Armando Diaz 2/27/06
To quote Armando’s bio on the Magnet website, ‘Armando Diaz is widely regarded as one of the finest improv instructors in the country.’ He began his career in Chicago where he was involved with ‘the Armando Diaz Experience.’ He came to New York where he has instructed at the UCB, PIT, and Magnet Theaters.
Josh: Where were you born?
Armando: I was born in Harvey, IL in 1966.
J: Is that a small town?
A: It’s a south suburb of Chicago, like 30 miles south.
J: What were some of the things you found funny when growing up?
A: My Dad’s sense of humor was pretty silly. He was kind of a silly guy. My mom’s was pretty wicked. It was more when she was mad at us that she was hilarious. She would say something heated to us and it was pretty exaggerated and funny.
I don’t think growing up I was exposed to a lot of comedy besides the tv. I guess growing up comedy was kind of a defense mechanism. But it wasn’t until later on, like in High School that I started to get interested in comedy seriously.
J: How did you get interested in comedy at that time?
A: Well, in High School, I became friends with Kevin Dorff [writer for Conan O’Brien and improviser]. I met him in, I think, Sophomore or Junior year. We were in the same Chemistry class. He was a total class clown. I was kind of a quiet guy. I was the kind of guy who would make jokes under my breath. Usually no one would hear them, but then Kevin would hear them and he thought they were funny, and he’d kind of joke back. Or repeat them and stuff. So he was kind of the first person who I connected with comedically.
So then later on I had another class with him. And it was really kind of a bullshit class called Consumer Education, or something like that, Consumer Studies. One of those things that High School makes you do, because they think they’re going to prepare you for life or something. So we had this real terrible teacher, he was the gym teacher, who taught it. He was a real dick and hated us both. So we just pass notes and write comedy bits, put captions in our books. That was the first time I started wanting to do comedy.
He was kind of a big fan of comedy already, like the National Lampoon, things like that. So he was kind of my introduction to it.
J: How did you get involved in improv?
A: Well, after High School I decided I was interested in film. So, I ended up going to film school. After about a year and a half, I ended up bumping into Kevin again.
J: At the same school?
A: No, Kevin had gone to U of I, and I had gone to Columbia College in Chicago. And Kevin had flunked out, was back in the city, living with his brother, working at a gas station…
J: Really?
A: Yeah. He worked at like an AMACO, QuickyMart, and was taking some classes at a Junior College, which was absurd because he was like a total AP student in High School. I just don’t think he was destined for academia.
So, we run into each other. And I had taken an acting class as part of film school. If you wanted to be a director, they encouraged you that to study that, and in it we did a lot of improvisation. And Kevin’s sister had gone to see ImprovOlympic a couple times, and brought Kevin to it. So she suggested that Kevin should take a class, so we both decided ‘ok, we’ll take that class and check it out.’
J: So, you decided… this wasn’t all decided at that one meeting at the gas station?
A: No, we started hanging out, and it just kind of came up. And I had the same idea of taking an improv class, because I had gone to sit in on a Player’s Workshop class at Second City, because I had a friend who was a fellow film student who was in it, who was like ‘yeah, you’re a pretty funny dude. You should come check out my class.’
And so for some reason Kevin and I both came up with the same decision at once. He suggested ImprovOlympic. I had seen Second City, so I decided to go try an ImprovOlympic class, and I liked ImprovOlympic a lot more, because you just got more into it. So we both just ended up taking that.
J: How did you get ‘more into it’ at Improv Olympic?
A: Well, there’s Players Workshop and then there’s Second City. Player’s Workshop is kind of this separate entity that was kind of affiliated with Second City. It was really basic. It was the kind of thing where you’d just be working on object work for three hours, you know? Like this is a camera [mimes taking a picture], sweep the floor [mimes sweeping with a broom]. It was basic, but in Charna’s class the first day we were just in, doing scenes. That class was just exciting and just amazing. It’s the kind of thing like where you’re like ‘wow.’ We had discovered this really great secret.
The funny thing about it was the first class we showed up to, we were supposed to show up to this bar, called the ‘Red Barron’ or the ‘Red Lion’ or something like that. The class was supposed to be at the back of the bar. It was this empty German bar. And the German bartender takes us to the back and says ‘well here’s the class.’ It was just this empty room with naked pictures shellacked all over the wall. There was just this kind of little plywood stage. And Charna didn’t show up. None of the other students showed up. It was just me and Kevin, and I was just like ‘Kevin, what kind of class is this?’ We waited for like half an hour and the bartender was like ‘phone call.’ And Charna said ‘yeah, we delayed the class one week.’ So, I was like ok. I’ll come back again. So the next week we actually had our first class and that was awesome.
J: So, they didn’t have their own theater space?
A: Oh no.
J: What year was this? And what was Improv Olympic like at the time?
A: I think it was like 89. It was either 88, 89 when we took that first class. And they didn’t have a space. It was just Charna, Del, and another teacher Noah. And they had shows, in a bar, kind of like the Parkside [a bar with a performance space in New York] or whatever. So on Fridays and Saturdays like at 8 or something they’d do their shows, then there would be bands and stuff later. The bartender would let them do it, because they would get drinks. And Charna would teach class at rehearsal studios. It was actually mostly in the back of bars, because it was all free. So it was really fly by night. There was no space. And that lasted for maybe four or five years. The venues got better, because they got more students and more teams. And they could get a bigger bar with a bigger stage. And they would be there for longer periods of time. But there would always be that, we’ve been here nine months to a year, and ‘Uh-oh, we got kicked out. ImprovOlympic doesn’t exist for three or four months until they find another place.’
It was such a new thing, you know? Such an underground thing. It was just such a little cult. No one really knew too much about it. But everybody knew Del, and everybody wanted to study with Del. That was a big attraction. And when you went there it just seemed like most amazing thing in the world. It was just like a great discovery. And it was the only place the Harold was going on. It had awesome performers and stuff, but it wasn’t until Charna finally felt the confidence to get a space that Improv Olympic became Improv Olympic. Until then it was like, ‘we’re a bunch of losers. …We all really love this thing. Wouldn’t it be great if we could do something with it? Or if anyone got into Second City.’
The biggest deal was Second City hiring Tim Meadows, who had studied at Improv Olympic. All of the sudden, there was kind of this legitimacy. A lot of it had to do with Del, because he directed Second City. He’d be like ‘you have to check out this guy Farley,’ which gave him an audition. And Farley got hired. And that just kind of really started to establish ImprovOlympic.
J: So there were only three classes at the time?
A: There three levels, level 1, level 2, and then Del’s level.
J: And when did you start to get performing at ImprovOlympic?
A: For some people it was like the fifth or sixth week of level one.
J: They were put on a team?
A: They would pluck them and have them sit-in sometimes with a group. It was pretty daring and reckless in a way, because they were still figuring out the Harold. Even the best teams still kind of derailed, and couldn’t get through a whole Harold. So some people would get put on sometimes in level 2. I didn’t get on a team until Del’s class, so that was comparatively late to everybody else. They didn’t really have a methodology to making up teams back then. They were kind of making it up as they went along.
J: Who were some of the performers back then?
A: Dave Koechner. Kevin Dorff. This guy Jay Leggit who was on ‘In Living Color.’ Mitch Rouse.
J: Tim Meadows and Chris Farley, were they around at the time?
A: Farley was around. Tim Meadows had already been hired. I think he was on a team before. There were guys like Dave Pasquesi and Mick Napier who were a generation before me and had already gone off and started doing their own thing. Then afterwards just some amazing people started coming through.
J: Did you know that these people would become like these big comedy names in the future?
A: Yeah, definitely, because you could just see it right there in front of you. And what I’d seen comedy-wise, it didn’t seem like anything was all that exciting except for what was going on at Improv Olympic. It just seemed like this is so much funnier than what’s on tv. And it’s really smart. Yeah, everyone kind of had that feeling, like this seems to be something powerful, except for the fact that we’re in a bar, out in the middle of the train tracks, in the west side of Chicago, and there’s only eight people in the audience. And they’re mostly friends or commuters who didn’t have anything to do. So it seemed like people were destined to do something, you know? And it just felt like the energy, and the conversations that happened after class, it just seemed like people were there because it was so powerful. There was no …[big payoff]. You’re just going to play in a bar. There’s nothing respectable to that. It wasn’t like you were achieving anything to do that. So it was definitely about the work. And they had the work-ethic.
J: So how did your goals start to change as you got more involved with improv, and want did you start to want out of improv?
A: Well, you know, I always kind of wanted to work in film. I think things started to change after I had done Improv Olympic for a while. After a couple of years, I was like ‘that’s fun, but I’m not going become an actor,’ that was never one of my goals. It was after I left and came back and ended up performing again, then started to teach and direct. So that’s when any goals asserted themselves, when I started seeing that I really enjoy teaching and directing.
J: So, what do you mean, after you left?
A: I left to go back to school. I had dropped out of film school, then I decided to go back and finish my degree. Once I finished my degree, all of the sudden improv came back. We started doing the ‘Armando Diaz Experience.’
J: How did that happen?
A: Well, by that time Improv Olympic had grown and gotten their own space. A lot of people were hired by Second City, working on their resident company or their touring companies. They talked for so long about how great it would be if Second City started hiring all these Improv Olympic people, how much better it would be, but then they realized Second City is still going to be the same animal. It’s about doing those sketch reviews and stuff. They kind of missed the whole long-form aspect of being able to just get up there and just perform with each other, instead of you know doing the same thing over again. The excitement was gone.
