Improv Interviews

Charna Halpern - 6/4/07 - Part 2

2007-06-04T11:51:00.000-05:00

JF: What would you say the role of IO has been in the development of the improv community?

CH: Oh, it's totally responsible. I mean there was no improv community before Improv Olympic. Before I started Improv Olympic and I was leaving Players Workshop, we would go to night clubs that had bands and beg them to let us have the stage for 10 minutes. They'd say 'You've got to ask the front man, because there's equipment on the stage.' And the front man would say 'Yeah, maybe 5 minutes, but you've got to put me in the scene or something.' That's it. That's how we did it. Dan Castanelleta would get little gigs for his group at a restaurant, the Firehouse, in Evanston. We'd do lights for him. There was no opportunity. There was nowhere to go.

Then when Improv Olympic started I started producing teams and the teams would try to get spots at little bars to try and rehearse the nights that I didn't have shows. I only had shows one night a week. I had like 6 teams at the time. I remember early on there was a story in The [Chicago] Reader that suddenly there were all these little troupes popping up. I blame Improv Olympic. [laughs] Yeah, it got bigger and bigger.

Then what happened there were some people that got cut from IO along with Doug Deffenbach and they just decided 'We're just going to start our own place, The Playground.' I was like 'Good, that's what you should do.' Then people who weren't getting on teams here were going there and getting good at their stuff. The people would come back and go we're getting good. So, I thought it was a great thing.

JF: What makes a good improv teacher?

CH: Someone who clearly knows the work. A really good teacher doesn't just give notes. A really good teacher gets involved right away from the first step. If you've had enough experience, you can see the scene going wrong right away. You can stop it, make the correction and put them on the right track and have them do a successful scene. So, someone who's involved with the side-coaching can make something work. I think that is the most important thing about a good teacher. To sit there at the end and tell them why it sucked can be very frustrating to them. They will learn more by succeeding, by seeing 'Oh, I see how that felt. Now that you're telling me to do this now I see what's going on,' or 'I see what's going on. He said something and I didn't listen. I just grabbed that idea and now that I did that we're moving forward.'

JF: Do you have any advice for people to make them good side-coacher, because I imagine that could be frustrating to people as well if it's done poorly?

CH: Again, you have to really know your stuff. Too many times I find people who aren't finding the right thing that's wrong with the scene then they're giving them the wrong information. That's very frustrating. That's the hardest thing for me. I make potential teachers sit-in with me and watch them give notes. That makes my decision on whether or not I let them be a teacher. I'll look at them and go 'There's a problem here. Fix it.' Then they'll stop the scene and won't fix the right thing. [laughs] I go 'Oh my God, that's way off.' They're just stopping it because I told them to, because they're saying something like 'That wasn't honest.' What are you talking about? Then there are new teachers who do the right thing and you go 'Oh, you know what's going on.'

You'd be amazed. There are some brilliant performers who are not teachers. I remember Brian Stack, who is a genius, I don't know if you've interviewed him, he's a writer on Conan O'Brien, and I am going to venture out to say he is one of the 3 funniest men in the world, the other two being Adam McKay and Neil Flynn. He couldn't teach. I begged him to teach a class. He said 'Alright, but come with me.' He goes 'All you do is say something funny, then people laugh.' I go 'No, that's what you do.' He doesn't understand how to break down what he does. He's just a genius. Another person who I tried to teach is Thomas Middleditch. He's a very funny, funny boy. He's one of our top performers here. I'm not sure if he's going to make a good teacher or not, and I'll tell you why actually it's because he's such a good improviser. I had him sitting in with me and there was a scene going wrong and said I 'Tom, what's going wrong with the scene?' And at the point I stopped the scene, he says 'Nothing.' He was like 'They can do this and da da da da, or they can do this, or they can take this. I liked when this happened here.' He can find something out of anything. So, for him, there is no problem with the scene, but he's a great improviser and on stage he doesn't get stuck. But these new kids, they're still getting wet. They don't get why this is stalling. They're not thinking like he is. It's kind of funny. He is so good he finds no problem with it. Ideally, that is how you should be, so it's hard.

I think the reason it's so hard to teach improvisation is because you need to know when you should get in the way and when you shouldn't, because something else could happen. It's very hard to know when you should keep your mouth shut. There have been a lot of times where I'm like 'Hmm, I should stop it, but I'm going to see what happens,' and something great happens and I'm like 'Thank God I didn't stop it.'

JF: In your opinion, what makes a great team? And when you were putting together teams did you look for anything in particular?

CH: Mmhm, I used to look for someone who was very literate, someone who could maybe narrate some kind of historical scene, a mythological scene, so he could keep everyone on track, find the levels. I'd look for a wild card, like Chris Farley, a high-energy crazy person, who was always funny even if he didn't know what was going on. I would look for people with different experiences believe it or not. The more diversity the more fun it was going to be. It was kind of cool for me, because I would see people who would never hang out with each other in their lives become friends. Like Barron's Barracudas, there was this guy who edited my book, Kim Howard Johnson, biggest geek in the world. They would have never been friends with Howard, but they loved him. He's this big comic book guy, SciFi/Fantasy type background. He added everything to that team. Then you have Pasquesi who's this funny genius. John Judd this incredible actor who'd bring emotion to the scene. It was all these wonderful different people.

JF: In your mind, what makes a good initiation?

CH: In my mind, it's not necessarily the initiation. It's usually the second line that makes the scene. [laughs] You can come out with anything and it's what the second person does with it that makes the scene work. Anything makes a good initiation. You can come out and cry. You can come out and give a piece of a information. You can come out and stand there and be a statue. I don't think there's a such a thing as a bad initiation. You can say 'Fuck you. I hate you,' and that's right. What makes it good is somebody get out there, and if somebody's out there, good.

J: In your opinion, what is the 'game of the scene?' What does that term mean and how important is it to good improv?

CH: I think finding the game of the scene is really fun. You're really paying attention to each other and it kind of falls into the relationship, like the Monty Python scene: 'Is this the room for an argument?' 'I already told you so.' 'No, you didn't.' 'Yes, I did.' 'No, you didn't.' It's just a game. It gives you a fun thing to play.

I think there can be any number of games in a scene, and that makes it fun and it helps you develop the relationship even more. I think if it's just a scene where there is no relationship it's going to stall. I think there are some places that will teach the game and not the relationship and how to build a relationship between two people, and they're not doing really good work because of that.

JF: How important is 'the game' in the IO class system?

CH: It's important in level 1, because we're teaching how to listen and hear what the person is asking for. So, a game can be termed as an initiation. If we do an opening and the opening is about child abuse, then I start a scene with you and go 'Father, can I have one piece of bread today?' That's a game room. To answer your question about initiations, am I initiating a good idea? I'm initiating the idea that you're a mean father and that you should abuse me. I think that's important to finding the relationship. That's what we teach right in the beginning.
A lot of people come to me very confused from Second City, and I'll say 'You're always supposed to say yes to everything.' And they get confused because saying yes means not saying yes to the character but to the actor. So, if I say to you 'Father, can I have a piece of bread please. Get back in your cage.' There are many students who will say 'Oh, he denied you,' but no you didn't deny me. You said yes to me. I'm saying to you 'Hey, here's my idea. You're going to be an abusive father who's starving me.' 'I got it.'

That's where slow comedy comes in. 'So, what does she want from me? She wants me to be an abusive father. What's the best response? I'll say no, back in your cage.' That could take a good 15 seconds. That's why we need to play slow comedy, so you can think and hear between the lines of what I'm really asking for, so you can say yes. But people get confused. They think you should go 'Oh, sure, you hungry? You want a steak?' That's what I normally teach people with finding the game. It's listening between the lines, where you and him agree. But you're not agreeing to what the character is asking for, you're agreeing to what the actor is asking for.

JF: In your opinion, what makes a good opening?

CH: I think a good opening helps the team to know what this is about, a thesis statement, like when you're trained in college how to write a paper. What is your thesis statement and what does it set out to prove? That's why the opening is so important. People don't get it. They think it's like warming up and it's not. I want you to be warmed up before you get on stage. This is 'What are the statements that we're going to be proving?' And all the information that comes out of this information we're going to use, so the audience sees the first level of connections. So, if we do an opening about conspiracy theories and we talk about Kennedy and Marylyn Monroe, the Mafia, the C.I.A., Bush, whatever, then someone starts a scene going 'Happy birthday to you,' as Marylyn Monroe you're going to get a laugh right away, because the audience sees 'Ah, they're keeping this Marylyn Monroe/Kennedy thing.' So, that's the first level of connections. That's where you get the laugh. And we know where it's coming from.

One of my best openings, I'll never forget, was The Family. The did a pattern game with monologues. It was Christmas time, and the audience gave us the suggestion of 'Santa.' They did this pattern game with monologues. It was about homelessness, suicide, loneliness, death. All of the wonderful things we have for the holidays, not all of them have to be cheery. And some of them were very funny. Some of them were very poignant. At the end they started a group game to end the piece where they were Christmas caroling. They were going 'Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way,' then Miles takes a gun puts it in his mouth, blows off his head and falls on the ground. They closed in the circle a little bit. They started singing 'Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer.' Adam takes out a noose, puts it around his neck and hangs himself. They close in the circle again. 'It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.' Neil kills himself. They all find incredible ways. You have 6 big guys laying on top of each other in a pile of bodies, and little Rachel Datch is standing alone next to the bodies. She starts singing 'Silent night, holy night.' She points to the bodies. 'Sleep in heavenly peace. Sleep in heavenly peace.' Blackout. The audience is just in shock. That's when the theme was Santa, but that wasn't what they were saying. It wasn't like they were saying 'Hey, America, merry Christmas.' They were saying 'Hey, go out and give the money to a homeless person. Go take care of someone who's sad over the holidays. This is what it's about. It wasn't about Santa.'

JF: So, you think it's important to have a theme for a long-form?

CH: Say that again.

JF: Do you think it's important to have a theme for a long-form? Does that add something?

CH: Sure, you've got to be saying something. You've got to come on different levels. Otherwise what are you doing? You're just up there being funny. You're got to make a thesis statement. And you've got a bunch of statements being made in a piece. There has to be a statement. You have to get off the stage and let the audience know that yeah, we said something to you just now. We have something to say, no matter what it is. You've got to have something to say. Otherwise what are you doing up there? Absolutely, you have a responsibility to say something.

JF: I saw something that you were offering a mask class for improvisers. How important do you think mask work and acting training is for improvisers and how do you think that helps them?

CH: Mask work is a class in possession. It really shows you how to do character. These things transform you. You start to feel. When they take off their mask, they're like 'Holy cow, I was in another world.' Then I can show them you can do that without a mask. Look what happens with your eyes wide. What kind of things happen to you? Look what happens when you flare your nostrils. What kind of person are you? If you walk a certain way, what kind of things come to you? They really get that feeling right away, that they're channeling something. When you do character work, it's like that too. It's like channeling. So, that's just kind of a direct route to another realm. It's incredible. If you wanted to sit in on a mask class sometime, you'd be blown away. I've seen people cry in scenes, characters just down out start crying and the whole group start crying because they're so emotional.

As far as acting training, ...that's what we're doing. This is what we're doing. A lot of people think 'Well, I've taken improv. Now I'll do acting classes.' Well, this is acting. There's nothing more serious than comedy. If you want to be effective in the scene, you have to truly act. You can't be like 'Wink, wink, nod, nod. I'm doing this scene.' The humor comes out of the tension of a scene. In order for us to laugh, in order for us to get that release, we have to see a goddamn serious scene. It's not just comedy. You can make them laugh. You can make them cry. You can make them feel. You can make them feel.

I always tell my students 'It doesn't impress me if you can make me laugh. Anyone can make me laugh, but what will really make me take my hat off to you is if you can make me go 'Oh,' then I think you're good.'

JF: Do you have any pet peeves when watching or teaching improv?

CH: Yeah, I do. Let me think back to what they all are. I hate when people run on stage and say 'We're so and so, Spontaneous Combustion, let me hear you clap. Let's hear it,' when they haven't even done anything yet. I hate when people make an audience clap for them when they haven't done anything. You do something good and we'll clap. Just walk on stage. Be respectful, say 'We're so and so,' and start your piece. Don't beg for claps.

