Joe Bill 3/20/06 Part 2
JF: So, what made you guys want to form ‘The Annoyance?’ Were you guys tired of what had been going on with Chicago improv up until then? Or did you want something of your own? Or both?
JB: Probably less tired. We wanted something of our own, and it was a little bit of anarchy. We hated ‘the rules,’ because the rules put all of us into our heads. And we did remember the shit that we did in college. We used to challenge ourselves every week. We used to do two shows every Friday night in college, and both the shows had to have 2/3rds new material. We tried to write it, but if we couldn’t get it done in time, we’d fill it in with improv. We’d bust our balls. We were concerned with ‘the rules.’ We were just about creating. So really that’s what we wanted to do. We just wanted to be able to create.
Mick wanted to be able to create theater using improv as a tool, which is kind of the Second City model. That’s what kind of launched all this. We wanted to get away from the improv rules, and do our own shit.
I don’t know that Mick’s sense of humor is naturally subversive or that it just appears to be subversive, like mine. We’re coarse and we’re rude. He liked to shock. One of my favorite things, that was so stupid, that he used to do was he would inevitably wind up drunk at parties, then lick up all the ashes out of an ash tray, just to freak people out. Even ‘Splatter Theater’ was sort of a tip of the hat to gore. Mick had certain influences like Hershel Gordon Lewis, Gore Theater, or John Waters. Those sensibilities took root early on in the Annoyance. So that, that which was disgusting, disturbed, freakish, weird, tended to filter all the way through for the duration of the Annoyance. Which I also think provided a nice counter-point to the couple of shows that really did put us on the map, which were the very opposite of that.
JF: Who were the people who were involved with starting the Annoyance?
JB: Mick Napier, Faith Soloway, Joe Bill, Eric Wadell, David MacNerland, David Razowski, Susan Messing, Ellen Stoneking. Martin De Maat was one of our artistic guides, and he ran the training center at Second City. He was huge, because he was one of the kids who Spolin had worked with on her theater games stuff, and he was very, very empowering. He was the artistic hub that we needed. He was big on giving yourself permission and self-help and everything, because he was so fucked up in so many ways. He was like the classic improv teacher. He was so great at helping everybody, but ultimately himself. He brought such power and belief out of people. Before we became ‘The Annoyance,’ there were guys like Richard Label, Timmy Meadows, David Pasquesi, guys that did stuff with us, that were a part of ‘Splatter Theater.’ I’d say there’s probably about 20 people that you could make a good case for, maybe more, that quote, unquote ‘started’ the Annoyance, but it wouldn’t have happened without Mick.
The thing that really bound the Annoyance and IO together was we were both subleasing at Cross Current, which became Cotton Chicago, from this woman who was taking our rent money and using it to run a cocaine business. So, none of our fucking rents got paid. So, we showed up one day, actually we got called, and the Sheriffs had come and emptied out the fucking building onto the sidewalks. That shut IO and Metroform, what would become the ‘Annoyance,’ that shut us down for a little bit. That began the IO hoping around from space to space thing, which happened in the late 80’s. I’m going to say 1989. Sure, probably around 89.
We got there and there’s these punk rock kids guarding our shit. We called everybody and put our shit in storage, then we went to Ann Sather’s and got drunk in the middle of the afternoon. Somehow we raised like $10,000 in a week to put a down payment on what to be a burlesque or a drag club, that became the first Annoyance, which was on Broadway. I believe that was in 1989 or 90.
JF: What have been some memorable shows at the Annoyance, or shows that you’re most proud of? And how have they shown the Annoyance style?
JB: Outside of ‘Splatter Theater,’ you’d have to start with ‘Coed Prison Sluts.’ We always had these bullshit nicknames for each of our shows, so the nickname for ‘Coed Prison Sluts’ was ‘Coed Prison Rent,’ because that’s largely how we kept the doors open when we started. That was huge because it initially put us on the map. It was so disturbed and whatever at the time. People didn’t believe the ‘audacity’ we had.