So, Charna was opening her new space and needed shows. So, I was hanging out with Dorff and Adam McKay and Koencher at our apartment. It was like five in the morning or something like that. They started talking about ‘yeah, Charna wants a show with the alumnis.’ Then Adam McKay came up with the idea of ‘The Armando Diaz Experience.’ The idea being that all the focus would be on me, like everyone would have to serve me was his idea. Because he wanted it to be egoless. It would be a rotating cast and he was worried about people’s jealousies, worried about people not taking things seriously. So, he just came up with the crazy idea, just ‘ok, we’re going to do a show, and everybody’s just there to serve Armando’s whims and wishes.’ And Dave totally yesanded the idea. Me, I’m just like whatever.
Then they drew up cast lists. Eventually the night ended. I was just like, ‘that’s funny, whatever. I have to go back to my videotaping weddings job. I don’t have time for this.’ Then I got a call from Dave the next day. He was like ‘I talked to Charna. She loves it. We’re doing it in April,’ which was a couple months later. And I was just like ‘doing what? I don’t even know what my role in this is.’ So we were slated to do this show called ‘The Armando Diaz Experience.’ It was just one of those things where it’s just kind of like [makes a motion of being forced out into the spotlight reluctantly.]
J: Did you say ‘at our apartment’?
A: Yeah, me and Kevin were living together.
J: With Adam McKay and Dave Koechner?
A: No, they were just over. Those guys had better jobs than us.
J: So how important to ‘The Armando Diaz Experience’ to you, just as like a show?
A: It was huge. It was definitely huge in terms of getting to teach, and coach and things like that. First off, I pretty much was done with improv, then the show was very successful, and I had a good time doing it, and had opportunities to coach and direct. So I started directing some shows and stuff. I don’t think I would have gotten that consideration as easily if it weren’t for that. That really led to me getting to develop as a director. So, that’s what kept me doing it.
J: What are some shows that you got to direct, and how did they help you as a director?
A: It was definitely a lot of trial and error. I did a show called ‘Fist Soup.’ It was kind of a long-form idea. It was kind of a big town kind of thing. All the characters lived in the same town, the same environment. Kind of improvise a bit of a story. It was mildly successful on our first outing. Then we tried doing a Sitcom based on a person’s life. The idea was every two weeks we’d put up a live sitcom. I learned a lot about writing and staging things. I learned that you can’t write a sitcom in two weeks and stage it and memorize it. It was a bold idea. It was fun. I directed a lot of groups that were improv groups. I developed a form called the Evente. I started developing it in Chicago.
J: How did you come up with the Evente? What was the original concept?
A: I worked with a couple groups, but I mainly got it off the ground with a group called ‘The Pack.’ It came about by wanting to do something where there were flashbacks, and using that device to tell a story, flashing back and flashing forward. It was influenced by Rashomon and the Usual Suspects. The Pack ran it for over a year at a place called Sheffield’s and really started to get it to work. Then I ended up doing it in UCB in Chicago with a cast [I think this should be either New York instead of Chicago or at the Chicago Improv Festival.] I brought it back a couple years later with Respecto, where we kind of approached it in a slightly different way, then with Jenny I think I got the last bit of it. It took years working on it on and off.
J: So how has it evolved and how has it taught you how to create a form?
A: Well, the structure wasn’t as big of a deal as so much learning how to teach the structure. Same thing with the Harold. Harold structure existed for a long time, but it took years with people experimenting with it until they learned how to teach it. And that’s when it really started to work. People didn’t really understand it until they started to play with it. So, I had to come up with different ways to teach certain concepts, about understanding time, and how game and story relate, instead of just writing the story, you know what I mean? That game playing, playing from the inside, instead of trying to write the overall story, I was kind of grappling with those concepts, of letting the story tell itself, instead of forcing it. These were kind of the principles that I messed around with with Fist Soup, but in the opposite way where we were trying to think about conventions of stories, and playing arcs and things like that, which didn’t end up working. The main thing was the tools, coming up with the tools for how I’m going to teach it that made the form work.
J: Who were some influences on you as an improviser and you as an improv teacher?
A: Noah Gregoropoulos, Mick Napier were both really big. Obviously, Del. Del more in a spiritual way than a technical way. Mick and Noah definitely in their teaching methods. So I’d say those three main people.
J: Where would you say you’re closest to now as a teacher? Would you say you’re closer to the Annoyance style, Improv Olympic, or to another teacher who you studied with?
A: I would probably say still a little bit more IO, but the thing that was really great about Annoyance was the way it just attacks it. It gets people to jump in there and do it. It’s sort of the way I like to teach. It’s has more to do with making them do it, and learn through experience, more than other ways where you sort of talk through it. You know it’s kind of a mixture of all them. But aesthetically it’s more ImprovOlympic. In terms of intensity some shades of, you know obviously stolen and mangled excersizes that I took from Mick Napier.
J: Were you doing any performing after film school?
A: No, it wasn’t until I did the Armando Diaz Experience [that I got back onstage again], after that I didn’t do any performing at all.
J: You were involved in an early incarnation of the UCB, right?
A: I helped out with one of the shows. They did a show called ‘Conference on the Future of Happiness.’ We did a version of the video roadtrip with it, which they did in the original show, which Neutrino kind of does as a full form. We’d do a bit where we’d grab someone out of the audience, and during the show tape some bits, then come back and show it at the end of the show.
J: Was it good work? Were you satisfied?
A: Yeah, it was a lot of fun, because the concept of it is just exciting. You’ve got somebody who you’ve never met before whose thrown in the middle of it. And you’ve got someone whose a plant playing characters. You’ve just going out into the middle of the city and being improvisational, being like ‘oh, there’s a gas station.’ How can we use this as a bit? There’s a florist, or, you know, there’s some people on the street. So it was cool because you were improvising on film, or on video, and you only had 15, 20 minutes to do it all, so it was a lot of great chaos. Then also as much as you could use film language, use the camera to take interesting shots and tell the story in an interesting way, that was such a great idea. That was all Adam McKay’s idea for their original show which they did in 1991, I think. But it always just worked, because it was in the moment, and I guess sort of the danger of it just inspired you to make some things happen.
J: So what brought you to New York?
A: UCB wanted to start a theater. They had been teaching classes and doing some shows out of Solo Arts. They had gotten signed by Comedy Central, so they needed somebody to kind of help take over classes, help them out getting their theater space and stuff. So I came out in 98 and was teaching classes for them while they were doing their tv show the first season. Found a space that Fall or Winter. I think it was January or February 99 we actually opened the space. So I was real interested in coming out there to try and help them run the theater, and teach. I had ideas about how we could take what ImprovOlympic was doing and maybe build on that. I was excited to be in New York too. I had been out here and had taught a workshop for the UCB like a year before. And had a really great time. People seemed to have a good time in the workshop. So, I was like ‘yeah great, I’ll come out here and do that.’
J: So how did you hope to build on what Improv Olympic was doing?
A: It was always the kind of thing where there were a lot of real talented performers, then they’d do Harolds or improvise. After that it’d just be the kind of thing, where’d they’d hope to get hired by Second City and stuff. So I was just like ‘well maybe all those talented people could create more of their own stuff.’ Just kind of finding different ways of doing things, different ways of running the team system, different ways of generating sketch shows and improvised shows. One thing I’ve always wanted to do was help raise the profile of improv, in terms of it being theater, in terms of it being art. Instead of it being something where it’s your friends just getting up on stage. And you have to kind of worry about getting over those cringe-worthy moments. ‘Ehh, it’s Bob from accounting doing improv.’ That’s a fun experience, but wanting to also help it keep pushing itself. I’ve always thought that there’s lots of potential with that.
J: How did you want the team system run differently?
A: It’s the kind of thing where before people were just kind of thrown on teams. Sometimes teams worked, and some teams didn’t. Then after months and months, they eventually just of disappeared. It was kind of just like ‘Ok, we’re not on the schedule anymore. I …guess we’re not a team. …Alright.’ So there was kind of like a gap in terms of any real methodology for doing it. One of the things we tried to do was to have a bit more of a process for putting teams together, and how you choose people, and how communicate with them. And the criteria. Because there was just so much speculation as to why you’d get put on a team, or get taken off a team.
So we were trying to do that at UCB, but it was hard because we went from having 3 or 4 one semester to jacking up to 11 level ones the next semester. And it was just like we’re handling this many people, and we’re going to give everybody a chance? It went from ‘ok, you’ll be on a team. It will be a chance to learn,’ to ‘Oh my God.’ Now you’ve got three times as many people and can’t give everybody a chance to be on a team even if you wanted to. So it just kind of got out of control. I was just like at that point I couldn’t keep doing it, because it just… you know, there’s no rhyme or reason.
But that’s always the biggest thing: finding a fair way to do it, because it’s such a hurtful thing not to be on a team. Everybody’s feelings get hurt if you don’t make it, but then again not everybody’s ready for it. And there are some who you don’t know. You put them on a team and you might have your doubts about them, then all of the sudden they get a chance to play on a team for a while, they gel and all of the sudden they’re awesome. And who are you to say you know best. And there are some people who you give them a chance and they never grow anymore. Then you have to deal with the hurtful process of what should I do? Should I take them off? Now that I put them on? It’s kind of like ‘here’s you baby. Oh wait a second. It’s not your baby anymore. We’re giving it to someone else.’ That’s still the biggest nut to crack.