I don't really like when people break on stage. That means they're not really committing. I think a lack of commitment is my biggest pet peeve. Some team is trying to build something really cool, whether it be physical or verbal, and somebody else stands off the stage with their arms folded going 'I'm too cool for that. I'm not going to do that.' Then that's not going to succeed. It's only when everyone's fully committed that something cool will come out of it. I remember giving that lesson for the first time with Blue Velveeta, one of my favorite teams. They're all standing in a straight line. We're talking Kevin Dorff, Susan Messing, really amazing people. 3 on one side started to make a computer where it was a machine, connecting movements and sounds, then Brian Blondell was in the middle, then there were 3 on the other side doing something to make the computer. And it wasn't quite happening. It was just 6 people with somebody in the middle trying to do something. Brian was looking to the left, looking to the right like 'Oh God, this is so dorky.' Finally, he realized 'Oh fuck.' He had to do it. And he did it. He connected the two sides and the audience roared, but it wasn't going to happen until he got involved. We talked about it afterwards. I was like 'Big lesson there, huh?' So, that's the biggest I'll see once in a while with a newer team is less commitment.

JF: Has improv changed your personality at all?

CH: I've always had a good personality. [laughs] You mean me or somebody else?

JF: You specifically. Has it changed your personality at all or what you want from life or anything like that? If it hasn't, it hasn't.

CH: It's helped me realize that this is a philosophy of life. I've had some wonderful things happen to me because of improvisation and because of Del Close. One thing I've learned is this yesand theory works as a philosophy for life, because if you say 'yes,' things will happen to you. If you say 'no,' nothing will happen. And I've had some pretty interesting things happen to me because I said yes.

Another thing I've learned is that life is more interesting than what I planned. I planned to be a High School teacher and look what happened. I'm running this huge empire, having the funniest friends in the world. I've written two books and a movie and I never planned to do any of that. So, that's how improvisation is: it's just more interesting than you planned.

JF: Why do you think improv is becoming more and more popular?

CH: I think because sky diving is dangerous. Bowling is boring.

JF: [laughs] Right. So, it's the best alternative. It's better than those two.

CH: Because look at my shows in L.A. On Tuesday night Madtv plays. I don't pay them. They play every Tuesday night. Saturday night Neil Flynn plays, David Koencher, Andy Ritcher. All these guys play. I don't pay them. I could never afford to pay those people. Why do you think they play? They love to play and hang out with their friends, then drink afterwards and laugh. That's their fun. That's their social life. That's their exercise. Madtv had to jump through hoops to get Fox to do that, because it's the entire cast and the writers playing every Tuesday night. Why are they doing that? I don't know. They're having fun. They're having more fun than they've ever had in their life.

JF: If you had to identify a handful moments that were important in the development of iO, what would they be, if any?

CH: Meeting Del Close. Hands down. Nothing more important than that. I think the second thing would be Del Close and I then meeting people who agreed with the vision and agreed that this idea of taking care of each other, and becoming a family and working to help each other is a really good idea, because those people with like minds have stayed with this theater for ages and ages and ages. [IO] had its 25 anniversary and Mike Myers flew back from Scotland on his own dime. And there's a reason that people do things like that. They believe in what they were taught. They believe in throwing down the gauntlet for the next group, saying 'Hey look, this place is important to me. It should be important to you.' I had like 30 stars come back to IO for the anniversary show, and it wasn't because of me. It's because of each other. I hope some of it was because of me, but it's like Thanksgiving you go home for the family would be upset. And Mike loves it. Mike likes to come home, because this is a place where he can be one of the guys. He wants to be one of the guys. This is a place where can be one of the guys. He's not the big star. It's so funny. When I talked to his people, his people were like 'You have to have a car for Mike to come from the hotel to the show,' which was across the street. We were at the Chicago Theater. But when Mike actually got there, he was like 'I don't want a car. I want to walk over with Timmy. I'm with so-and-so. I'm hanging out here.' He wanted to be with the guys. He didn't want that star treatment. So, it's a family thing, and the people that stuck it out, the people that still stick it out are the people who agree with the vision.

JF: Do you have anything that you would like to say to the improv community that we didn't get out in the interview?

CH: I think it's important to remember, that I didn't mention to you here, was that it was very hard to get started. Improv had the reputation of just being a tool, and not really being an art form that somebody could pay to see in a show. There have been times over the years, when, not the current ComedySportz, but ComedySportz from Milwaukee was at Chow and they were thrown out because it was so bad. And we couldn't even get people when we took over the space. People wouldn't come in, because they saw improv and thought that it was bad.

I think that while we're lucky there are so many places to perform the downside of that is that people think 'Well, I don't have to get good. I can go here. I can go to The Playground. I can go wherever, a bar.' Then people will look at it and say 'Oh, improv isn't good.' We have to be very careful. We have to treat it gently and take care of it. It took a lot of years for me to build this thing, and I'd hate for it to become so homogenized that it's boring and 'Uch, I've seen this.' We have to be careful to want to really want to be good at your craft. That's all I ask. Please want to be good at the craft before you get on stage. I know you want to get on stage. I know it will be fun, but please be good. That's all I ask.

Charna Halpern - 6/4/07 - Part 1

2007-06-04T11:30:00.001-05:00

Charna Halpern is easily one of the people most responsible for the growth of long-form improv community. Along with Del Close, she is the co-founder of iO and its current owner. iO now operates theaters and training centers in Chicago, Los Angeles and North Carolina, and has trained thousands of improvisers. Charna studied at Second City and with Del Close, and has been teaching at iO since its inception. She recently released the book 'Art by Committee,' a follow-up to the classic book 'Truth in Comedy' which she co-authored.

JF: Where were you born?

CH: Chicago.

JF: What were some early influences on your sense of humor?

CH: My parents were the earliest. They were very funny people. Diner was very fun. My dad was kind of like a Don Rickles. We had to defend ourselves and take it.

JF: Did you look for any of that in the humor that you found fun later on in your life?

CH: I think it was an influence on my sarcasm, then later, watching tv I was influenced by the Smothers Brothers.

JF: When did you know that you wanted to get involved with show business and performing?

CH: Not until I started taking improv classes. It was in college, upper college. Even when I was in college I was studying to be a teacher, and I even taught for a couple years in a school for juvenile deliquents. I had a minor of theater in college. If you were a Speech major, you had to take a second major. I actually had Speech and English as a double major, then I was a minor in theater. So, they made me do a few plays, and my plays always turned into comedies. I would resort to comedy and the directors would tear their hair out. I was in an Ionesco play called 'No Exit.' It's a short play where these two people realize this is their hell, to be together forever in this same room. To prove that the girl is lying to me, I'm supposed to pick up this knife and stab her. So, we're on stage and I picked up the knife. The prop department made the knife. [laughs] And I picked it up and it fell apart. So, I had to strangle her. I guess I had a funny reaction on my face. I was surprised and I started strangling her and the whole audience was in hysterics. There was my first foraye into comedy.

JF: So, how did you get involved with improv comedy?

CH: I was actually at a party and I met Tim Kazarinski. I remember fooling around, doing bits and he said that I should be on stage. He set me up with an audition for Second City, which of course I failed miserably because I didn't even know what it was. They had you do cold readings and I was like 'What the hell is going on here?' Then I wanted to find out what it was that I just lost. Then I started to watch shows. I thought 'You can do this? This is great.' So, I started taking classes at Players Workshop, which is now something totally different, so I don't recommend it. Yeah, I was hooked.

JF: And about what year was that if you don't mind saying?

CH: I'm going to say that was about 80. Maybe 1979.

JF: So, what were those early classes like in Players Workshop?

CH: They were pretty bad now that I look back on it. [laughs] Now that I realize how to do it I realize how much was wrong that I was taught. I was taught that if you give someone what we call now-a-days 'a gift,' like if I say to you 'Bob, I'm so sorry you've become a parapelegic and [inaudible]' you kind of know what I'm expecting from you, they would call that a 'lay-on.' Every time you'd give someone information they'd say 'You're laying-on information. Don't lay-on information.' It wasn't until I met Del that I learned no, you're telling him something, that's a gift. I was totally taught not to give that gift. [laughs] So, now that I look back. I'm like 'Wow, that's terrible.'

JF: So, were people doing actual improv scenes in those classes?

CH: Oh yeah, they were teaching Second City stuff, like the warm-up and [shift [?]]. You know if you do something I do it bigger then bigger. More structured scenes than relationship scenes that were really improvised, that's what I remember doing more.

JF: How did you get involved with the kind of improv that you would come to identify as long-form improv?

CH: Well, that didn't even exist when I was a student. I read about David Shepard coming to town. David, I had read in 'Something Wonderful Right Away,' had created this game competition called Improv Olympic in Canada, but it didn't go over well. I know now that's because David was a little scattered to say the least. So, when he came to town I saw him and thought to myself 'Well, heck, I can do that Improv Olympic thing here if he'll give me a crack at it. I have an improv group. Dan Castellanetta has an improv group.' There were so many of us who graduated the Players Workshop who didn't have a place to play, because there wasn't Improv Olympic. There was only Second City, and if you weren't on the Main Stage of Second City you weren't playing. There wasn't even an ETC.

So, I approached him and he said 'Yeah, if you think you can pull it off, do it.' So, I got my group, Dan Castellanetta's group, a guy named Frank Farrell had a group called 'Free Shakespeare,' and we started to perform. We were doing games and were very successful. I even got a team of improvisers that were Rabbis called 'The God Squad.' [laughs] I started doing things to get press by making identity teams. It was successful. We were packing CrossCurrents, but after a few months the work was really bad. It was game-y and commercial. We were resorting to the same tricks. It was always the same ending. It started to get boring, and I knew something was wrong if we started getting bored.

I had heard about Del Close over the past year and that he hated me, because he hated David Shepard. He hated anyone that worked with David Shepard. I was mad about that. He didn't know me. He hadn't seen my shows. So, I just thought 'This guy's a real asshole.' I met him in an art gallery, and we had a very bad first meeting because he was doing something called the Innovacation and I thought he was invoking demons. I went up to him and told him he had a lot of nerve to invoke demons. He was like 'Um, I protected the building.' I was like 'You can't do that,' and walked away. Now if he didn't hate me before, he definitely hated me now, but I figured he didn't know who I was.

So, at the time again, back when I'm bored at CrossCurrents, I saw him sitting in the cafe one day at CrossCurrents, which was a bar and a lobby and a theater. So, I went up to him and asked him if he wanted to teach a class for Improv Olympic. He goes 'Can I do anything I want?' I was like 'Yeah.' He goes 'Can I invoke demons?' I was like 'Yeah.'

He taught an amazing class. He showed what the Innvocation really was. Afterwards I took him for coffee and I said 'There has to be something more to improvisation than these games.' He said 'Oh, you're not a twit after all.' I said 'Thanks, I guess.' He said 'Well, I've been working on something in the 60's called the Harold, which will change the face of improvisational comedy, but Ruby won't let me work on it, because he's making no ends and he doesn't want to change anything.' He said 'If you want to close down your little game theater and work with me we can change the face of improvisational comedy together.' I was like 'Yes, please.' That's what we did and after long-form was born.

He taught me everything he knew and together we actually came up with this form. He didn't have all the stuff together. It was just like scene after scene after scene. It just went on forever. I told him about one of my favorite games at the Improv Olympic, which was the Time Dash where you had a beginning middle and end. Then he thought 'Well, if we tied that together.' It was the only game at Improv Olympic that I really loved, because it was improv. We didn't know if it was a form or not. Before, during and after the excersize is over. Before, during and after the first meeting. Things progressed. It was real art to me. So, we decided together 'If we take three of those, and one of your opening games and some intersepersed, we can combine both our work.'

JF: I was talking to Dave Pasquesi about the beginning of the Harold and he said there was a lot of experimentation, that people would try a lot of new things to see what worked and what didn't.

CH: Well sure, we went in there with that training wheels plan. It was always an opening with monologues and information, but sometimes we were just wandering around looking at the floor. It was about a year until we figured 'Ok, let's not do that. [laughs] Let's stand there and really focus.' There were a lot of things that slowly changed, but we were all kind of inventing the wheel together. We did have a little bit of the structure. We knew that the scenes were going to come back. We knew that there'd be some monologues. We didn't know what the games were going to be. The games were always improvised. It was really cool. They would go for about 45 minutes back then. After Barron's Barracudas I think Del and I pretty much got it down.

