Monday, April 28, 2008 by John Robison.

Question: What makes a good troupe?

1.  You must be comfortable with one another.

Improvisers are constantly exposing parts of their brain that may not get exposed on a regular basis in everyday life. To be truly creative, you can’t be afraid of those around you. You should be able to talk about absolutely anything. You should be able to touch each other without recoiling. You should have the kind of relationships where you don’t have to censor yourself for any reason.  I am successful to varying degrees in the groups I participate in. With people coming in and leaving, and group dynamics constantly shifting, accomplishing true “comfort” is always a moving target… but I’m always trying to get there. Also related…

2. You must have a positive environment.

In my troupe, this is terrifically important. You can be super talented, but if you don’t have a positive attitude, you don’t get in. It’s our culture, and is vital to establish a basic level of trust really quickly. If you’re scared of being teased or derided because of some stage experiment you tried, you’re not going to ever grow, because you’ll be scared of being talked about behind your back. Plus, life is just too short to deliberately bring a sourpuss into your life. Which leads into…

3. You must have an open mind

Some people I know would have some trouble performing some of the scenes I’ve been in. If you have a certain mindset, and aren’t at least a little open, you’re going to have a hard time with these “non-traditional” social roles that might happen on stage. Some of the recent highlights from this category: a NASCAR family that keeps physical love amongst themselves, shunning those that find outside partners; a gay male trying to find his place in a small town; a political debate over the wisdom of voting for Ralph Nader; a man whose wife struggles to fit in with his existing girlfriend and boyfriend; a boy that is trapped in a grocery store and after many months is forced to eat people and people by-products… and so on. I don’t personally currently take part in any of these situations, but with an open mind, we were able to create some really interesting and funny pieces. For crying out loud. They’re not real.

4. You have to rehearse and/or perform on a regular and frequent basis.

In general, I hate comparing any art to sports, but in this case I’ll make an exception… if your football team doesn’t practice, they’re not going to be good. Even if you are a team that’s currently at the top of your game, then you stop rehearsing for six months or a year, it’s going to affect you. When you start up again, you might still be better than any of your competitors, but you won’t be as good as you used to be. Performing is also important… keeping in touch with your audience is essential to being a good troupe. Staying in touch with your base helps keep you grounded in reality.

5. You must have some basic improv training.

You can only be successful up to a point without having some basic ideas about how to make a compelling scene, create interesting characters, and support your scene partner. These things happen all the time by accident, but you’re really increasing your chances of them occurring if you train. This also implies that you’re willing to learn, which is extremely important. No matter who you are, you still have room to grow.

6. You have to be talented. Duh.

You can train at the best places,  get together a lot, be comfortable, and have a positive environment, but if you don’t have the talent, you’re just drinking buddies. You can’t really learn this, but some level of attention, timing, and quickness has to already be there.

Reaching some of these is pretty easy. Some of them are constantly moving, so you will never reach 100% (everyone has some hangups… you’ll never get to a 100% open mind, for example), but if you get everyone in your troupe as high as possible on these things, I’ll bet you’re a good troupe.

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Wednesday, April 23, 2008 by John Robison.

The long awaited Part III… the biggest lesson for me, which starts with a memory, and morphs into a good reminder:

6./7. Music is your friend/Why your tech should be an improviser

I remember one of the neatest moments from my time studying in Chicago was seeing a Harold show at i.o. in which one of the scenes took place at a school dance. A couple socially awkward teens were talking with one another, and at a lull in the conversation, the man cocked his head and said, “This is a great song.” The woman did the same and said, “Yeah, I love Journey.”

What happened next is impossible without planning ahead (which I’m certain didn’t happen), yet it happened anyway. A seeming split second after the word “Journey” came out of her mouth, the anthem “Don’t Stop Believing” piped through the sound system in the theater.  I’m positive there had to be some sort of lag time, but in my memory, it was instant, and I’m going to go ahead and go with my memory, because it’s somehow more romantic that way.