It’s a bit different when you audition for a play. You’re like ‘ok, well, didn’t make the play.’ It’s such an emotional thing for people [to get taken off a team]. So, you know, still trying to work on that. Trying to find a different ways of doing it.
J: So how would you describe your approach to that at the Magnet?
A: Well, we’re getting to put people on teams in a class setting, so you really get a chance to see them under fire, and really know how they’re doing before you make that decision. Because I think there’s such a gap between, someone’s in a class, you toss them on a team, then you don’t get to watch them very much. Then you come back a few months later and get to watch their group, and you’re like ‘oh my God. These guys are terrible.’
Hopefully, by the time they’ve done so many shows, you’ve had the chance to work with them and give them notes and things like that, when you put them on a team you’re going to feel confident that you’ve taught them the things that they should know, and that they can perform them at a reasonable level.
And the people that you don’t put on teams, hopefully the opposite. You know that you have given them a chance and they understand that they know that they’re there to learn, and you’ve given them feedback. It’s not an arbitrary decision. So hopefully that’s something they can accept easier than it just being like ‘alright, let’s have an audition I’ll see you for three minutes and hope that was a representative sample of what they can do.’ So the hope is by doing the team performance workshop at least everyone knows exactly what you’re supposed to be doing on stage, so it isn’t like ‘oh they haven’t taught it.’
J: What was your impression of New York improv when you came here?
A: It was very spare. Chicago always had a piano player when you would do improv, so that’s how we always saw it, because you get used to it. There weren’t the same time constraints in Chicago. There would be an 8 o’clock show and there would be a 10 o’clock show, so a show would last ninety minutes. It was kind of loose, a Harold could last 45, 50 minutes. Some benefit was people could take their time and find things. The drawback was that sometimes shows could be kind of slow and plotty. It was like ‘when is this thing gonna be over?’ And then the music could be this kind of great element that added levels to it, and some times it could be something that was too much.
In New York, because UCB was renting by the hour, they tried to pack as many shows as possible. It was like ‘ok, there’s a 7 o’clock show, there’s going to be an 8 o’clock show, a 9 o’clock show, then a 10:30 show.’ It was like ok. We need the audience in and out between the shows. The players warmed up and you’ve got to do the full show, and there wasn’t anyone to pay a piano player. So it was a very spare bare-bones type of style. I think for a while it kind of devolved into something very conceptual and very verbal. The first things I was seeing were totally about dialog and concept. One of the things I was trying to do when I would teach was to try and make sure that people embrace in other elements. I think once they got a theater there was more of a chance to use that kind of stuff.
J: How have you seen the New York improv scene change since you’ve been here? And what do you think are some of the things responsible for that change?
A: What’s good is that more heads are in the game. There’s more teachers from Chicago. More people doing workshops out of town. More different types of influences. It used to be: there’s Chicago City Limits, Gotham City improv, UCB, a couple other things here and there. The UCB used to be the main authority, you know, and now there’s people studying a lot of different places, bringing in other schools of thought, trying to expand [the improv scene.] I feel it’s getting more depth and more variety which is good. You know, being able to play the game, but also being able to develop character and play detail, and play slow if you need to or fast if you need to. It feels like it’s getting to be more like Chicago was in the 90’s. You have broadening skills as well as strong performers doing strong work, so it just feels like it’s filling out. Before it was kind of skeletal. Now it feels like it’s a good thriving scene.
J: So what do you hope to accomplish with the Magnet that you weren’t able to accomplish at the UCB or at the PIT?
A: Uh, make a good living. My whole thing is that I feel that the culture of a place is important. I feel it filters into the work, the performers, so having a place of your own allows you to create the culture of it. It’s not only what you do onstage, but also how everybody behaves off the stage, how they treat each other, the relationships, things like that. But also, I think being able to change the emphasis of, teams are good, that’s fine. But the Rep is something good. It’s something I’m excited about. It’s an alternative to teams. Think of shows being cast like plays, and being part of a company. Everyone gets so team obsessed. A team’s a great opportunity to get your legs as a performer, but it isn’t the only thing. If we only do that we’re not going to expand forward very much. So that’s one thing. Then just with shows hopefully break open, even on team night, the way you present a show, try to make shows more audience friendly. Try to get more theater audiences in there, instead of just people’s friends. Try and really get it to be more artful. Another thing I’m really happy with about the Magnet is more of an exchange of ideas, like not only improv but theater, music, art. You shouldn’t live in improv seven days a week. You should find other influences and influence other people too. Hopefully, we’re putting that idea out there.
J: It seems like the Magnet has become pretty popular pretty quickly. Do agree with that? Were you surprised with it?
A: It seems like things are going well, and that’s good. For me, for the most part, I’m happy with what the students are doing. I like the work that they’re doing, and the way the program’s shaping up. So that’s good. I like that people are signing up for classes and we’re able to pay rent. I’m not surprised that it’s going well. I’m very happy about it. It’s exciting that there’s interest in our point of view.
J: You performed at the first Ampersand for half an hour. How long had it been since you performed?
A: Probably about 9 years, 8, 7 years. I used to sit in on some ASSSSCATs and stuff, but it’s sort of a different experience. Probably about 7 years.
J: How did you like it?
A: It was fun. It was really nice. I like that form, which is why I think I was interested in doing that. Just the chance to do a scene. And work with Christina Gausas, because I knew she was a great performer, and we could take some risks with each other. We had a friendship, so there was a lot of trust in it. So I really enjoyed that. It’s been fun every time we’ve done it. It was the kind of thing that was very different from sitting in with a bunch of people who can kind of get tag out happy. For me that doesn’t expand me as a performer at all. You can do that at a bar, just throw out jokes and see whose is the funniest. I thought it was kind of a great challenge to be out there longer and see if you can sustain it.
J: What is ‘the game’ and how important is it to good improv?
A: The game’s very important in improv like all components. You need all of them. You can’t just go ‘hey, you need environment. Or you need dialog, or chairs or whatever. You need history.’ All those things contribute to the game, so the game is only as good as the specifics that you bring to it. We can play a one-upsmanship game where I would keep on topping you, but what’s going to make it funny are the ways that I top you, the specifics that top you. Therefore, that’s the reason that you want to develop a character, and you want to develop the location, the history, whatever, because then I have lots of interesting, more profound, heightened, high stakes ways to top you.
To me the game is only a structure, the same way that Harold’s a structure. What makes Harold work is what you bring to Harold. And what was great about Del was how much he would inspire people to be able to play the structure, but being able to play it in a way that you aspired to something smart and meaningful. He didn’t say ‘play the game. Play the game. Play the game,’ but if the game’s not meaningful, then it’s sort of not interesting. It’s not going to be very funny. So to me the game is a structure and you can learn to recognize it, but you also have to be an interesting human being and have something to say.
J: Do you have any opinions on why the game is funny?
A: We respond to patterns. We like music and music repeats itself. Music has a verse and a chorus and verse. The rule of threes. We just get used to cycles. The universe is like that for some reason, and every living thing on it seems to be hardwired to it. And there’s probably some kind of Eastern philosophy that talks about this.
So we get pleasure every time a pattern in music happens. The same thing with game, with the joke that keeps coming back. We don’t want to hear it consistently. We want to see it [then have it go away.] In music, there’s this thing: the build up of tension, the release of tension. Most music is based on it. Build tension release tension. There’s a pattern to it. In comedy, it’s the same thing: the building of tension the release of tension. And that’s what the game does. And why that is? I don’t know. I don’t know the nature of the universe, but it seems like that’s just how it is and how we respond to it.
J: To you, what are some of the most important elements of good scene work?
A: There are techniques like take your time, listen, try and connect with your partner. Those are techniques that hopefully get you to a place where you find inspiration and you are able to use your intellect, and you’re able to fill that scene out. So I think good improvisers are able to tap into that stuff immediately and are very open to their partners and open to what’s going on onstage. You know that whole cliché of being in the moment. But it’s just whatever methodology you use to sort of ‘be there,’ that’s what good improvisers do, because their very sensitive. They are aware the moment anything deviates, anything special occurs. They’re able to react to it and exploit it and use it.
In scene work, you can work in great detail and get very specific, and get a real sense of rhythm, and a sense of patience. You just wait for the right moment to play the game, or make a move. Experience helps that. Sure there’s a lot of opportunity for jokes or game moves that are mechanically right. But the good improviser picks the right moment. Just like a basketball player is like you can take shots all time, but you want to take good shots. Shots you can make.
And you don’t always want to do the same thing over and over again. You’re going to challenge yourself to not play the same stock characters, not to play the same statuses or those kind of things. In good scene work, you’ve got all those tools at your disposal, but they’re so innate, you’re that well-trained, that you don’t have to think about the process of doing it. You can just put yourself in a place of inspiration and then just do it. It kind of like having this antenna tuned to this frequency. Just being able to open yourself up to that frequency every time you got on stage, and not having to rely on the mechanics of it. Like ‘ok, every time he does this I’m going to do that.’ While that’s in the back of your head, you have the choice whether to do that and how you’re going to do that. Hopefully, you don’t have to go through a thinking process. You just do it. You just play the scene. That’s one of those things where you want people trained but you want people to be able to throw out all that training out and just be in the moment and just tap into who you are and what you know and let that come out.
J: How do you work on getting improvisers into that moment?