JF: You mentioned that first workshop where Del did the Innvocation with you and some other people. What was it like being in those early workshops and how did it change what you viewed improv as?

CH: It was mind-boggling. We were really learning everything right for the first time. That's the first time we heard 'Say yes to each other. Make each other look good. Why are you pimping each other?' 'We got a laugh.' 'Oh really? You think that's more important?' We were like 'Wow.' We would leave there thinking that he had just given us the secrets to the universe. Think of all the things that we take for granted: the idea of getting a laugh because something was called back, seeing how patterns work. That was mind-blowing to us. 'Oh, we don't have get up there and be funny?' No, it's about call-backs, and if you call-back three times you're going to get huge laughs. We were like 'Holy shit.' This was mind-blowing.

J: So, how did Improv Olympic begin to change and grow as time went on?

C: Basically, we kept getting better and better at long-form. It was about the time that Blue Velveeta came that they got the Harold down. They were doing fast, furious Harolds. It wasn't like Barron's Barracudas anymore, who were doing 45 minutes. There's were like 30 minutes. They knew exactly what was happening and everything would tie up. The opening would connect to the closer. Everything would have levels.

The Barrons were great. They were the pioneers, but they weren't the best team that we ever had. It just got better and better. Blue Velveeta was the best team then, then The Family with Adam McKay the UCB guys. Del described them as 'Watching 6 men fall down the stairs at the same time land on their feet.' Through the years they just hit it, then Del and I decided 'Ok, that's the training wheels Harold. Now we can get it to the point where we don't worry about the form anymore.' We know that now we do a bunch of different scenes. They can take place at different times. It doesn't have to be in order. You can intersperes it with other games. You get it to be different levels of meaning. It was like free-falling now. It wasn't 1, 2, 3, scene, 1, 2, 3, game, 1, 2, 3.

JF: Have you noticed a change in improv over the years? Has it become faster and more condensed, like from Barron's Barracudas to Blue Velveeta? And if so, do you like that? Do you think it's a good step?

CH: Del used to say that we were doing comedy. The reason we were doing slow comedy is because we need time to think, and if we think we'll be more intelligent and the show will be more satisfying. He used to say 'Access your third thought.' Your first thought is your knee-jerk reaction. It's going to be a little jokey. Your second thought is a little better. The third thought is going to be the best. So, our Harolds were all very slow in the old days because they were doing it, then as they started getting better and better at it we started getting better at accessing that third thought. Now it's fast and it's still smart, and that's what we need. If we have some teams that are fast and not smart, then no, I don't like it. If we have a team like The Family was that is smart and could just access that third thought faster, then I like it.

And people are doing it better. Del used to talk about morphogenetic fields. It's kind of like this theory where you put rats in a maze and they can't do the maze, then as soon as a rat does it, then the other rats can do it right away. So, it's kind of like those ideas are trapped in that knowesphere. That's what's been happening here. People are getting better and better at it. And people are coming into classes better. I can see there are certain concepts that the world just has already.

JF: So are you happy with the state of improv? And if it could change in any way how would you like to see it change?

CH: The hard part for me is to keep it as good as it has always been in the past. There are new coaches. They weren't here when Del was teaching, so sometimes I see things being taught wrong. There are wrong values being taught. It's hard for me, because I can't be everywhere. I'm kind of a victim of my own success. I can't be teaching every team. So, I'll see teams on stage and go 'Oh God, they're doing this wrong, or they're not thinking or they don't understand why the opening is so important.' That concerns me. So, I'm not always totally happy, no. Even with some of my best teams I'm never happy. I think that's a director's job though to never be satisfied.

Do I think improv has gotten better over the years? Absolutely. I remember seeing a documentary about the old Second City days with Elaine May and Severn Darden, and oh what's the name. My name just went blank. I'll come up with it in a minute. Do you know the name of the pioneers of Second City?

JF: A couple people. I know Paul Sills.

CH: I know her name. Anyway, Severn and this woman who I'm trying to think of, she walked out on stage, Severn was on his knees and he was planting. He said 'How do you like my garden?' She said 'That's not a garden, that's garbage.' The audience cracked up. She was fantastic. She'd get thrown out of a level 1 class now. But these were the pioneers. This was funny stuff. That's why Del came up with these things, because he was there. He was like 'We shouldn't do that to each other. We can't screw each other over for a joke.' That's what Joan Rivers used to do to him. He did a scene with her, this is the famous story, where she initiated the scene and said 'I want a divorce.' From her initiation he understood that she wanted him to play the distraught husband, so he said 'But honey, what about the children?' She said 'We don't have any.' It got a huge laugh, but he looked like an idiot. What man doesn't know if he has children or not? She would get a laugh at the expense of her fellow players, as a result people didn't trust her on stage. She became a stand-up, but she's not an improviser. It's a different animal, because an improviser should take care of their partners. You're taking a risk to be out there every night. You have to make sure that your partner has your back.

Those are the things he developed with Elaine May. They called them 'The Kitchen Rules.' They'd do a show, he and Elaine and Severn and Mike Nichols, and they'd go back to her apartment and go 'What the hell went wrong tonight? Why was it so bad?' Well, Del said 'When someone said 'We've got a flat tire,' I said 'Ok, I'll fix it. Give me the jack.' Someone said 'No, I don't have a jack. No, there's no jack.' If you had just given me the jack, we could have fixed it, been on our way and seen what the scene was about instead of saying no to each other.' So, they decided 'Ok, we'll say yes to each other. That will be one of the rules.' So, Del was coming up with these rules with Elaine a long time ago.

Susan Messing - 6/4/07 - Part 3

2007-06-04T11:22:00.000-05:00

JF: Do you think that’s in conflict with the idea of being in the moment?

SM: That is being in the moment. Being in the moment is smelling, touching, tasting now. What else is being in the moment? You know what I mean? Do something. Wash dishes in real life and I don’t give a shit. Wash them onstage and it’s fascinating. You can’t make a discovery unless you do something. Otherwise it’s a tiresome invention. When you’re onstage, let’s say I’m staring at myself in the reflection of the plate that I’m washing. I might discover that I’m a vain little bitch. I discover how good my face lift looks. I’m also probably going to end up putting them down to my boobs and deciding what next operation I’m going to have. You will also find me beaming at myself in a spoon. I’m going to look for more opportunities to rape whatever I’ve discovered, and rape my friend and rape my world and myself. Exploit doesn’t work anymore.

JF: Yeah, you have to go bigger.

SM: Well, onstage try it on. Offstage get some therapy. I think it really comes down to people being afraid to fuck it up, and I’m saying you can’t fuck it up. It’s impossible to fuck it up. There are ways to get off better. You can touch my knee for 14 hours. It’s never going to be my clit. I’m going to say ‘Hey, if you go over here you might get back on the joy ride and cum.’ Ever almost cum and your mom calls? You’re like ‘Uch, I’ve got to start all over again.’

JF: Right.

SM: Josh is like ‘Uh, no, but …yeah …ok.’ It just doesn’t mean anything to me anymore. You see, I’m not going to do it anymore if it doesn’t bring me joy. I’m not going to teach it if people don’t get why it’s joyful. That’s my responsibility: to bring in joy every single time.
Group mind, we act like it’s such an ethereal gift. You hear of group mind, right?

JF: Yeah.

SM: Yeah, how do you achieve it?

JF: Uh, …trust.

SM: Really? How about this? Match each other’s fucking energy! I don’t care if you trust him or not. Get over yourself. [laughs] You just match each other’s energy. If you’re the kind of person who likes to sit back and slowly figure things out while everyone else is doing something, then fucking rise to the occasion asshole and pick up your energy. If you’re a person like me who’s a little too pushy, I’ve got to relax my crack and join the predominant energy. That’s being on the same page. Then all the sudden we’re on the same page, and you know what I discover? I trust them.

JF: How do you decide what the predominant energy is? Can simply be observed? Or is it whoever is in the minority doesn’t have the predominant energy?

SM: I know what you’re saying about that. Well, this is it. There’s got to be a central, middle energy for that. Like I said, people who are too pushy need to relax. People who are always being tentative and quite need to pull it up. This is a personal responsibility. I can’t manipulate people’s spines. Everyone has to be responsible for saying ‘fuck.’ I’m not saying you have to give up what makes you beautiful and relaxed and all that good stuff, and I don’t think a high energy person should have to give that up for themselves. But like I said a leader can be a follower, and a follower can be a leader easily. It really is just changing up your energy. When you turn around and realize that everybody is doing what we’re doing, it’s an awesome feeling, isn’t it? We judge ourselves more harshly than anybody else, but then when we paralyze ourselves we’re screwed. That’s a self-paralysis. Frankly, there’s bad table manners in improv, but I can teach people escapes and defenses from that. And frankly, if I’m getting off, I don’t care about someone’s bad table manners. I remember women used to say in Chicago, but they don’t anymore ‘Women follow the rules, and men just play.’ Well, who’s getting off? The playful ones. You realize that it’s because they don’t care about being right or wrong. They don’t can about looking stupid.

JF: Do you think that’s [changed]?

SM: Sure. Yeah, women in Chicago are very grounded now. They don’t blame men for their misfortune. I do a show now called ‘Messing with a Friend’ and the one rule I have is ‘If you don’t have fun, you’re the asshole.’ So that means [laughs] you will find me backstage before the show curled up in a little fetal ball going ‘Oh no, I’m going to be the asshole. The asshole’s my fucking role in my show. Oh my God, I’m going to be the asshole.’ Then my desire to create supersedes whatever weirdness I have to go through in order to create, then the joy ride starts.

JF: How do you balance that desire to have fun or be free onstage with doing work that you consider to be artistic, or artistically valuable?

SM: I think they’re one in the same. You put it onstage and people judge it. I got a review from Chris Jones a couple weeks ago that blew my wad. He put some absolute, esoteric, delightful …I can’t even remember the adjectives that he used to describe me. I’ve got a pre-paid commission for this man to write my obit. It’s redunk. Because you put it onstage, people judge it. People come up to me and ask me about the sociological and economic and political ramifications of Coed Prison Sluts. I would say ‘Did ya laugh?’ I think that when you put it onstage it gets judge. I think that’s when it becomes art. I think art begins when you express yourself and maybe somebody watches it. I guess I could make up art in my bathtub too. I don’t think there’s a balance there. If we decide that we’re always artists, instead of we’re just jacking off on a stage and running, everything will come back together if we trust everything comes back together. Then it will be pretty.

It’s interesting I also teach at DePaul University, Loyola University, and University of Chicago and actors don’t care if it looks stupid. It seems like half of improvising recently is talking people into improvising. ‘There’s no pee in the baby pool. Come right in.’ But people also use improv for different reasons. Not everybody wants to be an improviser. A lot of people want to get along with people better. A lot of people want to come out of their shell. A lot of people want to work in a corporate environment. I don’t think you have to be talented even to be an improviser. I think you have to learn cooperation. Talent I can always pull up in a class. Talent I think in improv comes from self-permission. If there are things that feel funky, like your body feels self-conscious, go to a fucking movement class, or it’s time to take that way gay yoga class. There’s always a cure for that. There’s always something that will put you back in the proactive seat.

JF: How important do you think acting training is to being a good improviser?

SM: Well, I was going to say my actors are willing to do absolutely anything at 9:40 in the morning. My improvisers have to be prodded into it. I do believe that actors do have a better idea of stage picture and taking care of their bodies at the top of the scene and all that good stuff, but I find them to be humorless little people with a perfection problem. [laughs] And they have an attitude problem that can be really hard to get through sometimes. Sometimes they’re wonderful at scene work. I’ve heard people say ‘Oh, he’s such an asshole, but he’s such a good actor.’ I’m thinking ‘That don’t fly with me.’ I’m going to deal with the people who are easiest to get along with. I don’t have time to fuck around with that noise. In class, I have all the patience in the in the world, but in directing I don’t. If you’re a diva, you don’t last long in improv.

JF: You directed Second City shows.

SM: I directed Tour Co. for about a year. That was one of the few jobs I ever quit.

JF: Oh really?