The first show that I directed there was called ‘Happy Blue Balls, Your Wife is Waiting.’ It was a rock operetta about what happens to the soul of an aborted fetus. That one was huge for me, because I was prepared and I knew what I wanted. I did a good job of casting it. Everything I fucking did right in that show, without really even knowing what I was doing. But I didn’t fuck around. I was very cast-oriented. The second show I directed was the biggest fucking disaster I’ve ever directed. It was one of the biggest shames, because it was probably an even better idea, but it never got put up because I did such a shitty job of casting it or whatever. The show ended up getting called ‘Look at Dick,’ and I was kind of a dick.
The idea for the show was I cast some improvisers and I would show them horrible imagery for like 5 or 10 imagery then make them get up and improvise, then show them more horrible imagery and make them get up and improvise. I was working really closely with Matt Besser at the time. He was going to video tape shit, and be kind of the eye looking in from the outside. We were going to incorporate videotaping somehow. It was such a great idea. I had scheduled 12 weeks of rehearsal, and it became apparent to me after the second rehearsal that I had done a shitty job of casting it, because I cast some friends instead of people who would have been really good in it. It was just a cluster fuck. It took me like 10 years to get over the guilt with Besser of dragging him through that nightmare.
So, personally those two shows were most influential to me. The first one because I learned everything I needed to know about directing in that show, and the second show because I was reinforced in everything I learned in the first show, because I fucked it up so badly.
In terms of the Annoyance, ‘Manson, the Musical’ was big. ‘The Real Live Brady Bunch’ put us on the map for a lot of the wrong reasons. I think ‘That Darn Anti-Christ’ was a wonderful offering. ‘What Every Girl Should Know: An Ode to Judy Bloom’ Susan Messing’s thing was a great show. ‘Your Butt’ that Mick directed was awesome. There was a lock-in show that Mick directed, where he locked a group of people in the theater for a week then they did a show. I wasn’t in that one because I was doing stand-up. That had like Matt Walsh and Scot Robinson in it.
We did like 95 shows in 12 years, or 11 years. The keys would be ‘Coed Prison Sluts,’ ‘The Real Live Brady Bunch,’ oh, and the ‘Screw Puppies,’ our late night improv show, which I directed, which basically meant I made sure the beer was there. That was the demonstration of the Annoyance style of improv. It was late night Saturday. We literally would say ‘give us a suggestion that we can forget,’ then we would just tear the ass out of the place for an hour. We’d have two cases of beer back stage, then we would take a suggestion and improvise until the beer was gone.
JF: How much of what goes on in the Annoyance is sketch or scripted and how much is improv? And is improv involved in creating the scripted stuff?
JB: Improv is involved in creating, I would say, 90 to 95% of the scripted stuff. I haven’t really been actively involved in the Annoyance in like 5 or 6 years. Once it became Annoyance Productions, they kind of reorganized. It should be open fairly soon, in time for the Chicago Improv Festival for sure from what I hear. Given all that, I want to say 90 to 95% of the scripted stuff they used improv for.
I’m going to say 80% of the Annoyance stuff was, I wouldn’t call it sketch, but we created musicals and plays using improvisation. The process would be: the director would get people together, you’d improvise your character through a scenario, then go from scenario to scene, from scene to act, from act to play. As director, you’re kind of the coach and head writer, editor and producer. But the gig was pretty much about putting put a play, and less a sketch revue, which I think set us apart from Second City. Second City would always be the sketch revue place and we wanted to do these crazy ass plays.
JF: It sounds like Del Close was a really big influence on you. How did he influence you and what influence do you think he had on the Chicago improv community?
JB: Del did have a big influence on me. Of all the Annoyance people, I think myself and Susan Messing are the biggest quote, unquote ‘Delheads.’ The biggest thing I respect about Del is that he had the hardheadedness or wherewithal to stand up to the fuckers who said longform [couldn’t work in front of an audience.] Spolin and Paul Sills, they never believed that improv was something that you would show to an audience. It was a rehearsal tool. Then you have your David Shepards and Keith Johnstones who said ‘no, no, you could put it in front of an audience,’ but Shepard wanted to make it a competition and Johnstone felt that you needed a narrator. So, there you have your ComedySportz and TheaterSportz.