A: A lot of just getting them to do scenes, and keeping the analysis very minimal and very essential. And put more emphasis on illustrating what’s good and why it’s good, so they recognize it and encouraging that. And moving them away from bad habits and stuff like that. So in the beginning it is more about trying to get them to be more open to things, even though it can kind of be a little sloppy or have some mistakes. Later on with advanced improvisers, it’s a bit more of the opposite. It about challenge them to take away the usual go-to things. Calling them out on stuff they do all the time, or calling them out on work that’s not that smart or thoughtful.
Essentially in all cases the thing that you’re trying to get them to be excited about improv and love improv. Therefore, you have to be interested and excited about it yourself. So it’s always challenging, especially when you teach a lot of classes, to continue to find interesting things about improv and enjoy it. And get to see that joy and excitement through your eyes. But it’s also like doing scenes. You do scenes with the same group all the time, you’ve got to find a way to be excited with working with them. It’s like a marriage. You’ve got to find interesting things with your partner and still love each other and enjoy each other. Sometimes that has to do with breaking up the routine. Taking some risks, stretching yourself. Same way when you teach. It’s a constant challenge to keep being excited about improv and making people excited. But I think once you create that excitement and love everything else falls into place a lot easier. I know just with my own experience just when I started taking classes. There was just so much excitement that I saw in my fellow students and teachers, and that was the thing that motivated me to do everything. That excluded any sort of mercenary aspirations, like I want to be on tv or whatever. The best thing in the world is now, while you’re in that scene, while you’re in front of an audience. And that’s essentially why we do anything. If you get paid for it, you can make a living off it, great. The work itself has got to be the thing that keeps you going.
J: So how do you stay inspired by and excited with improv?
A: [puts his head back and says in anguish] I don’t know.
J: [Laughs] Ok. Next question. [The tape conveniently runs out, giving Armando a moment to think] So, we were talking about staying inspired.
A: Yeah, if you can make discoveries each class, where you can think about it in different ways [it’s helps you to stay inspired.] It’s philosophy. You start to examine how improv works, sometimes you find different ways to phrase things. Sometimes you invent new exercises on the spot.
Sometimes it’s the students themselves. They wind up doing really funny, original work, and these are people you’ve never met before. They bring in experiences you haven’t had, because of who they are. They’re from different walks of life. I like working with the students. I like people. I have a fun time with them. So when they’re fun it makes it makes it easy to keep the class interesting. But they’re fun because I’m having fun, so it’s a bit of both. But I try and go there to be entertained, you know? So I try to create the conditions where the class can be entertaining, and the class can fly by. So you just have to find a way to be playful if you can, and try to enjoy it.
J: If you had any advice to beginning improvisers, what would it be?
A: Be open to it. Meet people. Don’t take it too seriously. Really try to enjoy it, because when you enjoy it you tend to learn more than when you put pressure on yourself and you have some sort of crazy goals, like to trying to be funny. Most of the times people end up being funny, it’s accidentally. They’re just being honest. The more they can be ok with themselves usually the more successful they are. And also, get to know people. It’s just like ‘ok, I’m being myself. I’m being who I am.’ So other people will feel good about doing that and you become friends with them.
You also do funnier work. It’s so much easier to joke around with your friends than with a bunch of people who are judging your work, you know? There’s sort of no reason not to have a good time, even though it’s not a natural activity. It’s one that can make you nervous or whatever, but the world’s not going to end because you do a bad scene. You’re going to do millions of bad scenes. I mean, not millions, but hundreds or dozens. So, have a good time with it.
J: Do you have any advice to experienced improvisers?
A: Again, same thing, have a good time with it. It’s up to them to keep challenging themselves, and making improv worth doing. Don’t take it for granted. Know the difference between a fuck around show and a show that you should care about. It’s fun to do shows and to have some beers and blow off steam and have a good time, but it’s also good to do shows where you’re rehearsing, you’re showing up on time, you’re being professional, you’re giving your all and you’re risking a lot. That’s when you’re going to continue to find improv interesting, because you’re like ‘yeah, we really tried our hardest for that show and we really were challenging ourselves, treating every show like it’s important,’ approaching it that way. Then inevitably the shows are good, the work is good. It has meaning as opposed to the times you’re like ‘ehh, that show was so crappy.’ And ‘what are we doing? Nobody wants to rehearse. There’s no one’s in the audience.’
Just be honest. If you’re not enjoying it, if you don’t find value in it, if you’re embarrassed about it, don’t do that show. Doing shows just to do shows is stupid. Be selective. It’s fun to have your ‘bowling night’ kind of show, but you should do shows that make you better. You should play with players who make you better. Don’t waste your time. And, I don’t know, go live your life. Experience things other than improv. Read. Museums. Travel. Take other classes. That’s what’s going to continue to replenish what you have to offer onstage.
J: What do you think are some of the important qualities for being a good improv coach or teacher?
A: It takes a little while to assemble a number of exercises that work for you and you can use. I think that being able to understand how improv works is important, and how you get from point A to point B in terms of getting people to do something. Because the real key is anything you do, say you’re trying to teach the Harold, you have to know how to break down the skills that they’re going to learn. There’s a whole mess of skills that they should have a handle on before they’re actually tempted to do a whole Harold. So, let’s make sure people know how to do scene work. Let’s make sure they know how to do an opening. Make sure they know how to do a group game. Now let’s start putting parts of those things together. In some ways, you just have to know how to dissect something and organize yourself in a way that you can get to places.
Another thing is that you have to have a good personality. In the sense that, you can be easy-going, but then you can also …crack the whip when you need to. You’re there to coach or teach, so you’re there to make sure they get work done. And people will tend to just want to sit and talk. It happens at all levels. People just will kind of get lazy, or start wasting time and stuff. So, whether it’s veteran performers or level 1 students, you’re the boss, you’re the director, you’ve got to make sure that you keep things moving along and that you actually get some work done. It takes a bit of authority. How it comes across depends on your personality. You don’t have to be yelling your head off. You can be pretty laid back and do it, but the thing is you have to have some authority to teach.
You also have to be patient. You can’t be too impatient about people’s inabilities or people asking the same questions. You can’t get frustrated because people aren’t getting it. Be flexible. That flexibility will allow you to say ‘well, this approach isn’t working, so let’s go in a different direction. Let’s go around the problem. Let’s approach it from the back side. As opposed to beating your head and being like ‘learn it this way. Just memorize this.’ So you find other ways to communicate. Being a good communicator is good.
And being perceptive. You have to sense when something’s going wrong. You have to sense what it is. You really start to understand what you need to tell people. Some people need to be told a lot. Some people need to be encouraged. Some people can be left alone because they’re just kind of …letting it roll off their back. Some people need really specific instruction. Some people just want to be heard or whatever. You start to be more perceptive about what’s going on and you can act on it in a timely manner. You can act on it in the moment, and it will be most effective then.
J: Where would you like to see improv go in the future?
A: [Puts head back]…Space. …It’s good that there are shows that there are shows that are doing it on tv and stuff. I would love for tv to see some of the things that we do right now. Shows like ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ use improv, but they sort of use it in a fairly basic way. It’d be great to see a Harold on tv. I don’t know if tv’s ready for it. Just because that experience is pretty amazing. It’d be great if tv audience started to get that. It would great if improvisers could make a living off of improv, just the way that actors do or stand-up comedians do. Just being like ‘hey, I did a Harold. And we got paid to do it on tv.’
You know, hopefully, continuing to discover new techniques and forms and styles. That would be great.
J: What have some of your favorite shows and teams been?
A: I really enjoyed Mother. Love those guys. Love working with them. I really enjoyed working with Respecto, the Swarm. Blue Velveeta was a great team, although they don’t ever get mentioned in the history. They’re the ones that really made the Harold work. They’re the ones that did Harolds that kicked ass consistently. They found a way to do it. In the time after that The Family came, and I always enjoyed them. TJ and Dave I totally enjoy. These are all sort of basic things that people know about.
TV shows, I love Mr. Show. I thought that was one of the best sketch shows to come out in the last ten or fifteen years. More people should see it, because there’s a lot of really great satire on it. There really hasn’t been any satire on tv. That’s been a really underrated show, but I think people are catching onto it on DVD.
J: What do you think of the state of comedy in popular culture today?
A: I think it’s starting to rebound a little bit. The hard thing is it’s hard for there to be breakout shows. There’s much diversity. There’s so many cable channels. There are so many ways that people can go out and have a good time. There’s so much going on it’s hard for anything to stand out. It just feels like everything’s diluted.
Also, the problem is there’s too many producers muddling the comedy. With the bureaucracy of a tv show you’re surprised that any comedy comes out, at all. It’s not an easy thing to get anything done with the process of tv. So that’s just hard in the first place. Then the emphasis becomes non-comedy people, non-performers running things. That can really interfere with being able to do a comedy show.
There seems to be more homegrown stuff. I think that gives the opportunity to reinvigorate comedy in general.
The other thing is I think people need to learn how to write. Just in general. Movies. Television shows. Whether it’s comedy or dramatic. The level of writing has really dipped in the last twenty, thirty years all across the board. If anything’s going to help, it’s somehow we develop writers more. As much as you can go to film school and learn how to put a camera in interesting places and stuff like that, every film I worked on was a piece of shit. There just weren’t any good ideas. So it’s just like spend less time learning cinematography and more time writing scripts.
J: Do you have anything that you want to say to the improv community that you didn’t get out in this improv community?