As the song played, the wallflower broke out of her shell, and did a two-minute improvised dance, using the entire stage. The tech did some really amazing dimming, runs, and flashing of the lights to help highlight this woman’s dance, and though two minutes might seem like a long time to spend during a scene, it was absolutely compelling. The combination of the music, lights, and commitment of the actress held me mesmerized. And I wasn’t the only one. The entire crowd was transfixed, and erupted into applause at the end.

After the show ended, I went over to talk to the tech (who happened to be one of my former improv teachers) to find out about what had happened.  Evidently, the ability to catalog and quickly find pieces of music was a new deal, and this had been the first practical use of that system. My former teacher was just as thrilled as everyone else. Had this been anyone else in the booth, this fantastic moment might have been missed, but it was an improviser at the top of his game that also possessed great technical skill and fabulous listening. He heard the call, added to the scene, and faded back into the background when it was time.

It still gives me shivers.  Too bad I’d forgotten about it.

Until (flash forward to the present) I went to see the show at the Playground. During their improvised dress rehearsal for a sketch show, Bella used (what I assume was) an iTunes playlist set on random to have opening music for each “sketch.” Most of the time this music was pretty well throwaway… to my judgment, the scene wasn’t really influenced by the music choice… with one notable exception.

The lights barely came up, with some 70s disco song playing. It doesn’t matter which one… so many of them are interchangeable. (That’s right, a little music criticism thrown in for free.) A woman fresh out of the shower stepped out and struck a pose (she was wearing a towel on her head… this group used random props that had been strewn across the stage.). After a few moments, a man went behind her, and started tracing the outline of her body in the air with his hands, so that all you could see were the woman, and a pair of hands caressing the air all around her - it was really a mix of sensual and funny… she had very little idea what was happening, as she kept her pose. When this played out, the man grabbed a random prop from the stage (a power strip), and started to dance with it just a little. Then he started to outline her body with the power strip, disco playing all the while, helping set the pace. Temptation was too much, and the guy decided he’d sensually plug the strip in to the nearest available “outlet.” The woman shrieked something about, “He clipped my hood,” and called for the tech to stop the music, which he did… and the scene unfolded from there.

I can’t believe it’s been a year since I’ve opened the Roving Imp, and I’ve yet to use the brilliant medium of music in a show. There’s so much potential there for helping to set the mood of a scene, and bring out some physicality in actors. I’ve only seen something like this done twice on stage, and both times it has left a really big impression. I’ve been working on a format that can use music (format may be too strong a word… it’s really just modified from formats that everyone uses), and I think I’ve arrived at something that will work. We’re going to workshop it the next couple weeks, and use it in the Spring Feelgood show on May 3. It may not be as mindblowing as the examples from Chicago… then again… why not?

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Thursday, April 17, 2008 by John Robison.

More ideas that have helped renew my thinking… thank you, Chicago:

3. Gender Issues: I’m sure there will eventually be a longer post about this… but gender representation in certain groups is terribly important. In the first group (the more novice of the three) there was one female out of eight improvisers. She got a LOT of play time, as it seemed that these novice improvisers were not as comfortable portraying a female on stage… it was easier to just grab the actual female in the troupe. Luckily, she got lots of good character time, and was not pigeonholed into the traditional improvised female roles that beginning troupes often fall into: the whore, the mother, the bimbo girlfriend, the bitchy wife. Maybe this issue gets less important as the experience level of the group as a whole goes up, but it made me glad that my relatively inexperienced group back home has about a 50-50 mix of guys and gals.

The second group was two women, and they had no problems at all playing whatever character sprang to mind. I haven’t seen many two-person female groups, but I was a little surprised to see just how many male characters they portrayed. Maybe I shouldn’t be… A quote from Clay Morgan’s review of my Improv Thunderdome performance: “John played more women on stage than were in the audience that night.” I guess it happens a lot, eh?

The third group played the same character the entire time, and those characters appeared to be, for the most part, pretty close to themselves. The issue of gender never even entered my head. I guess the illusion was complete.

4. Emotional connections are still the way to go: I’m sure I harp on this all the time, so I’ll make this short, with no pointed examples, but I think what separated the two groups I enjoyed from the one I didn’t was that the characters in the last two groups were actually vested in one another, and that made me care more as an audience member.