Shepard went crazy, so he didn’t get to latch onto a specific piece of the pie, but he liked the competition aspect of it. To this day, he likes Guerilla improv. Improv can happen anywhere. It’s all around us, just look and it’s there. Johnstone was like you need a narrator. You need somebody that’s controlling the action. You need a referee. You need somebody in charge of forwarding the narrative of the story.
Del was like ‘bullshit, you can do that with group mind.’ I don’t know what his relationship with Shepard was, if he even gave a fuck, or if he was discounted because he was a junkie or whatever. I admire Del because he believed that a group of people could know each other so well and could not only forward plot or take a piece from beginning to middle to end, with all your traditional story devices or whatever. He believed that you could build with intelligence, that you could affect people. He believed that it was theater. He believed that it was art. So, my alignment with Del is in the passion. I think Armando is like this too.
It’s kind of like there’s a gang of us who are the stewards of longform. We carry the torches to evolve it. Del knew it was going to evolve. Del knew it was going to go beyond Harold, that different devices would be employed, but still it was going to come down to hanging those devices around scenework and characters that are compelling. Del wasn’t so much into the acting part of it so much as the intellectual part of it. If you accidentally employed your entire ‘instrument,’ put instrument in quotes, as an actor, Del liked it, but he was really more interested in patterns repeating themselves, and the verbal progression through the circumstances, relationships, so on and so forth.
I think where I’m similar to Armando is that I feel like [Del’s] work wasn’t done. I think all of the growth in longform is going to turn into something else, or involve other devices that we aren’t aware of now. Technology will probably influence it. I want to really put the artistry and theatricality back into longform, which it’s kind of getting away from because of TV. Even the UCB’s approach is ‘find the game.’ It’s all about the verbal, verbal, verbal. But when you’re playing a character, what I teach is that you have these three things that are available to you that are observable to an audience: what you say, what you do and how you feel.
I teach that how you feel is the most important, and I think most Annoyance teachers are in this camp. I know Susan and Mark are. I’m not sure about Mick. What you feel is important, your point of view is important, because that effects how you do what you do and how you say what you say, which in my book are far more important than what you say. In my opinion, it’s a little split from the Del/UCB angle, because that intellectual swagger of being factually accurate gets discounted a little bit. That’s why it’s such a rush to play with those guys at ASSSSCAT, because they’re so goddamn quick, and they’re so accurate that if you fuck something up, if you’re inaccurate, they’re all over that shit.
I admire Del’s chutzpa and staying power for believing that longform could exist. I feel that of all types of improv longform improv and real-time improv are the two types of improv that I really, really love. I probably like the real-time improv a little bit more than the longform, but I still do longform just to keep my chops fresh. I think Mick discounts that a little bit, because of ‘the rules,’ and because he got put in his head. Mick is sort of the quote, unquote ‘champion’ of our approach, whatever that is. They’re two slightly different means to the same end. At the end of the day you’re still making shit up, you’re just looking at it through a different microscope. Does that analogy make sense?
JF: Yeah sure. So what are some qualities of improv that you like to see?
JB: I like to watch good improv. I like to watch confident improv that stops at being cocky. It’s hard for me to find short-form that I enjoy, but when it’s done well I can enjoy short-form as well as anything else. I like people that can act, that can affect and be affected. I like when performers understand what the fuck their piece is about. I like a symbiosis between the form and the players, so like a mirror excersize you’re not really sure who’s driving who.
JF: Do you think there have been any shows that you’ve seen that have really typified that?