SM: It was more babysitting and the dramedy of the day. It wasn’t pursuing joy. I think a lot of the actors were jaded. There was a lot of entitlement. There was a lot of fussing. I understand when you tour around the country and maybe you feel you’re not getting recognized by your theater, which they really do recognize, but it’s also part of your training. When I was on Main Stage at Second City, it felt like my Phd. in comedy. The Annoyance felt like my Masters and iO felt like my Bachelors. We have to understand that if we do something onstage and later feel crappy that those are growing pains, and be patient with ourselves. They’re pains, but we’re growing. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s only when someone stops you, like Keith Johnstone, and says ‘No, that’s not good enough. Do it over again.’ I’ve seen him do that. I end up going ‘Wait. I thought that every suggestion was great and that we can make flowers out of shit. That’s how I was taught.’ To hear that it’s not good enough means that there’s something better. I always thought that anything could be turned into art and beauty.

JF: When you were at Second City did you ever re-improvise scenes?

SM: Yeah, you have to understand through during my time at Second City I was censored. Like Rich Talarico said ‘They hired you because you were Susan Messing, then told you not to be.’ I think they worried about the fact that I was uncensored and that I’d be a loose cannon on Main Stage. I didn’t worry about that. They put this condition on my being hired that there was a possibility I couldn’t go… They were worried that I would go ‘blue.’ I wasn’t, but they were. In the first show, I didn’t.

What would happen was you would come into the rehearsal, and you could come in with written shit if you wanted. Mostly someone would come in with an idea, and not a very fleshed out idea either. We would improvise it. If we liked it, we would improvise it more and throw it in the set. If we didn’t like it, we’d probably promptly drop it or maybe Mick would see a gem in it that we could left-brain it somewhere else. That second time blues though, re-improvising something, is not always fun. It feels kind of creepy, but you have to do it sometimes. Then finally you beat it out and set it and the script naturally grows out of that, or you sit down and write something funny which I think is more difficult to do.

JF: I was reading something and it mentioned how important Del Close thought improv being a ‘theater of the heart’ was. Do you think that’s prevalent in the improv community or do you think people just do it more for comedy?

SM: I think that sometimes theories sound beautiful, but sometimes the reality is a little more difficult to pursue. But isn’t that a great goal? It really is. I really believe that we have to honor each other and take care of each other no matter where we play, no matter who we play with. The minute you come onstage with judgment is the minute you’re fucked before you start. Self-judgment like I said is the worst, but judgment of our peers is unconscionable. That’s where teamwork comes in, and that’s why it’s so difficult for some people to become a good team player, and that’s when I invite them to become just an actor.

My whole struggle my whole life is to become a good team player. That’s not easy for me. We all have our own agendas. I love that it’s difficult for me. I love that this is the kind of art where the day I stop growing is the day I start dying. You can’t rest on your petty little laurels at this stage of the game. I’ve been improvising over 19 years now and now I’m not going to stop. What? Stop growing? Did the earth stop?

In my evolution or de-evolution as it were, my life experiences change up who I am and how I play. Because if I go back to some tiresome piece of shit I did, trying to be funny, the audience will sense that. This is the thing: the only way to heighten something funny is to say something funnier. I love truth in comedy. I do. I also like changing up status. I love changing up everything. Comedy is a great learning tool. It really is for everybody.

JF: In your opinion, what makes a good initiation and how do you initiate typically?

SM: I guess I initiate with a person in a world and see what happens. I never initiate with plot with nothing else, because if I initiate with plot and my friend beats me to the chase, I’ve got nothing other than Susan Messing standing onstage in defense. [laughs] Because you’re thinking in your head ‘What about my idea?’ That’s why if somebody initiates I can always respond as a human being, even if I take care of myself in the first 3 seconds of the scene. Say I jut out my hips and I look defiant. Well, you can stick me anywhere. I can be your bride. I can be your lawyer. I can be anything. So, I just put a person in a world and see what happens. Or I do something at the top of the scene at the top of the scene and see how I feel about it. Or, if I have jack shit for myself, I match my friend’s energy and we’re already protected.

There was a time I think Emily Wilson once sat down in a chair and kind of straddled it. I had nothing, so I sat in a chair and straddled it as well. My show is that I’m totally inspired by other people’s body positions, like freeze tag where you have to be inspired by that. Emily sat down and said ‘Momma, I have to talk to you.’ I said ‘Sure honey, I can talk to you, but you’re going to have to put 25 cents in the machine. Mommy’s working now.’ Because it reminded me of that bad Madonna video from the 80’s, where she’s dancing for the man. So, she got to have a momma daughter talk with me while momma was in a spoog filled room. [laughs] That gets me off. I love specificity. I totally kills ambiguity.

JF: Why do you think there are so few great improv troupes?

SM: I don’t know why. I think there are so many improv troupes in Chicago that I assume there’s bound to be a good chunk of mediocrity. I’m trying to think about this. I think everybody deserves that time to grow and to be willing to fail. A lot of people have a lot going on. It’s one of several things that they do, so maybe they don’t have the time and energy to it. It’s a luxury. I don’t want to say that their work ethic is any worse of better than anything else. I don’t know how many improv troupes there are in New York, and that you go ‘Oh, that one’s a great one and that one’s not.’ I would assume that it’s their willingness to invest in each other. Maybe other people just don’t have the time or energy to do that. Just because people aren’t that great now doesn’t mean they can’t be in the future. I think anybody can be wonderful. If I can do this, anybody can.

JF: How have you seen improv change over the years?

SM: I just think a lot more people. I think that everybody thinks that they’re creating new forms. They’ve become a bit more sophisticated. It’s certainly more accepted as an art form on its own. It’s reaching far more people. It’s not just people going ‘Is that that thing that you do on ‘Whose Line is it Anyway?’’ People don’t ask as many stupid questions. [laughs] Obviously, if they’re taking me into their theater programs to teach their students, the academics are taking it more seriously, which makes me happy because I think I would have been a much better actor sooner had I taken improv in college.

JF: What advice would you have for improvisers starting out now?

SM: For what?

JF: In general. To be successful in this.

SM: Be yourself. Celebrate that you got up today. Enjoy sharing time with other people. Enjoy that people are honoring your choices, and think you’re great until you tell me you’re not. People are their own worse enemy in improv. It’s not that bully on your team, although the bully should go away. [laughs] Go away. There’s no time for that.

JF: Do you have any advice for people who are 8 years into improv or something like that?

SM: They’re losing their minds. Get a life. For a while. Because improv is not going away. After 11 years of improvising, the last thing I wanted to do was mime a cup of coffee. I wanted to make a cup of coffee. And that break gave me enough life-experience again to recommit to the art. Sometimes people fell like they’ve fallen down the rabbit hole with improv, like ‘Oh my God, this is the most amazing thing.’ They make their whole life around this art. And I’m saying it’s your life that will support your art, and your art will support your life. You’ve got to find a balance.

JF: Do you have anything that you would like to say to the improv community that we didn’t get out?

SM: Where? Who is? [laughs] Who is disseminating this information?

JF: Right now I’m posting them on the improvresourcecenter.com.

SM: Oh dear God. Forward that to me. I’ll be bored with myself. [laughs] What was the question?

JF: [laughs] Do you have anything that you would like to say to the improv community that we didn’t get out?

SM: Yeah, thank you for being part of the community. I hope you have a wonderful time, and I look forward to meeting you.

Susan Messing - 6/4/07 - Part 2

2007-06-04T11:15:00.000-05:00

JF: What do you think the impact The Annoyance has been on the Chicago comedy and theater scene and even broader?

SM: I think it was a real start off point for people to have permission to say whatever you wanted to say on stage, and now everybody does. I think you have to look at the history of it to see ‘Oh, maybe we were the precursors of all that.’ After us, Torso Theater came out and did ‘Campbell Cheerleaders on Crack.’ I could see people mimicking certain styles of shows we were doing. Or creating whole shows through improv, which is what Cardiff Giant ended up doing, but I think that was based off of what they had done with The Annoyance Theater.

JF: They did Urinetown, right?

SM: That’s Greg Codis. He’s out of Cardiff Giant. But when my mom saw Urinetown on Broadway she said ‘It reminded me a lot of an Annoyance show.’ That was her first comment. I didn’t ask her if it reminded her of an Annoyance show. It felt very loose. Part of the joke of the Annoyance was you can’t say you’re the star of our next musical. It really didn’t matter how good you were. It certainly was an attitude as well. We didn’t have auditions. There was this guy Ken Mancy who saw Coed Prison Sluts 72 times. You can imagine he needed a hobby, then the 73rd time he was on stage as the warden. Then we would do holiday shows and Ken would get dressed up. He was like [does a voice] ‘Ken Mancy, already in his forties. He just kind of had a very basic life, and he worked for Buena Vista film.’ A very boring man with a very monotone voice. He reminded me of Larry ‘Bud’ Melman. We’d stick him in a unitard with skulls and cross bones all over it. He’d be ‘Ken, as a skeleton.’ After a while, everything was game. I think we loosened people up. I think people saw us and thought that it was ok to go there. [Mick] is a big fan of lack of censorship. When I play at iO, I’m careful to acknowledge the integrity of the stage, same thing with Second City. I don’t want to alienate the audience or my peer group. By walking in the door, it doesn’t matter what time slot I’m in, I’m protected. I can say whatever I want to say and that’s nice. It’s nice not to have to catch yourself.

JF: Do you think that the training center there is unique? Do you think that the Annoyance has a unique approach to improv?

SM: It totally comes out of Mick, the whole premise of taking care of yourself at the top of the scene, whereas someone like Charna at Improv Olympic says ‘Take care of your partner.’ Mick says ‘Yes, you should take care of your partner, but the best way to take care of your partner is to take care of yourself for the scene.’ So, if your partner looks at you and you’re not panicking, that’s a pleasant place to be. You can’t take care of someone in lieu of yourself, like saying ‘You make me whole.’ You know what I mean? Now, granted, I can’t do it without my friend. I cannot do it without my friend, but the only thing I own in the scene is me. I don’t own your plot. I don’t own anything, but I can always put a person in your plot.

I created the level 2 curriculum at iO. When I teach it at iO, I’m bringing an Annoyance idea with me. It makes a powerful improviser. I don’t think it makes a selfish, bad improviser. I think it makes a solid improviser. Have you read Mick’s book?

JF: Yeah.

SM: I like his book. When you see Annoyance members improvising, I’m not saying it’s always good, but they don’t look scared. They don’t look scared as an improviser, so you disconnect and go ‘Ew. Yuck. I’m scared of them. I’m worried for them.’ That will make you disconnected and not enjoy the joy ride.

JF: What were you doing after Blue Velveeta?

SM: At one point Mitch [Rouse] and Jay [Leggett] sat Tommy Booker and I down and said ‘You can’t do this and The Annoyance. You have to make a choice.’ They didn’t want to go up first, because they were the headliners, the top dog team. They decided that they always had to go up second. It was more important for us to keep this status spot on the roster than for us to all play together. I thought ‘Well, I’m going to go where they don’t make me choose,’ because The Annoyance didn’t care what else I did. So, I left Blue Velveeta for a while, then they wanted to do this ‘Southern Comfort Comedy Team Challenge’ thing that Charna set up with a liquor company, where the winnings would be that we would tour military based with Southern Comfort in hand. You can only imagine how fun that would be. We were so stupid. Charna asked me if I would come back to Blue Velveeta for that, so I did. And we won. And we went to military bases. And I was the only woman. We would ask for a suggestion and the men would say ‘Show me your tits.’ Then we’d all drink Southern Comfort. It was warm and sticky like syrup, and invariably someone would throw up. [laughs]

I left iO for a while, and started doing only Annoyance stuff, then I was doing only Annoyance and wanted to teach for iO. I don’t know why. Oh, I was teaching for Mick. I was teaching a ‘Ladies Class,’ which I fucking hated. I didn’t want to teach ‘ladies.’ I wanted to teach people. I did realize there was a need for it at the time. Women were very victim-y in this work. It was rare that you got the Amy [Poehler]s and the Tina [Fey]s. Women were still blaming men for their misfortune, and I wasn’t. I was just thrilled to play with them. So, Mick had Jodi Lennon and I teach a class together, then I went to Charna and said ‘I want to teach for you.’ She said ‘If you want to teach, you have to coach.’ I’m thinking ‘Miles Stroth started like 6 years after me, and you’re making me coach instead of teach?’ I said fine and went and coached 3 teams for a year and a half, and I coached them fucking hard. Every day I’d go home and make up exercises, high in my tub. Finally, I came to her a year and a half later with a full curriculum. I said ‘You need this and this is why. You have a bunch of people standing around and talking about it and you’re boring me. It’s a character, environment and teamwork class.’ That’s how that started and she’s made a bajillion dollars off me since.

