The Guest Room: Kirsten Rasmussen

Kirsten Marie Rasmussen is a multi-talented performer hailing from the small town of Lumsden, Saskatchewan. In 2002, Kirsten packed up her bags and moved to Edmonton to pursue theatre. She studied for six years at the University of Alberta, graduating last spring with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting. In 2006, Kirsten joined Rapid Fire Theatre and has called it home ever since. She can be seen every Friday night improvising at Theatresports and most Saturdays at Chimprov. As well as improv and acting, Kirsten is passionate about playwriting, dance, physical theatre, and clowning.

It is dark. It is cold. It is Edmonton, 10 pm on a winter’s eve.

I am walking along the hipster-ridden street of Whyte Ave passing by stores that sell second-hand clothing at an alarming price and bars that I would never step foot in because I just don’t wear heels that tall, bars with names like Dirty Pretty, seriously, gross!

But I am headed to neither shop nor drink. I am headed to the Varscona Theatre, happily placed just off Whyte Ave. Where every Friday night at 11 pm, one may stumble into the wild world of Rapid Fire Theatre’s Theatresports.

But it is not quite eleven yet. Though already a fat line for reserve tickets winds itself loudly around the edges of our brick theatre, it is only a quarter after ten. Walking in and sharing a friendly hello with one of our many amazing volunteers, I slip through the audience door and enter the world of PRE-SHOW MADNESS! Rapid Fire Theatre style, yo!

I only entered the world of Improv about two and half years ago. But let me tell you it was intense, and on that first date, we went all the way. After a suitable amount of cuddling, Improv fell asleep in my arms, and I knew I was in love. I whispered in Improv’s sleeping ear, “You’re beautiful. I love watching you. I love doing you. Baby, I’m never gonna let you go… never!”

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The Guest Room: Immanuela Lawrence

Immanuela Lawrence is a senior improviser at the Loose Moose Theatre Company in Calgary. She has performed improv in Amsterdam, Edinburgh and Montreal, where she was one of the first members of TSC’s Sunday Night Improv. She is also a proud Without Annette alum and t-shirt owner.

Directing & Side Coaching

A long time ago, a few of my fellow troupe members in Amsterdam attended a workshop by Keith Johnstone. They returned a little disappointed. “He was telling us what do and say in scenes.” They said. “We weren’t really improvising.” Many of us were either working at or hanging around Boom Chicago, and were watching a lot of their fast pace short form. At their classes, nothing was too wacky or funny and most ideas were considered good. To my friends, hearing Keith quip: ‘Don’t say that! Say this instead,” sounded a lot like a block.

With the exception of TheatreSports, shows at the Loose Moose are directed. A typical scene will start by the director yelling: “I want an eighteenth century parlor. I need two people up. You are two lords sparring for a lady.” This may seem like a lot of external input and little improvising from the players themselves to some of you. And until recently, it also seemed to me that my friends in Amsterdam were at least partly right, shouldn’t the players be coming up with this stuff, who and where they are and shouldn’t they be figuring out where they’re scene is going? Isn’t that improvising?

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The Guest Room: Anders Yates

Anders Yates has been an improviser for about nine years. He is a founding member of the award-winning Montreal improv and sketch comedy troupe Uncalled For. As part of Uncalled For, Anders has performed at Fringe Festivals across the country as well as the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal (plus they recently won Best of the Fest at the Toronto Sketchfest). For the past four years, Anders’ alter ego, Zack Winters, has been the co-host of the Montreal Fringe’s official late-night talk show/dance party, “The 13th Hour“.

I’ve taken many opportunities to talk with people about the ways in which improv can have a positive impact on one’s life outside of the time spent performing on stage or rolling around in the piles of money that every improviser tends to make practicing their craft. Improv is an ideal way to boost self-confidence, to learn how to work productively in a team and to keep an open and positive attitude toward life, but one unexpected benefit that improv has had for me has been in one of the arenas that is often considered to be a polar opposite of improvisation: writing and performing prepared material.