A: [Puts his head back and thinks] …I love you improv community!
J: [Laughs] Awesome. Well, I think that’s about it.
Josh: Where were you born?
Armando: I was born in Harvey, IL in 1966.
J: Is that a small town?
A: It’s a south suburb of Chicago, like 30 miles south.
J: What were some of the things you found funny when growing up?
A: My Dad’s sense of humor was pretty silly. He was kind of a silly guy. My mom’s was pretty wicked. It was more when she was mad at us that she was hilarious. She would say something heated to us and it was pretty exaggerated and funny.
I don’t think growing up I was exposed to a lot of comedy besides the tv. I guess growing up comedy was kind of a defense mechanism. But it wasn’t until later on, like in High School that I started to get interested in comedy seriously.
J: How did you get interested in comedy at that time?
A: Well, in High School, I became friends with Kevin Dorff [writer for Conan O’Brien and improviser]. I met him in, I think, Sophomore or Junior year. We were in the same Chemistry class. He was a total class clown. I was kind of a quiet guy. I was the kind of guy who would make jokes under my breath. Usually no one would hear them, but then Kevin would hear them and he thought they were funny, and he’d kind of joke back. Or repeat them and stuff. So he was kind of the first person who I connected with comedically.
So then later on I had another class with him. And it was really kind of a bullshit class called Consumer Education, or something like that, Consumer Studies. One of those things that High School makes you do, because they think they’re going to prepare you for life or something. So we had this real terrible teacher, he was the gym teacher, who taught it. He was a real dick and hated us both. So we just pass notes and write comedy bits, put captions in our books. That was the first time I started wanting to do comedy.
He was kind of a big fan of comedy already, like the National Lampoon, things like that. So he was kind of my introduction to it.
J: How did you get involved in improv?
A: Well, after High School I decided I was interested in film. So, I ended up going to film school. After about a year and a half, I ended up bumping into Kevin again.
J: At the same school?
A: No, Kevin had gone to U of I, and I had gone to Columbia College in Chicago. And Kevin had flunked out, was back in the city, living with his brother, working at a gas station…
J: Really?
A: Yeah. He worked at like an AMACO, QuickyMart, and was taking some classes at a Junior College, which was absurd because he was like a total AP student in High School. I just don’t think he was destined for academia.
So, we run into each other. And I had taken an acting class as part of film school. If you wanted to be a director, they encouraged you that to study that, and in it we did a lot of improvisation. And Kevin’s sister had gone to see ImprovOlympic a couple times, and brought Kevin to it. So she suggested that Kevin should take a class, so we both decided ‘ok, we’ll take that class and check it out.’
J: So, you decided… this wasn’t all decided at that one meeting at the gas station?
A: No, we started hanging out, and it just kind of came up. And I had the same idea of taking an improv class, because I had gone to sit in on a Player’s Workshop class at Second City, because I had a friend who was a fellow film student who was in it, who was like ‘yeah, you’re a pretty funny dude. You should come check out my class.’
And so for some reason Kevin and I both came up with the same decision at once. He suggested ImprovOlympic. I had seen Second City, so I decided to go try an ImprovOlympic class, and I liked ImprovOlympic a lot more, because you just got more into it. So we both just ended up taking that.
J: How did you get ‘more into it’ at Improv Olympic?
A: Well, there’s Players Workshop and then there’s Second City. Player’s Workshop is kind of this separate entity that was kind of affiliated with Second City. It was really basic. It was the kind of thing where you’d just be working on object work for three hours, you know? Like this is a camera [mimes taking a picture], sweep the floor [mimes sweeping with a broom]. It was basic, but in Charna’s class the first day we were just in, doing scenes. That class was just exciting and just amazing. It’s the kind of thing like where you’re like ‘wow.’ We had discovered this really great secret.
The funny thing about it was the first class we showed up to, we were supposed to show up to this bar, called the ‘Red Barron’ or the ‘Red Lion’ or something like that. The class was supposed to be at the back of the bar. It was this empty German bar. And the German bartender takes us to the back and says ‘well here’s the class.’ It was just this empty room with naked pictures shellacked all over the wall. There was just this kind of little plywood stage. And Charna didn’t show up. None of the other students showed up. It was just me and Kevin, and I was just like ‘Kevin, what kind of class is this?’ We waited for like half an hour and the bartender was like ‘phone call.’ And Charna said ‘yeah, we delayed the class one week.’ So, I was like ok. I’ll come back again. So the next week we actually had our first class and that was awesome.
J: So, they didn’t have their own theater space?
A: Oh no.
J: What year was this? And what was Improv Olympic like at the time?
A: I think it was like 89. It was either 88, 89 when we took that first class. And they didn’t have a space. It was just Charna, Del, and another teacher Noah. And they had shows, in a bar, kind of like the Parkside [a bar with a performance space in New York] or whatever. So on Fridays and Saturdays like at 8 or something they’d do their shows, then there would be bands and stuff later. The bartender would let them do it, because they would get drinks. And Charna would teach class at rehearsal studios. It was actually mostly in the back of bars, because it was all free. So it was really fly by night. There was no space. And that lasted for maybe four or five years. The venues got better, because they got more students and more teams. And they could get a bigger bar with a bigger stage. And they would be there for longer periods of time. But there would always be that, we’ve been here nine months to a year, and ‘Uh-oh, we got kicked out. ImprovOlympic doesn’t exist for three or four months until they find another place.’
It was such a new thing, you know? Such an underground thing. It was just such a little cult. No one really knew too much about it. But everybody knew Del, and everybody wanted to study with Del. That was a big attraction. And when you went there it just seemed like most amazing thing in the world. It was just like a great discovery. And it was the only place the Harold was going on. It had awesome performers and stuff, but it wasn’t until Charna finally felt the confidence to get a space that Improv Olympic became Improv Olympic. Until then it was like, ‘we’re a bunch of losers. …We all really love this thing. Wouldn’t it be great if we could do something with it? Or if anyone got into Second City.’
The biggest deal was Second City hiring Tim Meadows, who had studied at Improv Olympic. All of the sudden, there was kind of this legitimacy. A lot of it had to do with Del, because he directed Second City. He’d be like ‘you have to check out this guy Farley,’ which gave him an audition. And Farley got hired. And that just kind of really started to establish ImprovOlympic.
J: So there were only three classes at the time?
A: There three levels, level 1, level 2, and then Del’s level.
J: And when did you start to get performing at ImprovOlympic?
A: For some people it was like the fifth or sixth week of level one.
J: They were put on a team?
A: They would pluck them and have them sit-in sometimes with a group. It was pretty daring and reckless in a way, because they were still figuring out the Harold. Even the best teams still kind of derailed, and couldn’t get through a whole Harold. So some people would get put on sometimes in level 2. I didn’t get on a team until Del’s class, so that was comparatively late to everybody else. They didn’t really have a methodology to making up teams back then. They were kind of making it up as they went along.
J: Who were some of the performers back then?
A: Dave Koechner. Kevin Dorff. This guy Jay Leggit who was on ‘In Living Color.’ Mitch Rouse.
J: Tim Meadows and Chris Farley, were they around at the time?
A: Farley was around. Tim Meadows had already been hired. I think he was on a team before. There were guys like Dave Pasquesi and Mick Napier who were a generation before me and had already gone off and started doing their own thing. Then afterwards just some amazing people started coming through.
J: Did you know that these people would become like these big comedy names in the future?
A: Yeah, definitely, because you could just see it right there in front of you. And what I’d seen comedy-wise, it didn’t seem like anything was all that exciting except for what was going on at Improv Olympic. It just seemed like this is so much funnier than what’s on tv. And it’s really smart. Yeah, everyone kind of had that feeling, like this seems to be something powerful, except for the fact that we’re in a bar, out in the middle of the train tracks, in the west side of Chicago, and there’s only eight people in the audience. And they’re mostly friends or commuters who didn’t have anything to do. So it seemed like people were destined to do something, you know? And it just felt like the energy, and the conversations that happened after class, it just seemed like people were there because it was so powerful. There was no …[big payoff]. You’re just going to play in a bar. There’s nothing respectable to that. It wasn’t like you were achieving anything to do that. So it was definitely about the work. And they had the work-ethic.
J: So how did your goals start to change as you got more involved with improv, and want did you start to want out of improv?
A: Well, you know, I always kind of wanted to work in film. I think things started to change after I had done Improv Olympic for a while. After a couple of years, I was like ‘that’s fun, but I’m not going become an actor,’ that was never one of my goals. It was after I left and came back and ended up performing again, then started to teach and direct. So that’s when any goals asserted themselves, when I started seeing that I really enjoy teaching and directing.
J: So, what do you mean, after you left?
A: I left to go back to school. I had dropped out of film school, then I decided to go back and finish my degree. Once I finished my degree, all of the sudden improv came back. We started doing the ‘Armando Diaz Experience.’
J: How did that happen?
A: Well, by that time Improv Olympic had grown and gotten their own space. A lot of people were hired by Second City, working on their resident company or their touring companies. They talked for so long about how great it would be if Second City started hiring all these Improv Olympic people, how much better it would be, but then they realized Second City is still going to be the same animal. It’s about doing those sketch reviews and stuff. They kind of missed the whole long-form aspect of being able to just get up there and just perform with each other, instead of you know doing the same thing over again. The excitement was gone.