JF: I’ve heard you make up a lot of exercises. Not a lot of coaches do that. Why do you think that is and do you think that’s a shortcoming of theirs?

SM: I don’t know if it’s a shortcoming of theirs. I can’t comment on anywhere I’m not. I think every team is unique and every coach is unique. You have to balance how much of this is teaching and how much of this is getting your team to be a cohesive unit and ready for a show. I’ve always felt creative [with making new exercises], like this is an exercise I’d do, or this hits my gay zone really tight, so let’s cross it. And if they were willing to do it, I was willing to show them. Actually, everybody who has ever committed fully to anything I’ve made them to do has looked great doing it. The worst thing that’s going to happen is maybe somebody laughs at them and we’re doing comedy, fuck you. [laughs] The failure rate is incredibly low in comedy if you pursue it with joy. Even a glorious failure is a huge success, don’t you think?

JF: It’s interesting.

SM: I don’t know. That’s just me. You improvise a lot Josh?

JF: Yeah.

SM: Yeah? You like that shit?

JF: Failing? I’m kind of tentative about making mistakes, or what I feel are mistakes.

SM: Isn’t that interesting? You’re tentative about making mistakes in an imperfect art form where there are no mistakes. Not only that, you’re greatest mistakes will become your greatest joys. I did a show a couple weeks ago with Alex Fendrich and Rachel Mason and I’m like the Yogi Berra of improv. I say bullshit all the time that just vomits out of my mouth, and I immediately of course want to take it back, but you can’t. It’s in nature now. I said ‘Starboooks,’ instead of Starbucks. Alex says ‘Ahhh, yes, Starboooks, almost as good as Starbucks.’ Rachel said ‘Yes, yes, it’s with an umlaut.’ I thought to myself ‘How fucking awesome that Starbucks has a bastard cousin, Starboooks. It’s kind of like the Avis of coffee shops.’ And I’m so fucking gullible I’ll buy into it the more I hear about it. The day that I realize ‘Fuck it. People don’t judge my mistakes unless I telegraph that I’m an idiot.’

I think The Annoyance is great at protecting the freak, that’s what I call it. If I walk around in circles for four hours at iO, I’m retarded or crazy Jenny. If I walk around in circles for four hours at The Annoyance, I’m just Jenny. You know what I’m saying? When I’m playing anywhere except The Annoyance, I’m making sure that I relax what might appear as a stereotype unless somebody joins me in that energy, so we’re protected by style, I relax my crack a little bit, so I can play with someone who’s as grounded as a Dorff or a Peter Gwinn or anybody.

JF: Do you teach differently in different training centers?

SM: Yes, here’s my curriculum at iO: I teach what I created for other teachers to teach what I teach as well. It’s funny to watch them teach Doublemint Twins get fucked up the ass, but they do it so I’m not going to complain. At The Annoyance, the level 3 class usually has a big case of F.I.D.S., which is frustrated improviser disease, which I’m trying to eradicate from the planet, although it can never really be cured only managed. Nice improvisers disease will turn into F.I.D.S. too, that’s the tentative, quiet improviser who holds up the back wall and says ‘Oh, I’m just a support player,’ one of those. I’ll tell you this: you will ultimately get so frustrated not sharing who you are and saying ‘fuck it,’ which is really where Mick comes from, ‘Fuck it. I’m great.’ You will jump through that, because you’ll get too frustrated with it. There is no right or wrong way to express yourself, and those aren’t rules. They’re suggestions that might get you there faster. They might put you in the power ride faster. Even Mick’s book, just suggestions. Everything is just a suggestion. Ultimately, I studied everywhere and became the improviser that I wanted to be. The way that I teach is, this is just my opinion from going in the trenches the other week, I don’t want anybody to go to hell. So, I really come from a very empathetic space.

JF: How do you encourage people to get off the backline? It is just a matter of time sometimes?

SM: Either you are going to have a breaking point or you are finally jump in there and realize that it doesn’t hurt. You come out and you’re proud of yourself afterwards. Followers have to turn into leaders. Leaders have to turn into followers. I was one of those frustrated leaders, one of those ‘Come on you guys,’ then I relaxed my crack and joined in the predominant energy. This is not about me. I’m an integral part of a whole. That also means that an improviser who has nice improvisers disease who says ‘This is nice.’ If we don’t know what it is, it sure as hell isn’t nice. Start getting specific, because I love your brain. There’s only two kind of improvisers I hate, that’s an improviser who telegraphs ‘I suck’ or who telegraphs ‘you suck.’ Everybody is on the exact same level playing field. I don’t believe that your college degrees are what make you intelligent. I believe your life experience pulls you out there. You’re only limited by your lack of imagination and fear of appearing stupid. Now I’m quite sure you have a vivid imagination, which is why you watched the show one day you said ‘I want to do this,’ or ‘I know I can do this one day.’ Well, you were right, so start being right. You understand what I’m saying?

JF: Yeah.

SM: I say to people ‘I can’t push you. I can’t manipulate your spine. The only thing you own in the scene is yourself. So, why don’t you try something on and see what the fuck happens? And if you don’t like it, do it more.’ [laughs] That’s the whole weirdness of improv. It goes against human nature, which is if you don’t like it, you’re prerogative as an adult is you don’t have to do it. I’m an adult. In improv, if you don’t like it, you have to do it more, because it’s your commitment to something that’s going to pull out the comedy, not hanging around saying wacky, clever shit. That’s hard to do. I don’t work that way anymore, because that’s too hard for me to do. I just work uncensored and trust that everything I put out there will be added to the stew, and by the end we have stew. Now it’s our choice whether we want to make stew or broth with water in a pot or a rich, aromatic stew. It’s up to us. We don’t know what the stew is until the scene over. Why are we all giving up on our shit?

I’ll let you know another little secret too. If you ever see me hugging the back wall, definitely I’m feeling insecure that night. I’ll tell you this: the power place on the stage is downstage, because our audience is on our side. You want to feel the fucking love, and you want to recognize that what you’re doing is important, you hang out downstage and you’ll discover that what you’re doing is important to the scene. It’s not just object work, not the coffee-stall-until-the-argument-in-your-apartment-scene anymore. It’s going to be that you’re drinking coffee. Now throw out a reason. ‘I was up with the baby all last night.’ Boom. Or ‘If I don’t I have a migraine.’ Now you have something in your arsenal to work with. Mick always says ‘Do something. Anything.’ One of the things about the UCB, you know how fast they play?

JF: Yeah.

SM: Yeah, because their whole gig is ‘finding the game.’ To them, I think it means the first weird or goofy thing that happens in the scene, but the game in the scene is your creation. It’s anything that you do more than once. If my contact lenses are bugging me at the top of my scene, if I wear them, which I don’t, but let’s say my contact lenses bug me and I’m blinking my eyes within the first three seconds of my scene your audience thinks you’re blinking. Then if your contact lenses stop bugging you and you stop blinking they go ‘Where did blinky go!? Come back!?’ That’s when they get mad. They don’t get mad when you make a choice. They get mad when you drop it. Your first 30 seconds of your scene is your promise to the audience about who you will be. We will discover where you are and what’s up, because scenes definitely aren’t about plot and it’s definitely not about your funny. It’s about people. I don’t care where you play. It’s got to be about people. So, ringing a bell could be a game. It doesn’t have to be wacky, but if I get lost in a scene and dropping it and go on to something that I perceive would be better, i.e. I suck, and recommit to the choice I made at the top of the scene and heighten them I will discover a new plot or at the very least the reason why I was doing this. I share that and something happens. Or somebody else comes up with a reason for it.

Susan Messing - 6/4/07 - Part 1

2007-06-04T11:09:00.000-05:00

Susan Messing is a veteran improviser and actor. She studied with Del Close and Charna Halpern and has taught at iO, Second City and The Annoyance Theater. She performed with Blue Velveeta and is a founding member of The Annoyance Theater, where she has appeared in many productions. She currently performs in 'Messing with a Friend' at The Annoyance Theater.

JF: Where were you born?

SM: Perth Amboy General Hospital, Perth Amboy, NJ.

JF: What were some early influences on your sense of humor?

SM: My father and ‘I Love Lucy.’ My father was the smartest and driest man I’ve ever met. My mother was humorless at the time. That was probably a good thing. And I just watched a lot of ‘I Love Lucy.’

JF: How did they influence you? Do you see their influence at all now-a-days?

SM: Sometimes. Charna will say that I make a stupid face, and it probably looks a little like Lucy. [laughs] I think it appeals to the five year old in me more than anything else. Now when I watch it it’s hard to watch. I still respect it, but I think it appealed to the five year old in me more than anything else.

JF: When did you know that you wanted to be a performer?

SM: My whole life probably. I was either going to be an actor, a hockey goalie or a swimming coach, and I thought the acting thing would probably fit best.

JF: Were you interested in sports growing up?

SM: Just the New York Rangers. [laughs]

JF: So, were you involved with theater in high school and stuff like that?

SM: I was a cheerleader, ironically. I couldn’t do anything, but I smiled like I had gas, so people overlooked my lack of talent. And yeah, I was doing plays forever. I went to a camp in the summer called Belmore Terrace in Lennox, Massachusetts. It was a Fine Arts camp, so I was doing that kind of shit from an early age.

JF: How did you get involved with improv?

SM: I went to Northwestern. I was a mediocre actress. After I graduated, I started taking classes at iO and went ‘Oh, I don’t have to memorize shit. I can just make up crap. This is fun.’

JF: How did you hear about iO? Did you have any training in improv during your acting training?

SM: I did a thing at Northwestern called ‘The Me-ow Show.’ It’s a comedy thing. I guess there’s some improv, some sketch, improv games probably. I just never thought of myself as a comedienne necessarily. Every time I was in a play it just happened to be a comedy for the most part, but I didn’t go ‘Oh, that’s what I want to do.’

I think my junior year at Northwester I heard there was an audition downtown for an improv group, and that was Improv Olympic. I didn’t really know it at the time, so when I took classes I didn’t put two and two together.

JF: What was your experience like when you started at Improv Olympic?

SM: There were very few teams. It was tiny, tiny, tiny. There were really just three teachers. [disconnected] …I just went home crying every night, but I had little voice inside my head that said ‘I can do this shit one day.’ And Charna was really, really mean to the few women who were around. She was one of those women who hated men. [laughs] Or women. She liked men, a lot. Then one day I had a class where you do musical improv, and that was like breathing to me. She said ‘ [inaudible]. One day you’re going to be invaluable to me. ’ Apparently, I became that, so God bless. …I think the masochist in me stayed.

JF: What were the other levels like? You said there were three teachers.

SM: It was Charna, then you had this guy named John Harisol, who was terrific, then you would take Del. I had John twice because Del was kind of M.I.A. for a while. Maybe he was in a play or something. And you would just take Del to infinity. You would just take his class until you stopped taking classes, and that was really your choice after a while, I guess. Although I think she threatened you that if you didn’t take classes, you weren’t on a team or something like that. There were very few teams, no more than maybe five when I started. And every time there was a new team it was called ‘Blind Faith.’ I was on about 11 ‘Blind Faiths.’ She decided then to get even worse and only gave names to what she perceived to be the great teams. Everybody else was on the ‘D Team’ or the ‘F Team’ or whatever.

I was on the D Team. It had Jay Leggett, Mitch Rouse, Brian Blondel, later [Brian] McCann joined, Brendan Sullivan, Kevin Dorff and myself. I was ‘the girl.’ They just looked at me and said ‘Oh, ok, you’re the girl,’ and they didn’t yell at me or tell me I sucked, so within a day I was a million times more brilliant than the day before. Our coach was Mick [Napier], who I guess hadn’t really coached before but he was fucking brilliant, and we became a really good team called ‘Blue Velveeta.’

JF: Why were you more brilliant the day after you joined than the day before?