When I sit down to write a sketch for Uncalled For, I try to approach the empty page with the same mindset that I bring to an empty stage: I am open to anything, positive and willing to fail. One of the biggest pitfalls that writing has over improvising on stage is that if a performer finds herself on a stage in front of an audience, the pressure of all those pairs of eyes looking at her will likely be enough to kick start her into at least doing something. Staring at a blank piece of paper is something that is most often done privately, with no direct, instant pressure to scribble something, anything on the page, and so therefore the page will often remain blank for a very, very long time.

The lack of external pressure is made worse by the fact that writing takes more time than speaking. I don’t know how to write in shorthand and I don’t even really like writing in cursive, so the speed at which my mind races is far greater than that at which I’m able to get anything down on paper. This temporal difference leaves plenty of time for my little internal critic to shoot down every possible idea that I am about to write: “Too boring. Too clichéd. You don’t know anything about that topic. Too juvenile.” If I’m open to anything and willing to fail, though, I am able to ignore my self-criticism long enough to start writing. Just like when I’m improvising on stage, the easiest way to start is by establishing a positive platform. Who is talking? What is their relationship to the person they are interacting with? Where are they? What are they doing? If I can do all of these things without worrying that what I’m writing might be terrible, then I’m well on my way to being able to tilt that idea enough to keep it interesting.

Of course, even after years of improvising, being willing to fail can be a pretty tall order some days (especially if I feel like I’ve been doing enough failing in other areas of my life that day), so the best way that I can think of to allow myself to write freely and openly is if I do it as often as possible. If what I write today turns out to be no good, there’s always tomorrow. One of the great founding fathers of improv, Keith Johnstone, likes to repeat that anybody trying to draw a face would have to draw about 500 lousy ones before he could start drawing good ones, so why not get those first 500 out of the way sooner rather than later and draw whenever possible. I like to try to take the same attitude toward writing. As long as I can squeeze it in between my money-pile-rolling sessions, of course.

Previous Guests: Charna Halpern, Jill Bernard, Marcel St. Pierre, Josh Fulton, Brendon Bennetts, Terence Bowman, Gil Browdy, Alan Marriott, Jason R. Chin, Ian Parizot, Bill Arnett, Pippa Evans, Ben Whitehouse, Sylvia Niederberger

The Guest Room: Sylvia Niederberger

Our guest this week is Sylvia Niederberger. She was an elementary school teacher before participating in the Loose Moose International Summerschool where she got bitten by the improv bug. After returning to Switzerland, she joined Improvenoes and has been improvising in English, Swiss, German, Gibberish and various accents. Since then, Sylvia has played on various stages, on the streets, on a ship, in a subway in Berlin and in bars. At the moment she is a Drama student at the University of Calgary and keeps training with the Loose Moose. Her newest vice is performance creation.

On the Other Side of the Pond

I moved to Canada one year ago and got involved with Improv here. Recently I went back to Europe to hang out with my family, friends and my old Improv group. It is weird how many clichés and stereotypes are associated with Improv (even though for me, Improv always seemed to be a global movement). A lot of Europeans think that the North American style is too gaggy and goofy, whereas a lot of North Americans think that European style is too much in the head or too slow. Having experienced both sides I have to say that there are a lot of things that I love in both styles.

I really like that we have live musicians on stage during our shows in Europe. It gives you a lot of input and it also allows you to get a couple of musical challenges in the show (improvised songs, musicals, soundscapes…). And I love the fact that we play Theatresports™ with/against other groups as opposed to within our own group. This gives some extra input and new inspiration. It also helps to create a sense of an Improv community because you get to know a lot of improvisers from your country or even from neighboring countries (yes, Europe is a lot smaller). There is also a bigger long form movement over there…

On the other hand I have to say that North American Improv seems to be a little bit freer and also more political. In addition, players seem to be much more playful. It helps that the audience seems less reluctant to participate and I like the use of props.