JB: Well, TJ & Dave usually do it. I think Mark and I are pretty successful at doing it in Bassprov, either by ourselves or when we have guests, but it’s a little bit different because Bassprov is just like a real-time scene. I like groups who know who they are. I was one of the judges for the Chicago Improv Festival this year and I got to see some groups. There’s a group in Vancouver. I can’t remember their name. It’s a four man group and they do something that’s angled more toward my taste. I like things that have a bit more of an attack to them. I have a form called the Scramble that I teach around the country. I teach the Bat, which is another form that’s one of my babies. I like when people do those, because those are kind of my Harolds. I think I’m going to be working on those forms for the rest of my life. I love seeing Dan Bakkedalh improvise with anybody. He and Ed Furman did a show called ‘Trainwreck’ that was fucking awesome. I could watch Amy Poehler burp on stage.
It’s weird. I rarely see improv just for the joy of seeing improv. I’m usually there to advise or as a coach, or quality control, giving some type of feedback. It’s rare that any show takes me out of that mindset, where I’m just along for the ride. I’d say more times than not TJ & Dave do that.
JF: What is the Scramble? And how does that reflect what you like in improv?
JB: The Scramble is a lights up version of the Bat, which is something I developed with Georgia Pacific, a group that I coached at IO, which was one of the greatest groups that were ever there although they don’t get mentioned so much. The Bat is basically a blind Harold with a soundscape at the beginning and end, and permission to explore more than just three scenes, scene A, scene B, scene C, and a game. I like chaos. The Bat came from my perverse desire to make a festival audience to watch an improv show in the dark for half an hour. When we did it first at Kansas City Improv festival, it fucking killed. Now there’s people who do the Bat all over.
The thing that I like about the Bat is that you’re not encumbered with having to move or do objectwork. It is all verbal. In a way, the Bat helps me square the reliance on the verbal, and reminded me how important verbal specificity is. The Scramble came out of that. It was like ‘ok, we’ve done this piece in the dark that moves around real fucking quick. Scenes happen on top of scenes and all that shit. Now what happens if you turn on the lights, and get people to embody this and play it.’ So, the Scramble is a bunch of my favorite devices. We generally will not do sweep edits in the Scramble. We’ll do overlap edits. So the end of one scene will overlap with the beginning of the scene that’s editing it.
The object is to do great scenework, but whereas the Bat was about my desire to watch a show in the dark, but the Scramble is about my desire to force the audience to choose where they focus, even in the face of missing something else. There might be times in the scramble where you’re stacking scenes on top of scenes, where like 3 scenes are happening all at once. It’s kind of like a Phil Specter wall of sound thing. Can each of the 3 scenes generically separate themselves enough so that each is followable, but still the audience has to zone in to choose which one they follow the most. If a group of 4 people comes into watch the show, because they’ve all chosen to focus on different places.
JF: How do you adjust to doing the Scramble as an improviser, and how do you find audiences react?
JB: The hardest thing as an improviser is letting go of the need to know everything that’s happened in the piece, and that is a motherfucker. A lot of really great improvisers never miss a fucking thing. Everything is available for them to use in the moment at any given point in the show. In the Scramble, you can only really be aware of what you see when you’re offstage or what you experience when you’re on it. So, if I’m stacking a scene with somebody else and two other scenes on top of it, I’d have a hyperawareness of what’d be going on between me and my scene partner, then I’d have to incorporate more physicality and emotion, both internal and external emotion, to let the piece be digestible.
I’m doing a scene with another guy. There’s two other scenes with two other guys in the other scenes. We have to be really fucking careful about when and where we talk, because if all of us have voices that are in the same tonal register, it’s going to be really fucking hard for the audience to follow it, and they’re going to get pissed off. But if one scene is primarily verbal, one primarily physical, and the other scene is primarily emotional, which is giving punches, obviously emotion can be manifested verbally or physically. Then you can get to the point as improvisers where you’re not analyzing that as you’re doing it. You’re engaging in the kind of give and take that can only be attained when you understand take and take, take your silence, take your focus, then it’s fucking transcendent. I guess part of me is perversely interested in giving improvisers more fun reasons to have good beers after a show. The Scramble is a great reason, when the show goes well, to have good beers after a show. So, you’re not beating each other up, but you’re catching each other up on what you all missed while you did this kick ass show that amazed everybody.