SM: Self-permission is probably one, but I think acceptance. In it, I heard I was fine. I was. You can only take so much negative reinforcement. Some people need to be kicked and some people need to be stroked. At the time, Charna had kicked me so many times to look at me and not kick me was considered a real soft touch. [laughs]

JF: Was that ever a turn off for some people?

SM: Yes, women left in droves. Women would leave in droves and became actors. There were maybe two women at the time that I started who were consistently still there, that was Madeline Long and Honor Finnegan. Honor was not a very good improviser but she was a brilliant singer, the kind of singer that would make your hair stand on end. They put [Madeline Long] and Honor Finnegan in The Brain Galaxy that Del created with a bunch of people.

JF: Blue Velveeta wasn’t expected to be a great team at first?

SM: Nooo, not at all. We were rug rats. Nobody respected us. They all laughed. Mick didn’t judge it, and we had an incredible work ethic, an amazing desire to get better. By shear work ethic and ultimately self-permission, we started flying.

JF: How long did that take?

SM: Because we took ourselves really seriously, we just got infinitely better. I don’t think it took us too long of a time. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe if you asked Dorff how long it took he’d say ‘Oh, at least it took at least 7 months or something.’ I just remember having such a good time. The consequence of joy is a good show. I think we got what would be perceived as good pretty quickly. We were also working really, really hard. Those guys were real tough nuts about succeeding, whatever that means to you. I was just happy to play, to be a fly on the wall in the boys club.

JF: So, you guys were doing it more than once a week?

SM: Oh definitely. I’m not sure how many shows we had, but we were definitely working with Mick at least once a week, then whatever shows we had as well.

JF: So, what were those early days at iO like? Were they competitive?

SM: They were. It was only because Improv Olympics was a competitive sport. A team would be pit against a team. What are they called now? When they have those competitions?

JF: Cagematch?

SM: Cagematch. Every night was a cage match. It wasn’t just your friends voting per se. There were four criteria. I think they were ‘Theme,’ how closely did you hit the theme on the head, ‘Originality,’ and two other tiresome things. It was stupid. Even at the earliest stage I knew that it was a stupid move to make. It’s like saying ‘This apple is better than this orange.’ So, it was kind of silly to try to pit people against each other. I don’t think we bought into it too much. I don’t think we got off stage and said ‘We lost today.’ However, once she phased that out, which happened a year or two after I started improv, she would have these semi-annual, or annual competitions, where she would pit us against each other. There would be a final on the Main Stage of Second City. But I remember they would say it was a ‘Just because you performed at Second City doesn’t mean you’re in Second City’ type of thing.

JF: How did your experience with improv start to change you or change what you wanted? It seems like it became a really big part of your life suddenly.

SM: Yeah, well, first of all, it becomes a huge part of your social life. It’s always in a bar-like situation, so it didn’t feel as heady I had to deal with in undergraduate in Northwestern. So, I liked the loose structure. I liked that I didn’t have to memorize anything. I liked that I could show up, do it, then leave. So, socially, it became your world, because everybody was friends with everybody else. A lot of partying. A lot of insane partying. A lot of ooo… a lot of debauchery. So, that changed immediately. Then I started realizing that this make-believe crap I had done all my life actually had a name. It just gave it validity, even in its nascent years. The only game in town was Second City and improv really wasn’t really what it was about. It was used as a creating device or used to do a set and let off a little steam and call it a day. So, it became something like ‘Oh my gosh, we’re onto something artistically pretty here,’ especially later on with Del when he would push us to do new forms and stuff, which really didn’t interest me as much as an opportunity to be around Del, but he was pushing the agenda that way.

JF: How did you become involved with The Annoyance Theater?

SM: Once I started with iO, that’s where I met Mick. He was one of the first three improvisers I met: Richard Label, Dave Razowski and Mick. You can imagine what my life was after that. [laughs] And I was young. Mick was hateful, but delicious. They used to have a group called Metraform. They were a bunch of people out of the University of Indiana. They did a show called ‘Splatter Theater,’ which was brilliant. It was a lot of fun. They also had something called ‘Nimbus,’ new forms night. You would get together and rehearse, but not really. A bunch of people would get together and someone would direct, like Pete Gardner or whatever. They would say ‘Your show is called ‘Clown.’’ It’s like ‘What’s that?’ They’re like ‘Figure it out.’ Then you perform it. [laughs] It was experimental. Then I got involved in Splatter Theater 2, which was a horrible show. There were too many people. Financially, it was taking blood out of us. Then Mick took 9 people who he tolerated out of this experience and that’s how we created ‘Coed Prison Sluts,’ and that’s how Metraform ultimately turned into The Annoyance.

JF: So, what was Coed Prison Sluts, and why was it such a big deal for The Annoyance?

SM: First of all, it was our first show. It was our flagship show under the Annoyance banner. Secondly, it was the way it was created. People really didn’t create musicals this way. All Mick said to us was, he sat us down, and said ‘I to do a musical. I want my dog to be in it. I want a fight between a clown and a drag queen, and I want there to be tap dancing, and I want it to be called ‘Coed Prison Sluts.’’ We just went ‘…Ok.’ [laughs] You know what I mean? We made it up and two nights before it went up, the last dress rehearsal, I think we invited people in. And I had just passed a kidney stone that night. So, I had gone to the hospital and crawled back. It went horribly. It was just like crickets chirping in the Hollywood Bowl. It was miserable. So, Mick and Mark Howard left-brained it for a whole night. The next night it was opening night and it was perfect from then on. It was very sweet and cheerful and happy and smart. It doesn’t sound like it, but even my mother who is a New York Times culture vulture would sing ‘Shit Motherfucker’ gaily along with the rest of the crowd. It was happy.

I think Mick started Metraform and The Annoyance because he was pissed at Charna. A lot of people start theaters because they’re angry at Charna. That’s certainly possible. Or at least they go ‘This ride is over for me.’ I think it was really important to be uncensored for Mick, to be able to say everything he wanted to say, but in a way that people would be willing to watch. I think Mick said in The Second City Almanac ‘If you want to alienate your audience, you might as well stand on stage and say ‘Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you,’ until everybody leaves. The heart of The Annoyance was that it just doesn’t mean anything anymore, like when 5th graders learn the words ‘fuck’ and ‘fart’ and they’re so delighted with themselves. If they needed an adverb for a madlib it’d be ‘fuckingly’ and ‘fartingly.’ That kind of tickled us, and I think that’s how it started out. I think a lot of people think The Annoyance is about saying ‘Cunty cunty, titty titty.’ It really isn’t. It’s about saying whatever you want to say and understanding that it will be protected by the very nature of you playing in that space.

Gary Austin - Part 3 - 2/19/07

2007-02-19T21:48:00.000-05:00

JF: So, what was it like directing The Groundlings during the time that you were there? Did the emphasis change from mixing it up with Moliere or whatever to purely sketch or improv?

GA: We did all original material in the shows. We didn’t do any Moliere once we opened The Groundlings, and it was called The Groundling Show. Our very first show was a rave review in the L.A. Times. We never got a bad review the entire time I was there. I was there 7 years, if you count 72 when I started teaching, until 79. We were in a 30 seat theater in a very bad part of town, East Hollywood, and packed the place, not always, but we started to pack the place. Major heavy weights from the industry started coming in. Lilly Tomlin was coming in to watch us. Lorne Michaels, we didn’t even know who he was yet, was watching us. This is before Saturday Night Live, just before. Producers, directors, television stars, film stars were coming to see shows in this 30 seat theater. There were 25 people in the cast. 30 people in the audience when we packed it. Some times there would be 10 or 12 people in audience and we outnumbered the audience.

We did lots of improv, lots of music, and lots of material that came out of improv, like The Committee. We did scenes that were the same every night that had been derived from improvisation. We did musical improv and lots of music. I would say 1/5th or 1/6th of the time of a show was musical. The women outnumbered the men 2 to 1, the entire time I was there. This is almost unheard of in improvisational theater. It’s usually the men way out number the women in an improv company. The women outnumbered the men. Why? Because the women’s material was better than the men’s. [laughs] That’s not true. What I meant was …ok, I said the best stuff goes onstage, but I didn’t say it had to be mostly men’s. So, it turned out that when I put what in my opinion was the best stuff onstage the women outnumbered the men.

JF: How did the growing success of The Groundlings affect the culture there?

GA: It affected it in a very negative way in my opinion, which is one of the reasons I left. Let me compare it to today. I sincerely believe, and have friends at The Groundlings who tell me this is true, the main reason people join The Groundlings is to get on Saturday Night Live. The second main reason people join The Groundlings is to become a star, whether they get on Saturday Night Live or not. Lisa Kudrow became a star out of The Groundlings. Paul Ruebens, Pee Wee Herman, became a star out of The Groundlings without being invited to do Saturday Night Live. That’s true of many stars who came to The Groundlings. It’s the number one showcase in Los Angeles. Everybody in the industry goes to The Groundlings to get talent. That’s the main reason why people join.

That was not the case when I was there. Why did people join The Groundlings when I was there? Well, before we were successful, before we were well-known, before people were getting taken to do big jobs, it wasn’t successful in that way. People just wanted to do that work. I was running workshops 6 or 7 days a week, where all 90 of those students got private lessons from me. Half an hour each. I had a schedule that was unbelievable. I started at 8 or 9 in the morning, work all day, teach private classes. Some of the daytime classes were actual classes, not just private classes. Then at night I would teach classes.

I eventually trained two other teachers, Tracy Newman and Tom Maxwell, and eventually Phyllis Kaz. But at the beginning it was just me. I was the only teacher. People wanted to be there. So, when we built the theater in 1975 on Melrose where The Groundlings still exists with our own hands, and people donated their own money and people gave us no interest loans. It was out of the love of being at The Groundlings, the love of doing that work, the love of hanging out together. We would go on field trips together. We would do all kind of things together. It was an amazing, huge group of people. It was a gigantic family. That was why people were there. That’s not why people are there now.

I went back in 1990. I left in 79. They brought me back 11 years after I left to direct for 2 months. It was a whole different thing then, a whole different feeling. There were some people in the cast I loved working with: Andy Sterling, Lisa Kudrow, Patrick Bristow, amazing people, Julia Sweeny, who I loved working with. They were terrific, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t what it was before. It was very competitive. It was very cut-throat. It was the first time I ever ran the trust exercise where people couldn’t play it.

JF: What is the trust exercise?

GA: Everybody’s in a group in a circle, standing up. You put one person in the middle, have them close their eyes. You turn them around a few times to disorient them, then you have them walk in a straight line until they come to the edge of the circle. We turn them and send them back across the circle with their eyes closed. The Groundlings could not play that game. I have done that game since 1968. That’s the only time in my life where I’ve seen people who could not play that game. Why? They didn’t trust each other. They were afraid they’d get hurt. They’d fall of off the edge of the stage, because somebody wouldn’t catch them.

JF: So, why did you leave The Groundlings in 79?

GA: I don’t know. I’m going to write a book about it. Part of what I’m talking about had to do with it. It started to become a thing where people were in it for selfish reasons. And I’ve always said to everybody, and I have it on paper, it’s documented: we can get careers out of this. We’re here to learn, to grow, to develop our craft, and we’re here to get careers out of this. Terrific. And when you get a career, you can come back and work with us some more. It’s always a home for you to come back to. And that’s true. It’s still that way. I still go back there and do my solo shows and I direct shows. As an alumnus, I go back there all the time and do stuff. I was there just a couple of weeks ago, but I’m not a member of it and I don’t make decisions.

There was a big split that happened. There were two groups, sort of like in Iraq now between the Sunni and the Shiites. It was a big battle between these groups. They saw things differently. A lot of things happened between me and other people. It became an intolerable, intolerable place for me. I hated being there. There came I point where I just snapped one day, gave them 2 weeks notice and just split. And I built the company. It was like a father walking away from his own kids and wife and house that he built. I walked away from what I created.

JF: It’s a shame.

GA: I guess. I went on and did better things. I look at that as my high school days. My work is far better now than it was then, as an actor, as a director and as a writer.

JF: So what are some things that you’ve been proud of since The Groundlings?