But not only are the formats different but also mime seems to be culturally different. I remember a scene where I was miming to fill a clothes washer and my scene partner walks on stage and says “Is all the money in the safe?”. Later we found out that he did not understand my mime because I mimed a European front loading machine instead of a North American top loader. Another great example was my friend who was in a mining scene. The director yells “The canary just died. It’s a good-bye scene”. Since she did not know the story about the canaries in the mines, she thought that it was a scene where they say goodbye to a dead canary…

Previous Guests: Charna Halpern, Jill Bernard, Marcel St. Pierre, Josh Fulton, Brendon Bennetts, Terence Bowman, Gil Browdy, Alan Marriott, Jason R. Chin, Ian Parizot, Bill Arnett, Pippa Evans, Ben Whitehouse

The Guest Room: Ben Whitehouse

Ben Whitehouse is our guest contributor this week. He started learning and performing improv way back in 2001 and has been obsessed with it ever since. Ben has studied with pretty much everyone at UCBNY plus Armando Diaz at Magnet (among others). He performs regularly with LD & The Scientist and co-authors the excellent improv blog Improvoker. He is often found sauntering around UCB Theater in various degrees of unshaveness and loves when people say hi.

Keeping Your Perspective

Ah improv, right? One minute she’s your sweet, sweet girl and the next she doesn’t come home and instead calls you at 4AM stranded with her “girlfriends” at Detroit Metro Airport. Oh yeah, right, her girlfriends?! Come on, who does she know in Detroit… So improv can be frustrating — one minute you feel like you have it down, the next, it leaves you in the lurch.

The other night I had an epiphany. I was on stage with some very accomplished improvisers during an improv lottery, where we all put in our names in a bag and they were pulled out at random. The suggestion was “Star Trek” and we were doing really well for never having worked together and being a little trashed. Then I initiated a scene by pulling out a chair and saying “Okay, for the last time, it was only a television show in the 70’s. It wasn’t real. None of it was real. I am just an actor. I can only answer questions about the television show.” This statement set up my character’s point of view pretty concretely; I am only an actor who can’t answer your questions. It also told the rest of the improvisers on stage what I expected from them: ask me more questions about things I would never be able to answer so I can get angrier and angrier. All the pieces were set for a scene that could sustain itself indefinitely. However, about 2 minutes in, after some dialog about it all being fake, I flipped my characters point of view, or game by talking about the show like it was real.

I felt it happen — it was horrible.

All that pent up energy was let loose and the scene fizzled. I knew I was doing the wrong thing and could hear my coach, Amey Goerlich, like Obi Wan in my mind saying “Keep your perspective, Luke. It’s your roadmap for your scene… Vote for change.” But the damage was done. The scene continued, people had to heighten from nothing and we eventually got back to a place where we had some stakes to care about. But it didn’t feel good.

The lesson I learned, the hard way, is once you have your character’s perspective and behavior (game), that’s all you need. Try not to think it’s not enough, because it is enough. Once you have that perspective, in my case “I am an actor who is asked ridiculous questions I won’t answer”, stick with it. The truth is, I could have played a version of that game in any situation and if the other performers are keyed in on my game, they can present situations that allow me freak out, like getting pulled over by a cop. Once you know it, nail it down and explore the situation on stage. Guaranteed you will find new and exciting ways to play with that perspective as you explore the scene… and don’t let your girlfriend fly to Detroit. Who the hell does she know in Detroit?!

Previous Guests: Charna Halpern, Jill Bernard, Marcel St. Pierre, Josh Fulton, Brendon Bennetts, Terence Bowman, Gil Browdy, Alan Marriott, Jason R. Chin, Ian Parizot, Bill Arnett, Pippa Evans

The Guest Room: Pippa Evans

This week’s guest is Pippa Evans. She had a successful Edinburgh Fringe Festival where her debut solo show, “Pippa Evans and Other Lonely People“, was nominated for the if.comedy Best Newcomer Award. Pippa regularly guests with Grand Theft Impro and is a core member of Scratch, the improvisation team behind the Fringe favourite “The Reduced Edinburgh Impro Show“. She has filmed sketches for “The Wrong Door” on BBC 3, appeared as a guest on the BBC Scotland improvisational radio show, “Coming Up Next”, and is currently writing her first pilot for BBC Radio 4.

