New excitement

Friday, January 23, 2009 by John Robison.

One of the double-edged swords of being constantly exposed to creative people in a creative environment is unbridled creativity of your own. For me, this manifests itself by creating new groups. I’m trying not to go completely nuts, because there are limits… you don’t want to overload your audiences with a whole bunch of new stuff… you don’t want to completely freak out your wife, who is about 20% freaked out at all times just because you own a business… and you don’t want to overtax performers.

So for this year, instead of having the grand change-splosion like in 2008, change will be a little more tempered. I can afford to do this since we’ve got such a great base of wonderful shows happening. Right now, there are three new projects… some are nearly here, and some are still on the horizon.

Project the First: Puppet Nation

Originally hatched last October after my sister Julie saw some puppet show on television and talked to me about it… and it reminded me of the really good puppet improv I’ve seen. We’ve made our puppets and have been rehearsing, and are set to debut this new show a week from tonight. I must admit… I’m more nervous about this show than I’ve ever been about any improv group I’ve created yet. First off, there’s infrastructure. One of the reasons I love improv so much is that it doesn’t require a set or props. This does. You have to have a puppet theater on the stage to hide the actors. The puppets themselves are props… and with multiple puppets per person, it gets crowded back there really fast.

Secondly, it seems that doing this puppet stuff is tough. Right now we’ve got four improvisers doing this show… and even the more experienced ones are having a tough time - they’re having to actually ‘do work’ at the same time as doing improv. Syncing a puppet’s mouth, arms, and body to fit the action is a lot tougher than any of us thought it would be. I have a ton more respect for good puppeteers now than I had before. Comedy is such a delicate animal… so far this puppeteering stuff has been throwing a wrench in our funny chi. Don’t get me wrong - I expect the show will have a respectable start… but we’re going to have to work our collective puppet butts off in the next week to make sure we don’t disappoint ourselves. Don’t be surprised if you come see the show, and none of the puppets have butts.

Project the Second: Expanded Classes

Roving Imp Saturday classes have proved popular enough now that we’re ready to expand to a second class. Hooray! I have a limit of 10 people, as more than that doesn’t play quite enough for my taste.The class format seems to work well, mixing absolute newbies, those with a solid grasp on improv, and people with over a decade of improvising. Everyone has things to work on, even if they just need to be reminded of things that they have forgotten about for the last four years. And there’s no better way for a newbie to get good really fast than to play with folks that are on fire. (that’s not literal, by the way. actual fire isn’t good for anyone’s performance). Actually getting to perform in front of an audience is also the kind of experience that no amount of rehearsals will ever prepare you for… and it’s good for people learning to have that.

The new class will likely take place on a weeknight (Monday or Wednesday), and have its monthly performance during our Final Friday at 7pm… to accommodate folks who just aren’t available on the weekends. I have two people that fit this category, and have told me they’ll sign up as soon as I get the class going. If there are two, that means there are more… I just have to find them and get them to sign up. I expect this class will start around the start of March… which means I’d better get my butt in gear and start telling folks. Next time you see me, don’t be surprised if I’m stuck in third and look a wee bit uncomfortable.

On a related note, our newest Imp, Denton, has expressed interest in teaching a non-performance class solely for beginners. We’re going to give it a try, and see if it’s something folks are interested in. I tried this when I first opened, but didn’t have any street cred at that time. Maybe now. Denton’s the guy to do it, too. He’s got good training, great enthusiasm, and experience. No timeline on this yet… maybe we’ll shoot for March as well.

Project the Third: Working Name: One

This new performance group will follow the same formula as Omega Directive. Omega Directive is a different kind of Imp troupe, made up mainly of improvisers that perform with other non-Imp groups, and who are really crackerjack. We’ve had such great, high-quality shows and so much fun & success with Omega Directive, that this similar project is almost a no-brainer.

Despite my apparently genetic aversion to having numbers in the name of my groups, “One” is speaking to me right now. We’ve spent some time the last two weeks of Roving Imp rehearsal tweaking the formats (both variations of longforms we’ve developed here at the Imp), to both make sure it would work and also to help get the actors as excited as I am about the group.

The new show will open in April, and will feature two halves of long form. The first being “One Location,” where each scene takes place in the same location, throughout time, back and forth. I love this format (which I brought back from my time at i.o. in Chicago) because it allows a great variety of scenes to happen, but also allows popular characters and scenes to come back in a completely natural and expected way.

The second format is one sprouted from a couple places… the first was during last year’s Chicago Improv Festival, when legendary group JTS Brown reunited for a talk about the old days. I’d never heard of this group before, but several of their members are rather famous nowadays. The idea came from something they mentioned about basing a longform around a character who gave a monologue at the beginning of their set. Each person played this character, bringing something different to the character, yet keeping the essence of that character. My non-Imp group, Improv-Abilities, developed a really cool game from this called “Group Monologue,” appropriately enough.

I toyed around with expanding that game into a longform, but as I thought about it, it became clear that having six mini monologues at the start of the show would box in the actors too much. There would be too much precedent, and everyone would be in their heads, trying to make sure they were keeping true to what had been established. Instead, it occurred to me to combine this idea with a longform in our arsenal called “Timeline,” in which we follow one character throughout their lifetime. In this new combined format, we follow one character in their lifetime, but that character is played by everyone in the cast at some point. Guaranteed interesting characters, because you have to make them unique enough that everyone can pick up on voice, body, and behaviors. It worked really well in workshop.

The formats are developed and the show is on the schedule. Now all that’s left is to cast it. I’ll talk to a bunch of actors, hopefully a bunch will talk to me, and I’ll develop a list of interested actors, and then choose the six from the list that complement each other the best. Sometimes I think I won’t be completely satisfied until I have every improviser in Kansas City working here at the Imp. There are worse places to be…

So there you go… more from my occasional series on what is exciting to me at the moment. Between new projects, ten other performance groups and family time, I no longer wonder why I can’t seem to blog more often. Besides… one of my blogs is worth at least six of most other peoples’ length-wise. Except Trish. God bless the long-winded, as we need it more, for we have weakened our fingers with typing and our butts with sitting.

Third butt reference. Time to wrap it up.

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