So, Charna was opening her new space and needed shows. So, I was hanging out with Dorff and Adam McKay and Koencher at our apartment. It was like five in the morning or something like that. They started talking about ‘yeah, Charna wants a show with the alumnis.’ Then Adam McKay came up with the idea of ‘The Armando Diaz Experience.’ The idea being that all the focus would be on me, like everyone would have to serve me was his idea. Because he wanted it to be egoless. It would be a rotating cast and he was worried about people’s jealousies, worried about people not taking things seriously. So, he just came up with the crazy idea, just ‘ok, we’re going to do a show, and everybody’s just there to serve Armando’s whims and wishes.’ And Dave totally yesanded the idea. Me, I’m just like whatever.
Then they drew up cast lists. Eventually the night ended. I was just like, ‘that’s funny, whatever. I have to go back to my videotaping weddings job. I don’t have time for this.’ Then I got a call from Dave the next day. He was like ‘I talked to Charna. She loves it. We’re doing it in April,’ which was a couple months later. And I was just like ‘doing what? I don’t even know what my role in this is.’ So we were slated to do this show called ‘The Armando Diaz Experience.’ It was just one of those things where it’s just kind of like [makes a motion of being forced out into the spotlight reluctantly.]
J: Did you say ‘at our apartment’?
A: Yeah, me and Kevin were living together.
J: With Adam McKay and Dave Koechner?
A: No, they were just over. Those guys had better jobs than us.
J: So how important to ‘The Armando Diaz Experience’ to you, just as like a show?
A: It was huge. It was definitely huge in terms of getting to teach, and coach and things like that. First off, I pretty much was done with improv, then the show was very successful, and I had a good time doing it, and had opportunities to coach and direct. So I started directing some shows and stuff. I don’t think I would have gotten that consideration as easily if it weren’t for that. That really led to me getting to develop as a director. So, that’s what kept me doing it.
J: What are some shows that you got to direct, and how did they help you as a director?
A: It was definitely a lot of trial and error. I did a show called ‘Fist Soup.’ It was kind of a long-form idea. It was kind of a big town kind of thing. All the characters lived in the same town, the same environment. Kind of improvise a bit of a story. It was mildly successful on our first outing. Then we tried doing a Sitcom based on a person’s life. The idea was every two weeks we’d put up a live sitcom. I learned a lot about writing and staging things. I learned that you can’t write a sitcom in two weeks and stage it and memorize it. It was a bold idea. It was fun. I directed a lot of groups that were improv groups. I developed a form called the Evente. I started developing it in Chicago.
J: How did you come up with the Evente? What was the original concept?
A: I worked with a couple groups, but I mainly got it off the ground with a group called ‘The Pack.’ It came about by wanting to do something where there were flashbacks, and using that device to tell a story, flashing back and flashing forward. It was influenced by Rashomon and the Usual Suspects. The Pack ran it for over a year at a place called Sheffield’s and really started to get it to work. Then I ended up doing it in UCB in Chicago with a cast [I think this should be either New York instead of Chicago or at the Chicago Improv Festival.] I brought it back a couple years later with Respecto, where we kind of approached it in a slightly different way, then with Jenny I think I got the last bit of it. It took years working on it on and off.
J: So how has it evolved and how has it taught you how to create a form?
A: Well, the structure wasn’t as big of a deal as so much learning how to teach the structure. Same thing with the Harold. Harold structure existed for a long time, but it took years with people experimenting with it until they learned how to teach it. And that’s when it really started to work. People didn’t really understand it until they started to play with it. So, I had to come up with different ways to teach certain concepts, about understanding time, and how game and story relate, instead of just writing the story, you know what I mean? That game playing, playing from the inside, instead of trying to write the overall story, I was kind of grappling with those concepts, of letting the story tell itself, instead of forcing it. These were kind of the principles that I messed around with with Fist Soup, but in the opposite way where we were trying to think about conventions of stories, and playing arcs and things like that, which didn’t end up working. The main thing was the tools, coming up with the tools for how I’m going to teach it that made the form work.
J: Who were some influences on you as an improviser and you as an improv teacher?
A: Noah Gregoropoulos, Mick Napier were both really big. Obviously, Del. Del more in a spiritual way than a technical way. Mick and Noah definitely in their teaching methods. So I’d say those three main people.
J: Where would you say you’re closest to now as a teacher? Would you say you’re closer to the Annoyance style, Improv Olympic, or to another teacher who you studied with?
A: I would probably say still a little bit more IO, but the thing that was really great about Annoyance was the way it just attacks it. It gets people to jump in there and do it. It’s sort of the way I like to teach. It’s has more to do with making them do it, and learn through experience, more than other ways where you sort of talk through it. You know it’s kind of a mixture of all them. But aesthetically it’s more ImprovOlympic. In terms of intensity some shades of, you know obviously stolen and mangled excersizes that I took from Mick Napier.
J: Were you doing any performing after film school?
A: No, it wasn’t until I did the Armando Diaz Experience [that I got back onstage again], after that I didn’t do any performing at all.
J: You were involved in an early incarnation of the UCB, right?
A: I helped out with one of the shows. They did a show called ‘Conference on the Future of Happiness.’ We did a version of the video roadtrip with it, which they did in the original show, which Neutrino kind of does as a full form. We’d do a bit where we’d grab someone out of the audience, and during the show tape some bits, then come back and show it at the end of the show.
J: Was it good work? Were you satisfied?
A: Yeah, it was a lot of fun, because the concept of it is just exciting. You’ve got somebody who you’ve never met before whose thrown in the middle of it. And you’ve got someone whose a plant playing characters. You’ve just going out into the middle of the city and being improvisational, being like ‘oh, there’s a gas station.’ How can we use this as a bit? There’s a florist, or, you know, there’s some people on the street. So it was cool because you were improvising on film, or on video, and you only had 15, 20 minutes to do it all, so it was a lot of great chaos. Then also as much as you could use film language, use the camera to take interesting shots and tell the story in an interesting way, that was such a great idea. That was all Adam McKay’s idea for their original show which they did in 1991, I think. But it always just worked, because it was in the moment, and I guess sort of the danger of it just inspired you to make some things happen.
J: So what brought you to New York?
A: UCB wanted to start a theater. They had been teaching classes and doing some shows out of Solo Arts. They had gotten signed by Comedy Central, so they needed somebody to kind of help take over classes, help them out getting their theater space and stuff. So I came out in 98 and was teaching classes for them while they were doing their tv show the first season. Found a space that Fall or Winter. I think it was January or February 99 we actually opened the space. So I was real interested in coming out there to try and help them run the theater, and teach. I had ideas about how we could take what ImprovOlympic was doing and maybe build on that. I was excited to be in New York too. I had been out here and had taught a workshop for the UCB like a year before. And had a really great time. People seemed to have a good time in the workshop. So, I was like ‘yeah great, I’ll come out here and do that.’
J: So how did you hope to build on what Improv Olympic was doing?
A: It was always the kind of thing where there were a lot of real talented performers, then they’d do Harolds or improvise. After that it’d just be the kind of thing, where’d they’d hope to get hired by Second City and stuff. So I was just like ‘well maybe all those talented people could create more of their own stuff.’ Just kind of finding different ways of doing things, different ways of running the team system, different ways of generating sketch shows and improvised shows. One thing I’ve always wanted to do was help raise the profile of improv, in terms of it being theater, in terms of it being art. Instead of it being something where it’s your friends just getting up on stage. And you have to kind of worry about getting over those cringe-worthy moments. ‘Ehh, it’s Bob from accounting doing improv.’ That’s a fun experience, but wanting to also help it keep pushing itself. I’ve always thought that there’s lots of potential with that.
J: How did you want the team system run differently?
A: It’s the kind of thing where before people were just kind of thrown on teams. Sometimes teams worked, and some teams didn’t. Then after months and months, they eventually just of disappeared. It was kind of just like ‘Ok, we’re not on the schedule anymore. I …guess we’re not a team. …Alright.’ So there was kind of like a gap in terms of any real methodology for doing it. One of the things we tried to do was to have a bit more of a process for putting teams together, and how you choose people, and how communicate with them. And the criteria. Because there was just so much speculation as to why you’d get put on a team, or get taken off a team.
So we were trying to do that at UCB, but it was hard because we went from having 3 or 4 one semester to jacking up to 11 level ones the next semester. And it was just like we’re handling this many people, and we’re going to give everybody a chance? It went from ‘ok, you’ll be on a team. It will be a chance to learn,’ to ‘Oh my God.’ Now you’ve got three times as many people and can’t give everybody a chance to be on a team even if you wanted to. So it just kind of got out of control. I was just like at that point I couldn’t keep doing it, because it just… you know, there’s no rhyme or reason.
But that’s always the biggest thing: finding a fair way to do it, because it’s such a hurtful thing not to be on a team. Everybody’s feelings get hurt if you don’t make it, but then again not everybody’s ready for it. And there are some who you don’t know. You put them on a team and you might have your doubts about them, then all of the sudden they get a chance to play on a team for a while, they gel and all of the sudden they’re awesome. And who are you to say you know best. And there are some people who you give them a chance and they never grow anymore. Then you have to deal with the hurtful process of what should I do? Should I take them off? Now that I put them on? It’s kind of like ‘here’s you baby. Oh wait a second. It’s not your baby anymore. We’re giving it to someone else.’ That’s still the biggest nut to crack.
It’s a bit different when you audition for a play. You’re like ‘ok, well, didn’t make the play.’ It’s such an emotional thing for people [to get taken off a team]. So, you know, still trying to work on that. Trying to find a different ways of doing it.