JB: Probably less tired. We wanted something of our own, and it was a little bit of anarchy. We hated ‘the rules,’ because the rules put all of us into our heads. And we did remember the shit that we did in college. We used to challenge ourselves every week. We used to do two shows every Friday night in college, and both the shows had to have 2/3rds new material. We tried to write it, but if we couldn’t get it done in time, we’d fill it in with improv. We’d bust our balls. We were concerned with ‘the rules.’ We were just about creating. So really that’s what we wanted to do. We just wanted to be able to create.
Mick wanted to be able to create theater using improv as a tool, which is kind of the Second City model. That’s what kind of launched all this. We wanted to get away from the improv rules, and do our own shit.
I don’t know that Mick’s sense of humor is naturally subversive or that it just appears to be subversive, like mine. We’re coarse and we’re rude. He liked to shock. One of my favorite things, that was so stupid, that he used to do was he would inevitably wind up drunk at parties, then lick up all the ashes out of an ash tray, just to freak people out. Even ‘Splatter Theater’ was sort of a tip of the hat to gore. Mick had certain influences like Hershel Gordon Lewis, Gore Theater, or John Waters. Those sensibilities took root early on in the Annoyance. So that, that which was disgusting, disturbed, freakish, weird, tended to filter all the way through for the duration of the Annoyance. Which I also think provided a nice counter-point to the couple of shows that really did put us on the map, which were the very opposite of that.
JF: Who were the people who were involved with starting the Annoyance?
JB: Mick Napier, Faith Soloway, Joe Bill, Eric Wadell, David MacNerland, David Razowski, Susan Messing, Ellen Stoneking. Martin De Maat was one of our artistic guides, and he ran the training center at Second City. He was huge, because he was one of the kids who Spolin had worked with on her theater games stuff, and he was very, very empowering. He was the artistic hub that we needed. He was big on giving yourself permission and self-help and everything, because he was so fucked up in so many ways. He was like the classic improv teacher. He was so great at helping everybody, but ultimately himself. He brought such power and belief out of people. Before we became ‘The Annoyance,’ there were guys like Richard Label, Timmy Meadows, David Pasquesi, guys that did stuff with us, that were a part of ‘Splatter Theater.’ I’d say there’s probably about 20 people that you could make a good case for, maybe more, that quote, unquote ‘started’ the Annoyance, but it wouldn’t have happened without Mick.
The thing that really bound the Annoyance and IO together was we were both subleasing at Cross Current, which became Cotton Chicago, from this woman who was taking our rent money and using it to run a cocaine business. So, none of our fucking rents got paid. So, we showed up one day, actually we got called, and the Sheriffs had come and emptied out the fucking building onto the sidewalks. That shut IO and Metroform, what would become the ‘Annoyance,’ that shut us down for a little bit. That began the IO hoping around from space to space thing, which happened in the late 80’s. I’m going to say 1989. Sure, probably around 89.
We got there and there’s these punk rock kids guarding our shit. We called everybody and put our shit in storage, then we went to Ann Sather’s and got drunk in the middle of the afternoon. Somehow we raised like $10,000 in a week to put a down payment on what to be a burlesque or a drag club, that became the first Annoyance, which was on Broadway. I believe that was in 1989 or 90.
JF: What have been some memorable shows at the Annoyance, or shows that you’re most proud of? And how have they shown the Annoyance style?
JB: Outside of ‘Splatter Theater,’ you’d have to start with ‘Coed Prison Sluts.’ We always had these bullshit nicknames for each of our shows, so the nickname for ‘Coed Prison Sluts’ was ‘Coed Prison Rent,’ because that’s largely how we kept the doors open when we started. That was huge because it initially put us on the map. It was so disturbed and whatever at the time. People didn’t believe the ‘audacity’ we had.