GA: The work that I’ve created, the people who I’ve taught, the work that I’ve done as a director and actor since then. Many of my students have become gigantic stars who were not Groundlings, people I’ve taught since I’ve left the Groundlings. I do work in my classes now that far surpasses anything I did with The Groundlings, that far surpasses anything that’s being done at The Groundlings. I develop shows with people. I direct the shows. I’ve worked all over the country. I work mainly right now in Washington D.C., Seattle, New York City and L.A. I worked a lot in Fort Collins, Colorado in a really cool theater there. Also, at Colorado State University. With the work that I do I’m breaking new ground in the same way that Del Close broke new ground. I’m creating work that’s never been done before, new styles, new forms of improvisation. Help people create incredible characters. And I do my own solo shows and so forth. And I’m a singer-songwriter. I’m involved in so many things with so many great people, and not just people who are improvisers and want to do comedy, but people who are actors or writers or producers, directors, or people who are not show business at all, who just want to do the work. And that’s always been the case even in The Groundlings day. Phil Hartman wasn’t an actor when he came to me. I was his first teacher. I taught him for five years. He was a graphic artist. He did album covers. So, we’ve always had to this day people from all walks of life, not just actors. I think there’s nothing more boring than a room full of actors. If they’re mixed in with other people, they’re cool, but just actors? Uch, pretty boring. [laughs]

JF: So has your approach changed at all?

GA: Yes, it’s changed in huge ways.

JF: And what’s allowing you to make this progress?

GA: Freedom. I have no bosses. I do what I want. I take risks. I take the same risks I took then. The Groundlings were created because of the risks we took. Nobody had done the kind of theater we were doing. It was different from The Committee and Second City and all that, not only because we had more women and did music, but also because we created wild and bizarre characters that went far beyond what most characters were at those other companies and full make-up and costumes. Because I’m a theater person. At The Committee or Second City, you put on a hat or a sport coat or a pair of glasses, very minimal costume. You’re wearing basically the same pants and shirt throughout the show. You would just change your coat or a hat or something to play a different character. But in The Groundlings, think of Pee Wee Herman. That’s my grey suit by the way, Pee Wee Herman’s suit.

JF: Oh yeah?

GA: Yeah, I gave that to him. That used to be my own personal suit, that I wore.

JF: That’s like, I don’t know, like a mixed compliment or something.

GA: [Laughs] Well, Paul’s bigger than me. He’s taller than me. That’s why it didn’t fit him. He had about 20 copies made, exact fabric, the exact cut, everything. The original he wore holes in both elbows and knees and had to put patches on it.

JF: So, how does this freedom show itself in your workshops? What are some signs that you’re allowing yourself to be more free?

GA: Because it informs the things we do. We make discoveries. And I go ‘Look what we did. We’re creating new forms and ways of working.’ People are having breakthroughs that are incredible, both in their craft and in the material we’re creating and the forms of improv that we’re creating. Del Close created the Harold. I was one of the actors in it. I was one of the people who was there when he created it. I was one of the improvisers. Well, that was new then. Now it’s done all over the world. I’m creating the same thing. I’m creating other forms that are catching on. You need to come to my workshops to see what I’m talking about. It’s really hard to explain what it is I do.

JF: How do you encourage students to make these breakthroughs in class?

GA: By creating an atmosphere of support and trust so that they’re willing to take risks without thinking that they’re going to be ridiculed. There’s got to be no negative fallout if they fail. It’s all support and trust. You do the work. It’s valid. If you do the tasks of the exercise, if you do the craft of improvisation, you do what those things are to make the work work, then whether it succeeds or not and whether you make mistakes or not is not important. What is important is that you commit 100% to doing your best possible work. There’s no failing in my class. You can’t fail. It’s impossible. Because if you do something that doesn’t work then you learn from it, so how is that failure?

JF: In New York, one of the big things in the improv community is ‘the game,’ creating patterns and stuff. Do you ever encounter students who mention ‘the game’ to you?

GA: I don’t know what they mean by ‘the game.’ We used to do a thing in The Committee called the game, but I don’t think that’s what they’re talking about. What are you talking about?

JF: Um, repeating patterns within a scene.

GA: Repeating patterns is a technique. That’s nothing new. That’s from the beginning.

JF: Is that something that you encourage in your work?

GA: If a pattern emerges, we go ‘Oh, that’s interesting.’ Del Close said in Guru ‘All this bullshit about patterns. Screw it. I’m interested in relationships.’ Well, he went back and forth. Sometimes he would be interested in patterns, but you can’t be interested in one thing forever. It’s like ‘Ok, now I’m emphasizing patterns. Now I’m emphasizing breaking patterns. Now I’m breaking both breaking patterns and doing patterns.’ That’s what an artist does. People who get stuck in one way of doing things, to me, aren’t artists and they don’t do valid work. You keep changing your work.

Del Close and I became very close toward the end of his life. We talked about shit like that. He would disavow things that he’d done before. I’d mention something he’d done years ago and he said ‘I don’t do that anymore.’ And I feel the same way. I don’t do The Groundlings anymore. If they invited me back to direct there, I’d say ‘No, don’t want to do that anymore. I’ve already done that. I want to do something different now.’

JF: In your opinion, what makes a good improv team?

GA: Supporting each other’s work. Listening to each other onstage. Taking giant risks. A willingness to fail, not a desire to fail, but a willingness to fail while trying to succeed. Love, L-O-V-E for each other. That doesn’t mean you don’t fight. Families fight. It’s a family. You get angry. Fine, but you know you stick it out together. You’re not out for yourself. You’re out for the work. It’s about the work. It’s about making something work. It’s about entertaining an audience. It’s about getting an audience to come and see you. [laughs]

JF: Where would you like to see improv go in the future both artistically and commercially?

GA: I care that it’s theater. Period. If improvisation isn’t theater, I hate it. I hate to watch it and I won’t do it. What’s theater? Theater is putting the truth onstage period. As Shakespeare said, holding the mirror up to nature. Also, I add to that holding the mirror up to the audience. When you do anything in the theater, when I say theater I’m also talking about songs and movies and plays and television, good television that is, there ain’t a lot of it, basically you’re holding a mirror up to the audience and saying ‘This is what you look like you guys. And we’re all the same in so many ways. And we’re doing you. We’re doing us. We’re all the same. We’re showing you the truth about humanity and the truth about the truth about the world we live in. The truth about who we are inside and the truth who we are on the outside, the truth about our environment, the truth about global warming, the truth about relationships.’ That’s theater to me. And that’s what we do. And that’s where I want to see improv go.

My opinion of improv in this country and I’ve seen a lot of it is that 90% of the improv in this country is bullshit. 90% of the improv in this country has always been bullshit. 90% of the improv in this country is not theater. It’s people going up and talking and trying to come up with funny lines. And that’s bullshit. Del Close said the same thing.

JF: Do you have anything that you would like to say to the improv community that we didn’t get out?

GA: [laughs] Yeah, do good work, because most of you aren’t.

JF: [laughs] Oh, the gauntlet has been laid down.

GA: Yeah, if somebody says back to me ‘Who are you to say that?’ I’d say ‘I’m Gary Austin. Who are you?’ [laughs] If you have a different opinion, fine. Go have it. If you want to join my theater join it. If you want to join my workshop, join it. If not, go somewhere else.

Gary Austin - Part 2 - 2/19/07

2007-02-19T21:47:00.000-05:00

JF: Could you give your impressions of Del Close as a teacher?

GA: Yeah, the main thing about Del was: he sought the truth. He demanded the truth on stage, and any bullshit was completely destroyed. He didn’t tolerate bullshit. Have you read ‘Guru,’ the book?

JF: No, I haven’t.

GA: Oh God, you’ve got to read it. It just came out about a year ago or less. It’s called ‘Guru: My Days with Del Close,’ by Jeff Griggs. A feature film’s being made of it. It’s about the last few years of Del’s life. It’s very accurate. I knew Del very well. It really captures who he was, both as a teacher and an actor and as a person, one of the most interesting people who ever lived on this planet. He did some outrageous things to demand honesty on stage. And he got what he wanted. When he didn’t get what he wanted, that person was not allowed to be in his presence. He often had me and the two biggest guys in the room, I’m not big, they would pick up a guy who was giving him a hard time, have me lead the way. I would open the doors as we went through the to the lobby of the theater, then out on Sunset Boulevard he would order the two guys to dump the guy on the sidewalk. I would be the door opener. He would say to the guy who they had just dumped on the sidewalk ‘And don’t ever come back.’ He would always start the sentence with ‘And.’ That’s all he would say to the guy. He would lock the door, and the guy would never be allowed back.

JF: Why would he do something like that?

GA: Because the person was being dishonest, on stage or off in the discussion. And if he wouldn’t conquer his dishonesty, Del was done with him. That was it. You’re gone. Forever. Don’t ever talk to me again.

JF: Did some people wind up hating Del Close?

GA: Sure, I had people hating me as a director.

JF: Why? Were you as demanding as that?

GA: Well, yes, I didn’t do some of the things Del did. I did other things. Some people hated me because I didn’t put them in the show at The Groundlings. I had one simple thing, which I told everybody up front ‘The best stuff goes in the show.’ ‘Well, who decides what’s best?’ ‘Me. I’m the director.’ [laughs] And people who thought they should be in the show or should have more to do in the show, you know, some of them did end up hating me. Some of them left. Ok, go create your own company if you don’t like it, which is basically what Paul Sills said to Alan [Meyerson] at Second City. He said ‘If you don’t like what I’m doing here, leave and create your own company.’ Alan said ok, went to San Francisco and created The Committee.

JF: So what was your experience like performing with The Committee Main Stage? It sounds like you guys had a theater. You were doing thirteen shows a week, right?

GA: Umhm.

JF: So what was it like performing thirteen shows a week?

GA: It was incredibly good. The training is irreplaceable. I always had the feeling that I was onstage more waking hours than I was off stage. [I did] two shows Sunday night, two shows Tuesday through Friday night, three shows Saturday night. And I was always so wired after the shows that I wouldn’t get to sleep until 4 or 5 in the morning. Sleep until 11, 12, or 1, get up, sort of do my day, then go to the theater and do it all over again. It was really a sense of always being on stage, under tremendous pressure, in front of 350 people, who paid a lot of money to see us. And having nights where we bombed, or me personally having a night where I bombed. Or having nights where we succeeded or me having nights where I succeeded. Or sometimes I would go home some nights and want to commit suicide after a bad night, come back the next night and have the greatest night of my life and think ‘wow, this is terrific.’ The ups and downs were huge.

JF: How would audiences react to the improv that you guys were doing?

GA: When we improvised, don’t forget the first show wasn’t improvised, the second show was improvised, the audience understood that’s what we were doing. So, they had a different expectation than they did than when they watched the first show. In the first show, they knew that the first show was, you know, material. We had decided it was good stuff and they expected a slick, good, solid show. In the second show, there expectations were ‘Ok, they’re probably going to fuck up a lot,’ but what the audience loved about it was, even when we fucked up, was the risk that we took. Since they knew we gave ourselves permission to fuck up, they too gave us permission to fuck up. So what you would see is brilliant improvisers fucking up. You would also see them succeeding. A scene works or it doesn’t work. Some scenes don’t work and the lights go out. And everyone goes ‘Is that it?’ There’s a smattering of applause and so on.

The skills of the performers were always good even when they weren’t doing a scene that worked. That’s what the audience dug. If it had been bad work, they wouldn’t have. So, it was good work in things that didn’t work, which doesn’t mean we didn’t make mistakes and do bad work sometimes. We didn’t do bad work on purpose. Our intent was to do good work, but sometimes we would do bad work and fix it the next night, or throw it out and never do it again. Usually, if we had a scene that we liked and seemed to be working, or had a scene that we liked and wasn’t working but we wanted it to work, we would stick with it for six months until it got good. That would go in [the next show]. Every six months there was an opening of the new show, the early show. The place would be packed with press. I remember The Committee in San Francisco most of the audience, hundreds of people would be press. It was amazing. Every six months, two times a year we would open a new show. But you would have all that material being created. It was really exciting, then once it was ready for the show we would put it all together and open a show.

JF: So what took you from San Francisco when you were doing The Committee Main Stage down to Los Angeles?

GA: I got fired.

JF: Oh.