J: So how would you describe your approach to that at the Magnet?
A: Well, we’re getting to put people on teams in a class setting, so you really get a chance to see them under fire, and really know how they’re doing before you make that decision. Because I think there’s such a gap between, someone’s in a class, you toss them on a team, then you don’t get to watch them very much. Then you come back a few months later and get to watch their group, and you’re like ‘oh my God. These guys are terrible.’
Hopefully, by the time they’ve done so many shows, you’ve had the chance to work with them and give them notes and things like that, when you put them on a team you’re going to feel confident that you’ve taught them the things that they should know, and that they can perform them at a reasonable level.
And the people that you don’t put on teams, hopefully the opposite. You know that you have given them a chance and they understand that they know that they’re there to learn, and you’ve given them feedback. It’s not an arbitrary decision. So hopefully that’s something they can accept easier than it just being like ‘alright, let’s have an audition I’ll see you for three minutes and hope that was a representative sample of what they can do.’ So the hope is by doing the team performance workshop at least everyone knows exactly what you’re supposed to be doing on stage, so it isn’t like ‘oh they haven’t taught it.’
J: What was your impression of New York improv when you came here?
A: It was very spare. Chicago always had a piano player when you would do improv, so that’s how we always saw it, because you get used to it. There weren’t the same time constraints in Chicago. There would be an 8 o’clock show and there would be a 10 o’clock show, so a show would last ninety minutes. It was kind of loose, a Harold could last 45, 50 minutes. Some benefit was people could take their time and find things. The drawback was that sometimes shows could be kind of slow and plotty. It was like ‘when is this thing gonna be over?’ And then the music could be this kind of great element that added levels to it, and some times it could be something that was too much.
In New York, because UCB was renting by the hour, they tried to pack as many shows as possible. It was like ‘ok, there’s a 7 o’clock show, there’s going to be an 8 o’clock show, a 9 o’clock show, then a 10:30 show.’ It was like ok. We need the audience in and out between the shows. The players warmed up and you’ve got to do the full show, and there wasn’t anyone to pay a piano player. So it was a very spare bare-bones type of style. I think for a while it kind of devolved into something very conceptual and very verbal. The first things I was seeing were totally about dialog and concept. One of the things I was trying to do when I would teach was to try and make sure that people embrace in other elements. I think once they got a theater there was more of a chance to use that kind of stuff.
J: How have you seen the New York improv scene change since you’ve been here? And what do you think are some of the things responsible for that change?
A: What’s good is that more heads are in the game. There’s more teachers from Chicago. More people doing workshops out of town. More different types of influences. It used to be: there’s Chicago City Limits, Gotham City improv, UCB, a couple other things here and there. The UCB used to be the main authority, you know, and now there’s people studying a lot of different places, bringing in other schools of thought, trying to expand [the improv scene.] I feel it’s getting more depth and more variety which is good. You know, being able to play the game, but also being able to develop character and play detail, and play slow if you need to or fast if you need to. It feels like it’s getting to be more like Chicago was in the 90’s. You have broadening skills as well as strong performers doing strong work, so it just feels like it’s filling out. Before it was kind of skeletal. Now it feels like it’s a good thriving scene.
J: So what do you hope to accomplish with the Magnet that you weren’t able to accomplish at the UCB or at the PIT?
A: Uh, make a good living. My whole thing is that I feel that the culture of a place is important. I feel it filters into the work, the performers, so having a place of your own allows you to create the culture of it. It’s not only what you do onstage, but also how everybody behaves off the stage, how they treat each other, the relationships, things like that. But also, I think being able to change the emphasis of, teams are good, that’s fine. But the Rep is something good. It’s something I’m excited about. It’s an alternative to teams. Think of shows being cast like plays, and being part of a company. Everyone gets so team obsessed. A team’s a great opportunity to get your legs as a performer, but it isn’t the only thing. If we only do that we’re not going to expand forward very much. So that’s one thing. Then just with shows hopefully break open, even on team night, the way you present a show, try to make shows more audience friendly. Try to get more theater audiences in there, instead of just people’s friends. Try and really get it to be more artful. Another thing I’m really happy with about the Magnet is more of an exchange of ideas, like not only improv but theater, music, art. You shouldn’t live in improv seven days a week. You should find other influences and influence other people too. Hopefully, we’re putting that idea out there.
J: It seems like the Magnet has become pretty popular pretty quickly. Do agree with that? Were you surprised with it?
A: It seems like things are going well, and that’s good. For me, for the most part, I’m happy with what the students are doing. I like the work that they’re doing, and the way the program’s shaping up. So that’s good. I like that people are signing up for classes and we’re able to pay rent. I’m not surprised that it’s going well. I’m very happy about it. It’s exciting that there’s interest in our point of view.
J: You performed at the first Ampersand for half an hour. How long had it been since you performed?
A: Probably about 9 years, 8, 7 years. I used to sit in on some ASSSSCATs and stuff, but it’s sort of a different experience. Probably about 7 years.
J: How did you like it?
A: It was fun. It was really nice. I like that form, which is why I think I was interested in doing that. Just the chance to do a scene. And work with Christina Gausas, because I knew she was a great performer, and we could take some risks with each other. We had a friendship, so there was a lot of trust in it. So I really enjoyed that. It’s been fun every time we’ve done it. It was the kind of thing that was very different from sitting in with a bunch of people who can kind of get tag out happy. For me that doesn’t expand me as a performer at all. You can do that at a bar, just throw out jokes and see whose is the funniest. I thought it was kind of a great challenge to be out there longer and see if you can sustain it.
J: What is ‘the game’ and how important is it to good improv?
A: The game’s very important in improv like all components. You need all of them. You can’t just go ‘hey, you need environment. Or you need dialog, or chairs or whatever. You need history.’ All those things contribute to the game, so the game is only as good as the specifics that you bring to it. We can play a one-upsmanship game where I would keep on topping you, but what’s going to make it funny are the ways that I top you, the specifics that top you. Therefore, that’s the reason that you want to develop a character, and you want to develop the location, the history, whatever, because then I have lots of interesting, more profound, heightened, high stakes ways to top you.
To me the game is only a structure, the same way that Harold’s a structure. What makes Harold work is what you bring to Harold. And what was great about Del was how much he would inspire people to be able to play the structure, but being able to play it in a way that you aspired to something smart and meaningful. He didn’t say ‘play the game. Play the game. Play the game,’ but if the game’s not meaningful, then it’s sort of not interesting. It’s not going to be very funny. So to me the game is a structure and you can learn to recognize it, but you also have to be an interesting human being and have something to say.
J: Do you have any opinions on why the game is funny?
A: We respond to patterns. We like music and music repeats itself. Music has a verse and a chorus and verse. The rule of threes. We just get used to cycles. The universe is like that for some reason, and every living thing on it seems to be hardwired to it. And there’s probably some kind of Eastern philosophy that talks about this.
So we get pleasure every time a pattern in music happens. The same thing with game, with the joke that keeps coming back. We don’t want to hear it consistently. We want to see it [then have it go away.] In music, there’s this thing: the build up of tension, the release of tension. Most music is based on it. Build tension release tension. There’s a pattern to it. In comedy, it’s the same thing: the building of tension the release of tension. And that’s what the game does. And why that is? I don’t know. I don’t know the nature of the universe, but it seems like that’s just how it is and how we respond to it.
J: To you, what are some of the most important elements of good scene work?
A: There are techniques like take your time, listen, try and connect with your partner. Those are techniques that hopefully get you to a place where you find inspiration and you are able to use your intellect, and you’re able to fill that scene out. So I think good improvisers are able to tap into that stuff immediately and are very open to their partners and open to what’s going on onstage. You know that whole cliché of being in the moment. But it’s just whatever methodology you use to sort of ‘be there,’ that’s what good improvisers do, because their very sensitive. They are aware the moment anything deviates, anything special occurs. They’re able to react to it and exploit it and use it.
In scene work, you can work in great detail and get very specific, and get a real sense of rhythm, and a sense of patience. You just wait for the right moment to play the game, or make a move. Experience helps that. Sure there’s a lot of opportunity for jokes or game moves that are mechanically right. But the good improviser picks the right moment. Just like a basketball player is like you can take shots all time, but you want to take good shots. Shots you can make.
And you don’t always want to do the same thing over and over again. You’re going to challenge yourself to not play the same stock characters, not to play the same statuses or those kind of things. In good scene work, you’ve got all those tools at your disposal, but they’re so innate, you’re that well-trained, that you don’t have to think about the process of doing it. You can just put yourself in a place of inspiration and then just do it. It kind of like having this antenna tuned to this frequency. Just being able to open yourself up to that frequency every time you got on stage, and not having to rely on the mechanics of it. Like ‘ok, every time he does this I’m going to do that.’ While that’s in the back of your head, you have the choice whether to do that and how you’re going to do that. Hopefully, you don’t have to go through a thinking process. You just do it. You just play the scene. That’s one of those things where you want people trained but you want people to be able to throw out all that training out and just be in the moment and just tap into who you are and what you know and let that come out.
J: How do you work on getting improvisers into that moment?