The first show that I directed there was called ‘Happy Blue Balls, Your Wife is Waiting.’ It was a rock operetta about what happens to the soul of an aborted fetus. That one was huge for me, because I was prepared and I knew what I wanted. I did a good job of casting it. Everything I fucking did right in that show, without really even knowing what I was doing. But I didn’t fuck around. I was very cast-oriented. The second show I directed was the biggest fucking disaster I’ve ever directed. It was one of the biggest shames, because it was probably an even better idea, but it never got put up because I did such a shitty job of casting it or whatever. The show ended up getting called ‘Look at Dick,’ and I was kind of a dick.
The idea for the show was I cast some improvisers and I would show them horrible imagery for like 5 or 10 imagery then make them get up and improvise, then show them more horrible imagery and make them get up and improvise. I was working really closely with Matt Besser at the time. He was going to video tape shit, and be kind of the eye looking in from the outside. We were going to incorporate videotaping somehow. It was such a great idea. I had scheduled 12 weeks of rehearsal, and it became apparent to me after the second rehearsal that I had done a shitty job of casting it, because I cast some friends instead of people who would have been really good in it. It was just a cluster fuck. It took me like 10 years to get over the guilt with Besser of dragging him through that nightmare.
So, personally those two shows were most influential to me. The first one because I learned everything I needed to know about directing in that show, and the second show because I was reinforced in everything I learned in the first show, because I fucked it up so badly.
In terms of the Annoyance, ‘Manson, the Musical’ was big. ‘The Real Live Brady Bunch’ put us on the map for a lot of the wrong reasons. I think ‘That Darn Anti-Christ’ was a wonderful offering. ‘What Every Girl Should Know: An Ode to Judy Bloom’ Susan Messing’s thing was a great show. ‘Your Butt’ that Mick directed was awesome. There was a lock-in show that Mick directed, where he locked a group of people in the theater for a week then they did a show. I wasn’t in that one because I was doing stand-up. That had like Matt Walsh and Scot Robinson in it.
We did like 95 shows in 12 years, or 11 years. The keys would be ‘Coed Prison Sluts,’ ‘The Real Live Brady Bunch,’ oh, and the ‘Screw Puppies,’ our late night improv show, which I directed, which basically meant I made sure the beer was there. That was the demonstration of the Annoyance style of improv. It was late night Saturday. We literally would say ‘give us a suggestion that we can forget,’ then we would just tear the ass out of the place for an hour. We’d have two cases of beer back stage, then we would take a suggestion and improvise until the beer was gone.
JF: How much of what goes on in the Annoyance is sketch or scripted and how much is improv? And is improv involved in creating the scripted stuff?
JB: Improv is involved in creating, I would say, 90 to 95% of the scripted stuff. I haven’t really been actively involved in the Annoyance in like 5 or 6 years. Once it became Annoyance Productions, they kind of reorganized. It should be open fairly soon, in time for the Chicago Improv Festival for sure from what I hear. Given all that, I want to say 90 to 95% of the scripted stuff they used improv for.
I’m going to say 80% of the Annoyance stuff was, I wouldn’t call it sketch, but we created musicals and plays using improvisation. The process would be: the director would get people together, you’d improvise your character through a scenario, then go from scenario to scene, from scene to act, from act to play. As director, you’re kind of the coach and head writer, editor and producer. But the gig was pretty much about putting put a play, and less a sketch revue, which I think set us apart from Second City. Second City would always be the sketch revue place and we wanted to do these crazy ass plays.
JF: It sounds like Del Close was a really big influence on you. How did he influence you and what influence do you think he had on the Chicago improv community?
JB: Del did have a big influence on me. Of all the Annoyance people, I think myself and Susan Messing are the biggest quote, unquote ‘Delheads.’ The biggest thing I respect about Del is that he had the hardheadedness or wherewithal to stand up to the fuckers who said longform [couldn’t work in front of an audience.] Spolin and Paul Sills, they never believed that improv was something that you would show to an audience. It was a rehearsal tool. Then you have your David Shepards and Keith Johnstones who said ‘no, no, you could put it in front of an audience,’ but Shepard wanted to make it a competition and Johnstone felt that you needed a narrator. So, there you have your ComedySportz and TheaterSportz.