Hello. I am Pippa and I have been promising to write this blog entry for about three months. I got busy. I was tired. I went to the gym. I ate fried chicken. I googled myself. I made lots of other things more important. And I suppose that is why impro is not so successful in the UK, because it is never as important as other things. As boyfriends or stand-up or making a nice dinner. Because you feel like you can do it, so why work at it? You can get away with it most nights, even if it is a bit of a shabby show, so why rehearse? Why talk about it? Why waste precious chocolate-spread-eating-out-of-the-jar-with-a-spoon time sat in a room with your troupe discussing the finer points of “Yes and…”?

Surely if you know that, you know it all!

Well, well, it is time we gave ourselves a wake up call. We need to work even harder. We need to hone our skills. It is all very well knowing how to play “Endless Box” but if you don’t play it regularly, even if it is by yourself each morning, your brain will get stuck in a rut. I found that. I got all Impro-cocky and just turned up to shows and then found that actually, it is not about Me knowing the rules to the games, it is about Us working together and finding new rules to new games. Impro is the ultimate team sport, and sitting in a backroom eating chicken on your own isn’t going to make a great improviser. Thinking that other performance mediums are “better” or “need more work” will only push impro to the back of the comedy performance genres when it should be at the front. Nothing can beat a stonking impro show –a group of pals working together to create a unique performance experience. And yet we favour a man with a bow tie telling jokes about his mother-in-law. Stoopid us. But then we do it to ourselves. Impro is, at its best, the most adrenaline-fuelled ride you can give an audience and, at its worst, the longest drawn-out hour of cringe that you can muster. You cannot guarantee what will happen in the auditorium but I can guarantee this: if we give it the respect it deserves, we might get the results we crave.

Until next time, this is Pippa of the UK signing off!
xxx

Previous Guests: Charna Halpern, Jill Bernard, Marcel St. Pierre, Josh Fulton, Brendon Bennetts, Terence Bowman, Gil Browdy, Alan Marriott, Jason R. Chin, Ian Parizot, Bill Arnett

The Guest Room: Bill Arnett

Bill Arnett teaches and performs at the iO Theater in Chicago. He has taught workshops across the USA and Canada. As a performer Bill improvises with The Armando Diaz Experience and 3033.

When Francois asked me to write a post for his blog my first thought was how was I going to link my improv blog idea to France. I’m sure that was not the first thing Francois had in mind. In fact it’s inconsiderate of me to try and jam France into this thing. I’m not sure why I felt that way I just did. I think it’s a very human thing but that doesn’t make it any more acceptable. It would be like Francois inviting me over for dinner and I show up with a basket full of croissants wearing a beret. Bone Apa-teet!

If you have any friends who are police officers make a promise to yourself that you will never talk to them about being a cop or the law or the legality of one of your parking tickets. I knew a guy growing up, Officer Howard, and rather than having normal conversations with people about sports or the weather people only seemed interested in him answering their question about his gun, or the law regarding tinted car windows or obscure rules of drug possession (”Is it illegal to steal someone else’s illegal drugs and what if you did it with the intent of throwing them away?”).

So, Quincy Jones, the famous musical impresario, studied in Paris under the instruction of Mademoiselle Nadia Boulanger (I couldn’t help myself). In an interview I saw Mr. Jones mentioned that when he was young studying with the Mademoiselle that he hated having to learn his scales. He just wanted to improvise like his be-bop jazz heroes. His instructor snapped at him, telling him that by taking on limitations he will gain focus. Cool, but what are the scales of improv?

