ImFest Day 4 (late show)

The teams from StoryBox (Chicago), Rapid Fire (Edmonton) joined members of Without Annette and On The Spot for a best-of-the-fest-at-the-nest.

The audience was sitting a bit far from the stage with the notable exception of 2 drunk girls sitting in front of the stage. One was quiet, one was loud–obnoxiously loud.

In the middle of our second or third game, the loud, drunken woman started singing really loud. John from Chicago did a nice job of yelling at the “neighbour” to shut up, then yelling at the “neighbour” that she had a drinking problem and finaly stopping the scene to ask her to stop interrupting. At this point, as host, I should have gone onstage and relieved John, a guest, from having to do this. But I didn’t. Part of me thought maybe she’ll finally shut up; part of me thought John seemed to be better at this than me; and part of me just didn’t know what to do next. The players on stage resumed the scene, she kept interrupting, and they finally finished what was a total energy-killer of a scene. Everyone was feeling rotten, and I was really feeling like I had dropped the ball. At least I had time to plan my next move.

From what I know of heckling, the next step in escalation is to show the heckler that it’s not heckler vs. players, it’s heckler vs. everybody, so I had the entire room yell (1-2-3) “Shut the fuck up, Daphne!” in unison. It was pretty glorious. She tried to brush it off, but under that layer of drunkeness, I could tell that her ego had been wounded. I wasn’t sure if she’d stop though; she still seemed very belligerent (and drunk). Thankfully, she did a little more arm waving, but gave up, went to the bar, got a verbal lashing from the staff, and left.

The show soared. The players seemed to have fun and the audience went home with a belly fully full of laughs. We abandoned the idea of long-form, but the short-form was great.

But what if she hadn’t stopped? What is the next level of escalation? Is it to ask the staff to eject her?

After the show, some of us closed out a bar with the folks from Chicago. It was really interesting hearing about the classes they teach at Second City and the projects they are involved in. I was left with plenty to think about. They were as nice as they were talented.

That was the end of the fest for me, seeing as I couldn’t participate in the final day. I say kudos to Terence for organizing a great festival. And big ups to everyone who performed and came out to watch. Except Daphne. Shut the fuck up, Daphne.

ImFest Day 3

ImFest switched venues to MainLine theatre for day 3. It was my first time performing there. It’s a gigantic stage compared to the comedy clubs and TSC. Note for big stage = you have the space, use the space.

First up was Rapid Fire Theatre from Edmonton. They did a no-games short-form set, using a white sheet as a multi-purpose prop. I’ve seen newspaper used in the same capacity. I think a white sheet works well because it’s versatile yet unobtrusive in scenes where it isn’t used as much. Homework: what other props can be used in this way? Joe and Kirsten had good chemistry, particularly evident in the diary scene.

Marc and I followed with a 2-person Uno, our first such attempt. We have workshopped the 2-person Uno a few times recently, so it was a chance for us to put it into practice. We were both very happy with the results. I did a monologue about how exceptional gifted students can use their exceptional gifts to defeat bullies. We followed up with a scene about 2 kids testing GlowOn, a farmer losing a cow, a scary pastor and a high-school with very high-security.

On The Spot followed up with some short-form games which went over well. The rest of us joined in for some more games in a show-ending jam and that was all he wrote.

ImFest Day 1

ImFest opened tonight at ComedyWorks with a mixture of short- and long-form.

I really dug what Dan and Brent from TSC did, which was a 2-player, multi-character story with lots of loose energy, some scene-painting and much off-stage scene-setting and direction. The deliberate choice of being unpolished in terms of intra-scene bits worked really well. The story was going along really well, but they kind of ran out of time to tie up all the loose ends properly. Whatever. The characters and attention to detail were great.

Our Uno went pretty well, I thought. I over-described the format at the top of the set because we’ve been getting feedback that some of our audience members feel lost. I think that some of the magic is lost by describing it, but maybe it’s worth it. Even though I told the audience that most of the scenes wouldn’t be related, our two story lines converged right at the end. So, so much for that!

Terence will be blogging the festival over here.

ImFest continues tomorrow at the ComedyWorks with a show at 8:30. Our next performance is at MainLine Theatre on Thursday at 8:30.

940 Audio

The One Thing People Are Talking About Today: Improv

Terence from OTS and I were on What’s Up Montreal last Sunday, hosted by Natasha Hall. She had us on to plug our upcoming joint-show, Ultimate Improv Championship, and to talk improv. We also played a few games.

Natasha was a pleasant and welcoming host. You’d never know she’s only been doing this for only 2 months.

The interviewing went well enough. I think I adequately described our long-form show, Uno. (Clip) When asked if there were any times I didn’t enjoy improv, I meant to speak in general terms about turning scenes and shows around when things aren’t going well–that moments of despair can turn to triumph, that this is one of the glorious aspects of improv. But in the moment, the example I was thinking of was that heckler-from-hell from a few months ago. (Clip)

Terence and I also did some on-air improv which was, shall we say, forgettable. We did a 1-word story about a guy in Shaghai, a 1-word story about a big monkey (Clip), and a game of More Specific.

My favourite part of the interview is included in that last clip. After a fairly choppy 1-word story, Natasha interrupted (fortunately!) and we had this exchange:

N.H: “Is this a passing of the buck? Is that the goal? Is the goal to screw your partner up, to like, try and give them as little as possible to work with?”
BJ: “Ah… Not usually, no.” [laughter all around]
N.H.: “But that’s what’s happening?”
TB: “If you’re picking that up…”

Obama?

Yeah, um, in improv, you generally want the opposite. You want to make others look good. Looks like Natasha caught us making each other look bad! Oopsie!

Thanks to Natasha and Terence!

Oh, inside the newsroom, there’s a sign that says: What is the one thing that people are talking about today? That’s indeed a fairly concise way of summing up talk-radio for you. Still, I find corporate instructions on the wall to be a tad demeaning. Don’t tell my Joe Cannon what to do! He’ll wash his hands before returning to work if he sodding well wants to.

Until next time, keep drinking that Kool-Aid!