Shepard went crazy, so he didn’t get to latch onto a specific piece of the pie, but he liked the competition aspect of it. To this day, he likes Guerilla improv. Improv can happen anywhere. It’s all around us, just look and it’s there. Johnstone was like you need a narrator. You need somebody that’s controlling the action. You need a referee. You need somebody in charge of forwarding the narrative of the story.
Del was like ‘bullshit, you can do that with group mind.’ I don’t know what his relationship with Shepard was, if he even gave a fuck, or if he was discounted because he was a junkie or whatever. I admire Del because he believed that a group of people could know each other so well and could not only forward plot or take a piece from beginning to middle to end, with all your traditional story devices or whatever. He believed that you could build with intelligence, that you could affect people. He believed that it was theater. He believed that it was art. So, my alignment with Del is in the passion. I think Armando is like this too.
It’s kind of like there’s a gang of us who are the stewards of longform. We carry the torches to evolve it. Del knew it was going to evolve. Del knew it was going to go beyond Harold, that different devices would be employed, but still it was going to come down to hanging those devices around scenework and characters that are compelling. Del wasn’t so much into the acting part of it so much as the intellectual part of it. If you accidentally employed your entire ‘instrument,’ put instrument in quotes, as an actor, Del liked it, but he was really more interested in patterns repeating themselves, and the verbal progression through the circumstances, relationships, so on and so forth.
I think where I’m similar to Armando is that I feel like [Del’s] work wasn’t done. I think all of the growth in longform is going to turn into something else, or involve other devices that we aren’t aware of now. Technology will probably influence it. I want to really put the artistry and theatricality back into longform, which it’s kind of getting away from because of TV. Even the UCB’s approach is ‘find the game.’ It’s all about the verbal, verbal, verbal. But when you’re playing a character, what I teach is that you have these three things that are available to you that are observable to an audience: what you say, what you do and how you feel.
I teach that how you feel is the most important, and I think most Annoyance teachers are in this camp. I know Susan and Mark are. I’m not sure about Mick. What you feel is important, your point of view is important, because that effects how you do what you do and how you say what you say, which in my book are far more important than what you say. In my opinion, it’s a little split from the Del/UCB angle, because that intellectual swagger of being factually accurate gets discounted a little bit. That’s why it’s such a rush to play with those guys at ASSSSCAT, because they’re so goddamn quick, and they’re so accurate that if you fuck something up, if you’re inaccurate, they’re all over that shit.
I admire Del’s chutzpa and staying power for believing that longform could exist. I feel that of all types of improv longform improv and real-time improv are the two types of improv that I really, really love. I probably like the real-time improv a little bit more than the longform, but I still do longform just to keep my chops fresh. I think Mick discounts that a little bit, because of ‘the rules,’ and because he got put in his head. Mick is sort of the quote, unquote ‘champion’ of our approach, whatever that is. They’re two slightly different means to the same end. At the end of the day you’re still making shit up, you’re just looking at it through a different microscope. Does that analogy make sense?
JF: Yeah sure. So what are some qualities of improv that you like to see?
JB: I like to watch good improv. I like to watch confident improv that stops at being cocky. It’s hard for me to find short-form that I enjoy, but when it’s done well I can enjoy short-form as well as anything else. I like people that can act, that can affect and be affected. I like when performers understand what the fuck their piece is about. I like a symbiosis between the form and the players, so like a mirror excersize you’re not really sure who’s driving who.
JF: Do you think there have been any shows that you’ve seen that have really typified that?