Freedom in restriction is what this post is about. Why is it that in some scenes the words come so slowly and reluctantly, and not in a good way. In other scenes the players are tripping over each other to speak next. While there are many factors that go in to any scene I believe that one of the strongest factors in this situation is that the slower scenes lack clarity. They lack rules, boundaries, a good fence. Ask someone what they like about people in general and you’ll slowly coax out of them a list of pleasant generalities. Ask the same person what they hate about George Bush and you won’t get them to shut up. They’ll immediately release a tirade of pointed, specific traits. By limiting what a person can think about they are forced to make stronger statements.

In improv we give ourselves boundaries by being explicit with our contextual information. A young boy enters a room and asks his mother, busy folding laundry, if he can go play now. What does the mother say? While there is no right answer we can easily provide a reasonable answer. (Did you finish your chores? No, today is family day. Yes, but be careful, it’s raining outside. etc…) Compare that to this scene: one player walks up to another, waving their hands before them, and asks if they’ve seen their thing. What happens next? Prepare for some slow, reluctant improv.

Previous Guests: Charna Halpern, Jill Bernard, Marcel St. Pierre, Josh Fulton, Brendon Bennetts, Terence Bowman, Gil Browdy, Alan Marriott, Jason R. Chin, Ian Parizot

The Guest Room: Ian Parizot

Ian Parizot is our guest this week. He is a member of the French improv troupe “Eux” (which is likely the only group doing a Harold in France). Ian spent this summer travelling across North America studying improv and blogging his travels at “L’impro, c’est la vie…“

I might be stating the obvious here, but I think taking risks is important in improvisation. What is improvisation, anyway? I will take a stab and try to define it simply: “Improvisation is theatre created on the moment.”

In that sense, when we watch improvisation, we are watching two things: the story unfolding AND the players taking risks while telling the story. And what is really great is that each part of the equation feeds the other: (1) when we take risks, we also take the story in unexpected directions and (2) when we strengthen our stories, we allow for more meaningful risk-taking on stage.

I will not focus on the story here, but rather, on risk-taking. Sometimes, I feel like we improvisers are forgetting to take risks. I’m stepping into very murky territory here, but we can usually sense when a performer is taking risks and when he isn’t. We can feel that at group level, too. Maybe you see the same old material pop up in scenes again and again. Maybe the games aren’t funny anymore. Maybe it gets simply… boring. There are lots of ways to tell.

What then? One solution is to change format. A lot of groups turn to long-form after a while because they feel short-form isn’t satisfying anymore. If you choose to do this, whatever the format you choose, I recommend really trying to understand and train specifically for that format.

Another way is to “spice up” what you are already doing. Do you do short-form games? A good way to take more risks in your games is usually to speed them up. I’m thinking of games like “Word at the time” or “Speak in one voice”. Or, if you realize you’re always at full speed, try slowing down.

Other suggestions:

• Do you use props? How about bringing some in your show? Fake mustaches are cheap and great!
• Check out what others are doing. Especially the other “schools of improv”. How about a little Johnstone? Annoyance? iO? Spolin? See shows, take workshops…
• Bring guests into your shows.
• Change the number of people in your show. Try doing a night with three people, if you usually play with six.
• Play to different audiences. How about playing in prison? In a children’s hospital? How about setting up a “non-profit” night at your theatre to attract new people?
• Take care of yourself. Give yourself one challenge per show and allow yourself two screw ups. Do that with everyone in the group.

I think there are lots of ways to take more risks. Basically, the idea is to change what you are doing. I’d like to finish with a quote that I love from Keith Johnstone: “If we knew how to do it, we would stop to do it.” If it gets too easy, if it gets boring, just change it! Find new ways to make improv interesting again!

Editor’s Note: This 10th article will be the last in the Guest Room series for a few months. Things have gotten pretty busy on my end. I hope to resume this as soon as I’m able because I’ve really enjoyed reading other people’s thoughts on improv. Kilothanks to everyone who participated.

