2008 entry in Michael Black’s 2008 fringe diary for a very cute story told in pictures about a Dolphin looking to see a show at the Fringe.

Who did this? Thank you!

Andrew Connor stars in the one-man show, Boom. As half of Stick to Glue, which I loved, I was hoping my previous experience wouldn’t overly colour this one.

The show revolves around a man who is in the bomb-maker’s guild but doesn’t make destructive explosives as it would be “taking the easy way out”. Instead we’re treated to all manner of bombs that don’t explode but still manage to do their job. Along the way, our bomb-loving protagonist has to deal with the semi-unreal, semi-all-too-real characters that inhabit this world. His sister, his niece, his boss, the rich neighbours, the radio call-in host, they all inhabit the small town of New Rockwell and are all affected by the new spaceport being built in town. It’s a quirky and curious tale but the script manages to deftly keep things grounded in its own kind of reality while never letting the characters slip into shallow cariacatures.

The excellent exchanges between two characters in a scene (both played by a fleet of foot Connor) never seem out of place or unnatural thanks to some great direction. The idea of playing both sides of a conversation sounds perilous at best but the execution just works and is very rewarding to watch. Like Stick to Glue, the show is polished, rehearsed and shares a similar sense of humour. Boom is funny, charming and skillfully delivered. Go and be delighted.

This show gets a: Highly Recommended

Greg Landucci delivers multiple great performances in Dishpig, a one-man show about a terrible dish-washing job.

I hope outlandish and emotionally-charged things happen to this guy, because I look forward to seeing more of his shows. If he can do this with a banal topic like a bad job, imagine what he could do with the search for his birth parents across the Steppes?

This show gets a: Recommended

Three Old Bags was a delightful surprise. After noticing that it was 90 minutes long, and reading Pat Donelly’s description that it was not yet a fully functioning script and 15 minutes too long, I almost skipped it. Three Old Bags turned out to be one my favourites among the 10-or-so shows that I saw this year.

The Three Old Bags each had wonderfully rich and funny characters. The script was delicious and the acting fantastic. Too bad these ladies are hiding out in Lac Brome.

And the audience! I can’t think of another show that was enhanced by audience members talking to each other during the show: “What did she just say?” “She said Depens.” “What’s that?” “It’s a diaper, Harry!”

The show opened with some clowning that didn’t quite work, but once the story began, those 90 minutes flew by.

This gets a: Highly Recommended

From Pat Donnely’s Montreal Gazette blog (emphasis mine):

Fringe producer Jeremy Hechtman told me yesterday that many Fringe shows, like SHOSHINZ and Cherry Typhoon, are getting sold out. The show selling the largest number of tickets, he said, is Blastback Babyzap. It’s sketch comedy by a local group called Uncalled For. The final show is at 5:15 p.m. today (Sunday June 22).

An improv comedy show, Argument with a Dolphin, is said to be doing well, too.

And many people are recommending The Sputniks.

I thought our numbers were pretty good this year, maybe middle of the pack, but getting mentioned among the top-sellers makes me feel kind of giddy. From what I can tell, turnout has been good this year. The official numbers will come out soon, no doubt.

Having a small venue in and of itself can help generate buzz. Since it’s easier to sell out a smaller venue, you’re more likely to do so. Selling out shows is great publicity because word gets around, even all the way back to Pat Donnely.

Viva Venue 4, damned obstructing column and all!