5. Really cool shows don’t need to take the suggestion literally: Something I occasionally drift away from. What should happen? You get the suggestion “skunk,” and you do scenes based on images and themes that the suggestion brings to mind. “But John, that’s harder than just going out on stage and petting a skunk!” Not necessarily, my whiny friend.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of room for skunk petting, and scenes about completely wiping out an opponent, or seeing the skunk family at home, but what about taking that suggestion out to a wider place? What is the skunk’s role in the animal kingdom, and how can that transfer to a human character? What would a character be like that walked into a scene as if he had just smelled a skunk? Maybe my character has a gray streak in her hair. Maybe my character will be a great lover, like Pepe le Peu. From the audience, these characters and scenes will probably look like they have nothing to do with the suggestion… and that’s OK. The point of the suggestion is not to give the audience a literal reinterpretation. The point is to start the creative flow of the artist.

Again, if you just get the suggestion, and immediately are starting a scene, you go with whatever comes to mind… but if you’re  on the sidelines and have half a brain free while you’re listening, why not try something more esoteric?

Yes… there’s still more to come… stay tuned.

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Wednesday, April 16, 2008 by John Robison.

Seeing a show in a new theater in Chicago was a great refresher. It’s really important for a serious improviser to get out and see what other people are doing, and it’s especially helpful if you can check out the scene in another city. Chicago, of course, has the most going on in improv, so there’s a lot to see. I was reminded me of several things that I had forgotten, or schooled me in things that I didn’t previously know. I’m going to split this into parts, as I learned a lot, and am also longwinded. Part I of that list follows:

A. Part of learning is performing: Very few things will change your behavior faster than doing something that is supposed to be comedy, and then getting no laughs. That’s good education… the kind that’s really tough to get in a workshop. I know performers who started out going for the quick easy joke, or by using quotes from television shows… to say the jokes and quotes fell flat would be an understatement. It’s funny when you’re in the context of a Simpsons episode… but not recycled coming from stage. I’ve told people this before, and they said they didn’t really believe it until they tried it in front of a crowd, and they felt people rolling their eyes without even looking.

On the other hand, nothing will reinforce your good habits faster than getting appreciation from an audience. Crafting a scene involving two characters with names that know each other and then exploring that relationship within the parameters of the scene seems like an interesting exercise during workshop. When the crowd goes nuts during a show because they can’t believe you just made up that entire scene, keeping them captivated and invested… well… there ain’t no better feelin’.

B. Different groups together: Nearly all the true Chicago-style longform shows are three-team events. It’s this way for the Harold teams at i.o., and for the teams I saw at the Playground.  Here in KC, this isn’t the norm, and it’s easy to forget that our way is not the only way. I feel like we’ve just recently figured this out, not only here at the Roving Imp (where we’re slowly phasing in multi-group nights), but also with multi-group nights that have been hosted at the Westport Coffee House. I know that the Trip 5s, Babelfish, Makeshift Militia, and several other groups have “split the rent” at WCH… I think as there get to be more and more improv groups in our city, this is going to be the way to go.

With more groups, there’s more competition for talent, venues, and audience… performing together could solve all those problems, and get your face out in front of people that wouldn’t normally come see you.  At RI, we’ve traditionally (in the past year) had one group do two shows back-to-back. That works well sometimes, but through some experimentation lately, I’ve found that presenting more than one group and allowing a little discount for seeing both really increases audience for both groups. For a theater owner, that’s important. We’ll be doing a lot more of this as I create or work out deals with more improv groups.

Part II to come…

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Monday, April 14, 2008 by John Robison.

My apologies for not updating in so long… the past week was spent in Chicago on a much-needed vacation with my family, and then catching up on work when I returned.

During my trip, I decided to skip the pilgrimage to my alma improv mater, i.o., and instead went to check out a theater I had never previously visited… The Playground. When I went in, I was shocked to discover that the Playground and the Roving Imp could easily be long lost sisters. Upon walking in, it was like coming home. Both theaters are similar in size, have an identical capacity (75), are laid out in a similar way, and also had sparse attendance for the show I attended.