Previous Guests: Charna Halpern, Jill Bernard, Marcel St. Pierre, Josh Fulton, Brendon Bennetts, Terence Bowman, Gil Browdy, Alan Marriott, Jason R. Chin

The Guest Room: Jason R. Chin

Jason R. Chin has been a teacher and performer of long-form improvisation in Chicago, Illinois for the past dozen years. He has created many long-form shows including Dinner for Six and Whirled News Tonight. He writes in his blog with words.

Formless Form

What is an improv form?

Basically, it’s a loose structure that improvisers can hang their scenes on; it helps with inspiration and connections. There are hundreds of different forms/styles of long-form improvisation for performers to choose to play with. I teach many classes at the iO Theater, with a primary focus on either learning new forms or reinforcing work on the iO’s signature long-form called The Harold. Sometimes it’s easy to get lost in all this form work and forget that it’s really about the scenes.

Every long-form style should be in service of the performers, not the other way around. Players should not be worrying about what has to come next, but rather what they’d like to come next.

When my sister (who graduated with a Masters in Dance from the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, thank you very much) performed in dance recitals, my mother would praise her and remind her to always smile. There’s a joy in performing and (unless it distracts) it should be shown.

You’ve seen some of the awful remakes and re-treads of classic shows that Hollywood has been turning out. The ones that work adhere to the spirit or nature of the show while freeing the writers and actors to create something new from old cloth. The bad ones are the projects that ape catchphrases or slavishly reiterate past plots or ideas. The bad shows are the ones that feel that they’re slaves to the form. Break past the form and do what’s necessary for a good show.

I am, of course, referring to how great Battlestar Galactica is and how bad Get Smart was. And I adore Steve Carrell. He was on the Second City Mainstage when I first started taking classes there and he was very nice to me (a student who worked in the coat check.)

Even in the beloved Harold (which is, basically: Group Game, Scene1, Scene2, Scene3, Group Game, repeat, lather, rinse, repeat as necessary), we should feel the freedom to break out and do what’s fun and necessary.

The audience doesn’t care what an improv form is, nor does it care. In the “current events”-driven show, Whirled News Tonight, we certainly adhere to specific form tricks, but basically it all comes down to great scenework. Let us be people and be affected by other people.

Previous Guests: Charna Halpern, Jill Bernard, Marcel St. Pierre, Josh Fulton, Brendon Bennetts, Terence Bowman, Gil Browdy, Alan Marriott

The Guest Room: Alan Marriott

Our guest blogger for this week is Alan Marriott with a retrospective piece. Now residing in Canada, he co-founded London’s Grand Theft Impro and created The Impro Musical and Impropera (a fully improvised opera). He has worked with or taught: The Comedy Store Players, Dogs on Holiday, Brickbats Volunteers, South of the River (with Steve Frost and Jeremy Hardy) and The Top Dog Players. A partial list of Alan’s former students include Eddie Izzard, Alan Davies, John Sparks, Gordon Kennedy, Niall Ashdown, Fay Ripley and many more. Keep an eye out for his upcoming book, “Genius Now!”

Well… Here I am back in Vancouver. As a Canadian who has been non-resident in Canada for almost 25 years, that statement might just mean a bit more to me than to you.

I came to London, England in 1985 to study at the London Academy of Music and Drama (LAMDA) and what an amazing time it was. Nights spent watching shows in London’s famous West End, days studying with experts in every aspect of theatre (to use the English spelling).

I had come from Canada with a pretty fair degree of experience in improvisation and I had the great fortune to be part of the early explosion in improvisation that happened across Canada in the early eighties. I cut my teeth with Vancouver Theatresports’ at its original home, City Stage and, as well as taking part in many, many TS matches, I also was cast in the first plays produced by VTL (Theatresports Hamlet and Suspect).