A: A lot of just getting them to do scenes, and keeping the analysis very minimal and very essential. And put more emphasis on illustrating what’s good and why it’s good, so they recognize it and encouraging that. And moving them away from bad habits and stuff like that. So in the beginning it is more about trying to get them to be more open to things, even though it can kind of be a little sloppy or have some mistakes. Later on with advanced improvisers, it’s a bit more of the opposite. It about challenge them to take away the usual go-to things. Calling them out on stuff they do all the time, or calling them out on work that’s not that smart or thoughtful.
Essentially in all cases the thing that you’re trying to get them to be excited about improv and love improv. Therefore, you have to be interested and excited about it yourself. So it’s always challenging, especially when you teach a lot of classes, to continue to find interesting things about improv and enjoy it. And get to see that joy and excitement through your eyes. But it’s also like doing scenes. You do scenes with the same group all the time, you’ve got to find a way to be excited with working with them. It’s like a marriage. You’ve got to find interesting things with your partner and still love each other and enjoy each other. Sometimes that has to do with breaking up the routine. Taking some risks, stretching yourself. Same way when you teach. It’s a constant challenge to keep being excited about improv and making people excited. But I think once you create that excitement and love everything else falls into place a lot easier. I know just with my own experience just when I started taking classes. There was just so much excitement that I saw in my fellow students and teachers, and that was the thing that motivated me to do everything. That excluded any sort of mercenary aspirations, like I want to be on tv or whatever. The best thing in the world is now, while you’re in that scene, while you’re in front of an audience. And that’s essentially why we do anything. If you get paid for it, you can make a living off it, great. The work itself has got to be the thing that keeps you going.
J: So how do you stay inspired by and excited with improv?
A: [puts his head back and says in anguish] I don’t know.
J: [Laughs] Ok. Next question. [The tape conveniently runs out, giving Armando a moment to think] So, we were talking about staying inspired.
A: Yeah, if you can make discoveries each class, where you can think about it in different ways [it’s helps you to stay inspired.] It’s philosophy. You start to examine how improv works, sometimes you find different ways to phrase things. Sometimes you invent new exercises on the spot.
Sometimes it’s the students themselves. They wind up doing really funny, original work, and these are people you’ve never met before. They bring in experiences you haven’t had, because of who they are. They’re from different walks of life. I like working with the students. I like people. I have a fun time with them. So when they’re fun it makes it makes it easy to keep the class interesting. But they’re fun because I’m having fun, so it’s a bit of both. But I try and go there to be entertained, you know? So I try to create the conditions where the class can be entertaining, and the class can fly by. So you just have to find a way to be playful if you can, and try to enjoy it.
J: If you had any advice to beginning improvisers, what would it be?
A: Be open to it. Meet people. Don’t take it too seriously. Really try to enjoy it, because when you enjoy it you tend to learn more than when you put pressure on yourself and you have some sort of crazy goals, like to trying to be funny. Most of the times people end up being funny, it’s accidentally. They’re just being honest. The more they can be ok with themselves usually the more successful they are. And also, get to know people. It’s just like ‘ok, I’m being myself. I’m being who I am.’ So other people will feel good about doing that and you become friends with them.
You also do funnier work. It’s so much easier to joke around with your friends than with a bunch of people who are judging your work, you know? There’s sort of no reason not to have a good time, even though it’s not a natural activity. It’s one that can make you nervous or whatever, but the world’s not going to end because you do a bad scene. You’re going to do millions of bad scenes. I mean, not millions, but hundreds or dozens. So, have a good time with it.
J: Do you have any advice to experienced improvisers?
A: Again, same thing, have a good time with it. It’s up to them to keep challenging themselves, and making improv worth doing. Don’t take it for granted. Know the difference between a fuck around show and a show that you should care about. It’s fun to do shows and to have some beers and blow off steam and have a good time, but it’s also good to do shows where you’re rehearsing, you’re showing up on time, you’re being professional, you’re giving your all and you’re risking a lot. That’s when you’re going to continue to find improv interesting, because you’re like ‘yeah, we really tried our hardest for that show and we really were challenging ourselves, treating every show like it’s important,’ approaching it that way. Then inevitably the shows are good, the work is good. It has meaning as opposed to the times you’re like ‘ehh, that show was so crappy.’ And ‘what are we doing? Nobody wants to rehearse. There’s no one’s in the audience.’
Just be honest. If you’re not enjoying it, if you don’t find value in it, if you’re embarrassed about it, don’t do that show. Doing shows just to do shows is stupid. Be selective. It’s fun to have your ‘bowling night’ kind of show, but you should do shows that make you better. You should play with players who make you better. Don’t waste your time. And, I don’t know, go live your life. Experience things other than improv. Read. Museums. Travel. Take other classes. That’s what’s going to continue to replenish what you have to offer onstage.
J: What do you think are some of the important qualities for being a good improv coach or teacher?
A: It takes a little while to assemble a number of exercises that work for you and you can use. I think that being able to understand how improv works is important, and how you get from point A to point B in terms of getting people to do something. Because the real key is anything you do, say you’re trying to teach the Harold, you have to know how to break down the skills that they’re going to learn. There’s a whole mess of skills that they should have a handle on before they’re actually tempted to do a whole Harold. So, let’s make sure people know how to do scene work. Let’s make sure they know how to do an opening. Make sure they know how to do a group game. Now let’s start putting parts of those things together. In some ways, you just have to know how to dissect something and organize yourself in a way that you can get to places.
Another thing is that you have to have a good personality. In the sense that, you can be easy-going, but then you can also …crack the whip when you need to. You’re there to coach or teach, so you’re there to make sure they get work done. And people will tend to just want to sit and talk. It happens at all levels. People just will kind of get lazy, or start wasting time and stuff. So, whether it’s veteran performers or level 1 students, you’re the boss, you’re the director, you’ve got to make sure that you keep things moving along and that you actually get some work done. It takes a bit of authority. How it comes across depends on your personality. You don’t have to be yelling your head off. You can be pretty laid back and do it, but the thing is you have to have some authority to teach.
You also have to be patient. You can’t be too impatient about people’s inabilities or people asking the same questions. You can’t get frustrated because people aren’t getting it. Be flexible. That flexibility will allow you to say ‘well, this approach isn’t working, so let’s go in a different direction. Let’s go around the problem. Let’s approach it from the back side. As opposed to beating your head and being like ‘learn it this way. Just memorize this.’ So you find other ways to communicate. Being a good communicator is good.
And being perceptive. You have to sense when something’s going wrong. You have to sense what it is. You really start to understand what you need to tell people. Some people need to be told a lot. Some people need to be encouraged. Some people can be left alone because they’re just kind of …letting it roll off their back. Some people need really specific instruction. Some people just want to be heard or whatever. You start to be more perceptive about what’s going on and you can act on it in a timely manner. You can act on it in the moment, and it will be most effective then.
J: Where would you like to see improv go in the future?
A: [Puts head back]…Space. …It’s good that there are shows that there are shows that are doing it on tv and stuff. I would love for tv to see some of the things that we do right now. Shows like ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ use improv, but they sort of use it in a fairly basic way. It’d be great to see a Harold on tv. I don’t know if tv’s ready for it. Just because that experience is pretty amazing. It’d be great if tv audience started to get that. It would great if improvisers could make a living off of improv, just the way that actors do or stand-up comedians do. Just being like ‘hey, I did a Harold. And we got paid to do it on tv.’
You know, hopefully, continuing to discover new techniques and forms and styles. That would be great.
J: What have some of your favorite shows and teams been?
A: I really enjoyed Mother. Love those guys. Love working with them. I really enjoyed working with Respecto, the Swarm. Blue Velveeta was a great team, although they don’t ever get mentioned in the history. They’re the ones that really made the Harold work. They’re the ones that did Harolds that kicked ass consistently. They found a way to do it. In the time after that The Family came, and I always enjoyed them. TJ and Dave I totally enjoy. These are all sort of basic things that people know about.
TV shows, I love Mr. Show. I thought that was one of the best sketch shows to come out in the last ten or fifteen years. More people should see it, because there’s a lot of really great satire on it. There really hasn’t been any satire on tv. That’s been a really underrated show, but I think people are catching onto it on DVD.
J: What do you think of the state of comedy in popular culture today?
A: I think it’s starting to rebound a little bit. The hard thing is it’s hard for there to be breakout shows. There’s much diversity. There’s so many cable channels. There are so many ways that people can go out and have a good time. There’s so much going on it’s hard for anything to stand out. It just feels like everything’s diluted.
Also, the problem is there’s too many producers muddling the comedy. With the bureaucracy of a tv show you’re surprised that any comedy comes out, at all. It’s not an easy thing to get anything done with the process of tv. So that’s just hard in the first place. Then the emphasis becomes non-comedy people, non-performers running things. That can really interfere with being able to do a comedy show.
There seems to be more homegrown stuff. I think that gives the opportunity to reinvigorate comedy in general.
The other thing is I think people need to learn how to write. Just in general. Movies. Television shows. Whether it’s comedy or dramatic. The level of writing has really dipped in the last twenty, thirty years all across the board. If anything’s going to help, it’s somehow we develop writers more. As much as you can go to film school and learn how to put a camera in interesting places and stuff like that, every film I worked on was a piece of shit. There just weren’t any good ideas. So it’s just like spend less time learning cinematography and more time writing scripts.
J: Do you have anything that you want to say to the improv community that you didn’t get out in this improv community?
A: [Puts his head back and thinks] …I love you improv community!
J: [Laughs] Awesome. Well, I think that’s about it.
posted by JoshFult at 3:03 PM
1 Comments:
Very interesting. I am going to point my twitter followers here.
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