I saw the Sandbox Improv Showcase, which takes three different teams to form a 90-minute show (which is the norm for a Chicago improv show). The names of the particular teams escape me at the moment, but the essence of the performances linger with me, waiting to be scribed in the paragraphs below.

As with other Chicago shows I’ve seen, the most novice team goes first, middle team next, and the most experienced team rounds out the night. This was also the case on this night. The first team, made up of seven men and one token woman (who absolutely held her own, by the way), performed a format where one two person scene occurs stage left, and then another eventually takes over on stage right. The original scene comes back on stage left, and the second scene follows it. At the edit, a different scene begins, and the pattern starts over again. Simple, and easy to follow. I will probably steal this idea. The improvisers on this team were obviously new to the art, asking far too many questions, failing to recognize gifts and games, and going for the quick (unfunny) joke at the expense of the scene. It was a pretty rough set, but gave me hope that yes, Chicago improv is not all glitz and glitter and uber-professionals.

The second team was a two-person female troupe, who took my suggestion of “floor lamp” and used it to start a documentary-style interview about two college roommates, followed by several freestyle scenes along the theme of “people that live with other people, and the people that love them.” Really entertaining, great characters, fantastic relationships, and an overall great show… my favorite of the night.

The third team performed an improvised sketch rehearsal. At first glance, it appeared that this team consisted of a guy and two gals on stage, but it quickly became apparent that a fourth male member was doing his improv from the booth, in his role as tech for the sketch show. The group got eight suggestions from the audience at the top of their set, and used those suggestions as the titles for the eight sketches which were to be in the show. The actual sketches were fine, but the real highlight of the set was the banter/arguments between the on-stage actors and the tech… that’s where the real emotion was, after all. Good, solid entertainment. Plus, there was an improviser that could easily have been the sister of KC improviser Tina Morrison. Eerie. The evening was bookended with clones. First the theater, then the actual actors.

I learned some new things, and was reminded of some things that I once knew, and had not focused on for awhile. I’ll highlight those in my next post. Tune in next time.

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Thursday, April 3, 2008 by John Robison.

I recently attended a show that reminded me exactly why it wasn’t a good idea to ever perform if you’ve been drinking. I know lots of people do it… but it’s just not the way to get to the top of your game.

This show I attended was performed by a group I really respect, though they are relatively new, and I had never seen them do a bad show. Their timing is always great, and I always laugh.  The night I saw them, there had been some revelry before the show, and if nothing else, it was really fascinating from a scientific point of view to see the effects of heavy drinking on improvisational comedy. (adjusts pocket protector and gets out laser pointer)

The camaraderie and sense of playfulness that normally exists in this group was nowhere to be seen…  and in fact the frustration from the one completely sober member of the group was palpable.  It probably goes without saying that focus was completely out the window, and relationships, storytelling and wordplay were greatly diminished, replaced by obvious onstage confusion, real-life smoking and drinking on stage, and the actual removal of pants for no real good reason.

In my groups, I’ve never really had any official policy on drinking before shows… as it had never been a problem. Even when a member would pop next door to the bar during breaks from rehearsal, I was cool with it, as long as they were back on time. These people are adults, right?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this ‘non-policy’ since I saw a perfectly good group have this show implode on them. People who are tipsy often think they are a lot funnier than they actually are, and when it comes to performing a show, I personally believe that we owe the audience our best, which they won’t get if it’s been dulled by substances. In many ways, I am glad I saw this show, as it has given me real and concrete examples as to why a nip or three of courage may be fun for you, but not for people watching you. And in a city where improv isn’t completely accepted as entertainment by the general public, we have to be super careful about what we present to people, because people talk to other people… and we will eventually want those other people to come see our shows.

In case you’re wondering, I still love this group, and plan on continuing to attend their shows. I’ve talked to some of the group’s members, and they are unhappy with the show they gave. In the end, it was a real learning experience for everyone, including me, and it wasn’t an evening completely bereft of laughs. Just further proof that anything can happen in improv, eh?

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