With my London training finished and nothing particularly pulling me back to Vancouver, I decided to stay and spread what I knew about improv to the English. I’ll never forget teaching a nutty Covent Garden busker called Eddie Izzard in his beginners class. Eddie was completely raw, manic, loony, and wonderful to watch. When I see him doing a comedy set, I always think how much his improv was like his stand up.

In 1985, London had a vibrant comedy circuit with tens of small venues tucked away in little rooms above pubs. The acts were weird and wild, often dangerously so (like Chris Lynam’s closing routine of dropping his pants and inserting a lit Roman candle between his naked cheeks). This was the heyday of Britain’s ‘alternative comedy’ circuit that spelled fame for people like Ben Elton, Lenny Henry, Jerry Sadowitz and many others.

Alternative meant turning away from the perceived racist values of older comedians and finding comedy from different sources. This created a huge pool of talented, funny people looking for some kind of extra edge that would get them noticed by bookers and then later, TV producers. A lot of them thought improv might just give them that edge. The Americans were doing it, weren’t they?

Kevin Carr, the artistic director of Marginal Bard, asked me to help cast, train improvisers, and play in a very different improvised version of Hamlet than the one I had previously done in Vancouver. Shortly thereafter, I set up London Theatresports with ex-Loosemoose Theater actor Barry Cook in 1987, first at the Banana Cabaret in Balham, South London and then later was asked put together a sponsored (Moosehead beer, of course) tournament at the Donmar Warehouse. There was almost no other improv in London at that time. The Comedy Store Players (with Mike Myers) had only just begun doing shows to tiny houses at the old Comedy Store venue in Leicester Square. Only three years later, ironically after Myers had returned to Toronto and joined Second City, they would become the nucleus of ‘Who’s Line is it Anyway?’ The remnants of Keith Johnstone’s ‘Theatre Machine’ (Ben Bennison, Roddy Maude-Roxby, Ric Morgan; all utterly brilliant improvisers) had all moved on to other things. This left a vacuum that Theatresports and Hamlet Improvised quickly filled.

It was like the early days of Vancouver all over again. Actors, comedians, street performers, social workers! Everybody, it seemed, wanted to learn about this new thing called impro.

Previous Guests: Charna Halpern, Jill Bernard, Marcel St. Pierre, Josh Fulton, Brendon Bennetts, Terence Bowman, Gil Browdy

The Guest Room: Gil Browdy

Gil Browdy is this week’s guest blogger. He’s a member of New York’s Epione, an improv tragedy group (they just played the Del Close Marathon). Gil began his improv career at the the University of Maryland with Erasable, Inc.. He then jumped ship and moved to Montreal, joining Without Annette, and becoming a regular at Theatre Ste. Catherine before fleeing to NYC. He sometimes goes by his graffiti name, Mr. Sir Duke.

Improv is Funny. NOT.

To start off, allow me to define improv. Improv is working together with a partner to create something completely new and original onstage out of thin air. Improv is cooperation, teamwork, creativity, story, character, emotion and more all wrapped into a (ideally) neat bundle and shipped out to a theatre near you.

If this is the case, then why does improv have to be funny? It turns out it doesn’t.

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The Guest Room: Terence Bowman

With almost 20 years of improv under his belt (as well as writing, acting and stand-up), Montreal’s Terence Bowman is the co-founder and Artistic Director of On The Spot Improv. He is also a member of the classic sketch comedy troupe The Vestibules (formerly Radio Free Vestibule). Terence is currently hard at work organizing the 3rd Annual Montreal Improv Festival which will be held Sept. 30 – Oct. 4, 2008 (last year’s site). He’d like you to know this is his first real foray into the blogosphere, so be gentle.

Chicago: Improv Town

There’s an episode of The Simpsons where Homer is on vacation in Chicago. He goes to see an improv show. The improviser on stage asks for a suggestion. Homer shouts back, “I’m on vacation. You do the work!”

While I’m sure most of us can see the obvious improv humour there, I was recently enlightened to the reason why attending an improv show is a particularly Chicagoan reference.

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