JB: Well, TJ & Dave usually do it. I think Mark and I are pretty successful at doing it in Bassprov, either by ourselves or when we have guests, but it’s a little bit different because Bassprov is just like a real-time scene. I like groups who know who they are. I was one of the judges for the Chicago Improv Festival this year and I got to see some groups. There’s a group in Vancouver. I can’t remember their name. It’s a four man group and they do something that’s angled more toward my taste. I like things that have a bit more of an attack to them. I have a form called the Scramble that I teach around the country. I teach the Bat, which is another form that’s one of my babies. I like when people do those, because those are kind of my Harolds. I think I’m going to be working on those forms for the rest of my life. I love seeing Dan Bakkedalh improvise with anybody. He and Ed Furman did a show called ‘Trainwreck’ that was fucking awesome. I could watch Amy Poehler burp on stage.
It’s weird. I rarely see improv just for the joy of seeing improv. I’m usually there to advise or as a coach, or quality control, giving some type of feedback. It’s rare that any show takes me out of that mindset, where I’m just along for the ride. I’d say more times than not TJ & Dave do that.
JF: What is the Scramble? And how does that reflect what you like in improv?
JB: The Scramble is a lights up version of the Bat, which is something I developed with Georgia Pacific, a group that I coached at IO, which was one of the greatest groups that were ever there although they don’t get mentioned so much. The Bat is basically a blind Harold with a soundscape at the beginning and end, and permission to explore more than just three scenes, scene A, scene B, scene C, and a game. I like chaos. The Bat came from my perverse desire to make a festival audience to watch an improv show in the dark for half an hour. When we did it first at Kansas City Improv festival, it fucking killed. Now there’s people who do the Bat all over.
The thing that I like about the Bat is that you’re not encumbered with having to move or do objectwork. It is all verbal. In a way, the Bat helps me square the reliance on the verbal, and reminded me how important verbal specificity is. The Scramble came out of that. It was like ‘ok, we’ve done this piece in the dark that moves around real fucking quick. Scenes happen on top of scenes and all that shit. Now what happens if you turn on the lights, and get people to embody this and play it.’ So, the Scramble is a bunch of my favorite devices. We generally will not do sweep edits in the Scramble. We’ll do overlap edits. So the end of one scene will overlap with the beginning of the scene that’s editing it.
The object is to do great scenework, but whereas the Bat was about my desire to watch a show in the dark, but the Scramble is about my desire to force the audience to choose where they focus, even in the face of missing something else. There might be times in the scramble where you’re stacking scenes on top of scenes, where like 3 scenes are happening all at once. It’s kind of like a Phil Specter wall of sound thing. Can each of the 3 scenes generically separate themselves enough so that each is followable, but still the audience has to zone in to choose which one they follow the most. If a group of 4 people comes into watch the show, because they’ve all chosen to focus on different places.
JF: How do you adjust to doing the Scramble as an improviser, and how do you find audiences react?
JB: The hardest thing as an improviser is letting go of the need to know everything that’s happened in the piece, and that is a motherfucker. A lot of really great improvisers never miss a fucking thing. Everything is available for them to use in the moment at any given point in the show. In the Scramble, you can only really be aware of what you see when you’re offstage or what you experience when you’re on it. So, if I’m stacking a scene with somebody else and two other scenes on top of it, I’d have a hyperawareness of what’d be going on between me and my scene partner, then I’d have to incorporate more physicality and emotion, both internal and external emotion, to let the piece be digestible.
I’m doing a scene with another guy. There’s two other scenes with two other guys in the other scenes. We have to be really fucking careful about when and where we talk, because if all of us have voices that are in the same tonal register, it’s going to be really fucking hard for the audience to follow it, and they’re going to get pissed off. But if one scene is primarily verbal, one primarily physical, and the other scene is primarily emotional, which is giving punches, obviously emotion can be manifested verbally or physically. Then you can get to the point as improvisers where you’re not analyzing that as you’re doing it. You’re engaging in the kind of give and take that can only be attained when you understand take and take, take your silence, take your focus, then it’s fucking transcendent. I guess part of me is perversely interested in giving improvisers more fun reasons to have good beers after a show. The Scramble is a great reason, when the show goes well, to have good beers after a show. So, you’re not beating each other up, but you’re catching each other up on what you all missed while you did this kick ass show that amazed everybody.
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