GA: [laughs] About five of us got fired one night. It was the year before it closed, 1971. And there was this guy there named Bill Love. He made up his name by the way. Now this guy was anything but love. It’s ironic that’s the name he chose. He was the accountant for The Committee I think the whole ten years, and Alan Meyerson’s best friend, or certainly one of his best friends. Well, this guy, as far as I know, had no skills as an artist, Bill Love. He had no experience. He had never directed, never acted, never improvised. He’d never done anything as far as I know. Maybe he had done a couple workshops with some improvisers, but I never saw him. But he was always there every night. He hated my work. Absolutely hated it and made no secret of it.

We did a show opening in which I got the best reviews of any actor in the company. The San Francisco Examiner said ‘This is the best Committee show ever done,’ and he basically implied that I did the best work in the show. It was a rave review. Everybody else who came that night raved about my work. So, I was glowing. I walked into the theater the next night with all this press behind me, all these incredible reviews and the whole cast was sitting there in the green room, including Bill Love who hung out with us, and Bill Love said when I walked in the room, so that everyone could hear, ‘Well, Austin, you can fool the press, but you can’t fool us.’ Not one person came to my defense. Not one person said ‘Bill, you’re an asshole for saying that.’ Not one person said ‘Gary, he’s wrong.’ Not one person said ‘Shut up Bill.’ They just looked at me. Ok?

So, what happened was in 71 Alan said to Bill, because Bill had been begging for years to direct, Alan finally said ‘I’m going to let you direct. You can pick your cast.’ He always said that to whoever directed. So, Bill decided that four or five of us had to go out of about eight or nine of us, and they brought in some of the old Committee people who weren’t around then to replace us. And they told me a lie, which, well, I’ve forgiven them, but I know they lied to me. They called us in one at a time while we were getting notes at the end. I think they called me in last. I didn’t know what was going on. ‘Why do they keep calling people out of the room to have a meeting with Alan while we’re talking about what went on in the show?’

They called me in there and said ‘We’re letting you go and we’re letting three or four other people go. We’re letting you go because of seniority. You don’t have seniority. Bill’s taking over. He wants certain people to come back so we’re getting rid of the four or five people who have less seniority.’ Well, in fact, there was a guy there named David Booty, who had less seniority than me. So, I knew that was a lie. Bill just didn’t want me around, and he didn’t want the other four around either.

So, I left and went back to L.A. I started improvising at The Comedy Store, started teaching. I had never taught in my life but I started teaching, that was 72 when I started teaching.

JF: What was it like at The Comedy Store? Who were you improvising with?

GA: The Comedy Store had just opened a week earlier when I discovered it. The reason I discovered it was because there were two Committee people, Valerie Curtain and Archie Hahn, who had started a group the first week it opened called The Comedy Store Players. Valerie called me up. She was a very close friend of mine. She said ‘Why don’t you come over and improvise with us at The Comedy Store?’ I went over there. Don’t forget it had only been open a week. They only had one room then. Sammy Shore was the owner. His wife Mitzy Shore was the cashier.

I watched The Comedy Store Players. They had this guy named Sid, who was a friend of the other three, but didn’t want to be an actor. He was a techie, but he was filling in. They needed somebody because it had just started. He came to me and said ‘Take my place. I don’t really want to do this,’ so they invited me in. So, I became a member of that, which I was for a year and a half, six nights a week at The Comedy Store with The Comedy Store Players. Robin Williams became a member of The Comedy Store players many years I left The Comedy Store. As far as I know, The Comedy Store Players still exists. I don’t know, but it certainly existed for many years.

We improvised with the biggest stars in show business. Red Foxx would come in. Flip Wilson would come in from his NBC show taping. He was the number one show in the country nationally. Every star in the business came in and either sat in the audience or went on stage. It was an amazing time. Richard Pryor was creating his act. Gabe Kaplan was creating his act. The Unknown Comic was creating his act. Rodney Dangerfield would come in and do stuff. The Smothers Brothers would come in. It was incredible. I also did stand-up and MC’ed. This was before Letterman came in. Long after I left, Letterman came in and did stand-up and became the MC there. Nobody knew who he was yet.

And um, so, …what did you ask me? [laughs]

JF: [laughs] Uh…

GA: Oh, I know, about improvising there. The four of us would improvise there and if someone like Flip Wilson or Red Foxx would come in we’d ask them to improvise with us.

JF: Ok, so how did The Groundlings start?

GA: Well, I was teaching at The Comedy Store about four nights a week and I was also teaching at a theater I rented, so I was teaching a lot. After teaching for a year, I had some amazing people. There were only two improv teachers in town at the time, actually three I think. Howard Strong from The Committee, me and a woman who’s name I can’t remember right now. I think that was it. Improv hadn’t really caught on in the way it has since then. There were tons of people who became giant stars who were coming to my workshops. After a year of incredible work, I said to the group ‘Let’s do a show. The work is so incredible here.’ We would do, not just improvs, we would do scenes from plays. We would do Shakespeare, Moliere, Tennessee Williams. We would do all kind of things in addition to improv games, scenes and monologues. So, we did a show at this place I was teaching called The Cellar Theater. We packed about 75 people into a 50 seat theater, including Mitzy Shore, the cashier from The Comedy Store, who now of course the owner of The Comedy Store. I’m sure you know that. She won it in the divorce.

The show was incredibly successful and we did everything we were doing in class: music, Moliere, Harold Pinter, improv games, improv scenes, characters. It was so cool that we kept doing it and it was called ‘The Gary Austin Workshop.’ It was not called The Groundlings. After a year of doing shows, now we’re talking about 1974, I gathered about four or five people who were very close to me there, and were very active, committed students of mine and friends at a restaurant in Santa Monica and I said ‘Let’s have a meeting.’ After they got there they said ‘What’s the meeting about?’ I said ‘I want to start a company.’ They said ‘What do you mean?’ So, I told them and one of the guys who I brought there was also an attorney for CBS, who was also one of my students, because I wanted a legal mind there. I said ‘How do we do this?’ This guy said ‘Why don’t you go non-Profit. That way you can get donations for your theater and do all the things you want to do.’ So, I said ‘Ok,’ and he said ‘Ok,’ and we created a non-profit company called The Groundlings. That was 1974. I named the company The Groundlings.

JF: What was the process of its growth like? How quickly did it grow?

GA: I had 90 Groundlings at one point, right after we formed the company. I had so many students that it eventually became 90 Groundlings. In the early days, you didn’t have to audition. The way you got in The Groundlings in the early days was you paid $25 a month for workshops and you were a Groundling. We did shows, but only about 25 people out of the 90 did the shows. If you were good enough, you got in the shows. Phil Hartman joined The Groundlings in 1974 and it took him two years to be good enough to be in the shows. That’s how stiff the competition was. And that’s how much he had to learn. He was in the workshops for two years before he was invited into the shows by me.

Gary Austin - Part 1 - 2/19/07

2007-02-19T21:38:00.000-05:00

Gary Austin is a long time improviser, actor and teacher. He was a member of The Committee in San Francisco during the 60’s and 70’s and was the founder of The Groundlings in Los Angeles. He currently directs and performs in various shows, in addition to teaching workshops across the country. His website is www.garyaustin.net.

JF: Where were you born?

GA: Tulsa, OK.

JF: What were some early influences on your sense of humor growing up?

GA: My father was one.

JF: How was he an influence?

GA: It was important to him to be funny, to say funny things. They often weren’t funny. Part of the humor was the fact that they weren’t funny.

JF: I remember reading that you had a very strict upbringing. How did that play a role on your sense of humor, or what you thought was funny?

GA: I used to do things in Church that would ridicule what was going on when I was a little kid.

JF: Did you ever get in trouble for it?

GA: Sure.

JF: When did you know that you wanted to be a performer?

GA: From the time I could think.

JF: Ok, so were some early steps that you took…

GA: I would do things to entertain people when I was little. For instance, in class, I would do and say things to get laughs in school, also at Church.

JF: When did you start taking steps to more public or official performances?

GA: Well, starting out in Church when I was a little kid at the age of four there would performances like on Christmas for instance. Each child of the Church would get up and recite a poem or do something like that. I remember my first performance was at the Nazarene Church in Oakland, California in 1945. My father had just returned from WWII. He was in the sailor uniform. I remember looking at him in the audience while I did the poem. I loved being up there. I would create performance situations for myself. For instance, when we moved to Corpus Christi, Texas, I was probably five years old. I would get up on the porch, which was like a stage, or a platform. In Church, we didn’t call it a stage. We called it a platform where the preacher preached from, which a level higher than the audience. I would get up on the porch and I would seat other kids in chairs on the lawn. I would preach to them and pretend to be an Evangelist at the age of five.

JF: Do you think that some people are born performers?

GA: Well, I don’t know how to answer a question like that. Are you born with a gift? Are you born talented? Are you born a performer? The way I like to put it is people are born with different facilities, different abilities, different skills, so when we take those tests in high school to find out what your occupation should be of course people are different. Somebody who’s great at math naturally might not be great at writing poetry naturally. So, I believe that people are different, yeah, from the time they’re born, yeah. What causes that? I have no idea. I guess it’s everything from DNA to the influences around you when you’re growing up.

JF: How did you get involved with improvisational theater?

GA: Accidentally. I had a degree in Theater from San Francisco State University. My classmates are some of the most successful people in show business today. It was an amazing Theater department. High percentage of success came out of that theater department. That was in the 60’s. I had never improvised, except on my own like preaching to the kids and whatever I would do to act silly when I was in public. So, that was improv in a sense, but I never thought of improv as a formal thing that one did onstage with an audience that paid money. What happened was that I accidentally got involved with The Committee, and that changed my life.

JF: In college,…

GA: There was no improvisation in college in those days. There were improvisational exercises in acting classes, but they weren’t the same kind of improv that’s done at Second City, as is now done in America. It was a different kind of improv and there was very little of it. As far as I know, there was not a single college or university in this country that had an improvisation course. It was not legitimate, even though Second City had started in the late 50’s and had become very famous and very successful actors were coming out of it. It was still not considered a legitimate course for college in the 60’s.

JF: How did you accidentally get involved with The Committee?

GA: I had a very close friend named Christopher Ross. Christopher Ross was a classmate of mine in college. Towards the end of my college career, he went off and became a member of The Committee in San Francisco, which is the same town we were going to college in. I never went to The Committee. I didn’t care to. I didn’t even know what it was. I just knew it was successful and I saw the ads everywhere. I never went and I even did the annual talent show at San Francisco State called ‘Kampus Kapers’ with a sketch that somebody else wrote that satirized The Committee. So, I’m onstage satirizing The Committee, not knowing that one day I would be a member of it.

What happened was I moved to Los Angeles. I became a social worker in Watts, which is South Central Los Angeles, in order to make a living while doing theater at night and taking classes. I was driving down Sunset Boulevard one day and I saw on the marquee of the Tiffany theater, a movie theater, the marquee said ‘Opening Tonight: The Committee,’ which was the San Francisco company that Christopher Ross was in. I thought ‘Wow, I want to see Chris perform in this, whatever the hell it is.’

So, I found him having lunch with the rest of the cast. It was the middle of the day. I asked him if he would comp me, so I got a comp to go to go to the opening in the night. Carl Reiner was in the audience. Rob Reiner was up there on stage as a member of the company. Christopher Ross was up there. It was the first time I had ever seen this kind of theater and wanted to be a part of it. I went backstage after it was over and found out that there was a workshop every Saturday afternoon taught by some member of The Committee, different members of The Committee. It cost $1 to join, $1 per Saturday. Usually, about 50 people would show up, and they would all work. 50 of us would get up on stage, not at once, but we would all get a big work-out. They ran it very fast.

Eventually, Del Close, who was from Second City and helped create Second City, came to the Committee and started teaching the workshops, and also helping Alan Meyerson direct the Committee. He became my first improv teacher. Out of the about 50 people who attended these workshops, including Ellen Burstyn, who was not yet a movie star and David Landers, Squiggy on Lavern and Shirley, who was not yet a professional actor, myself and other, about 12 of us were selected, including David, Ellen and me, to perform every Monday night, which was the dark night at The Committee. We were called ‘The Committee Workshop.’ We performed and Del directed us.

During that time, I became the light man for The Committee. My title was Stage Manager. My main job was to run the lights. Well, in improv theater, as you know, whoever runs the lights, usually, certainly in The Committee, determines when the scene is over. So, I had this tremendous responsibility to determine when the scene is over. So, I with my improvisational instincts would do that and I was very successful at it. The reason I took that job is because I found out that about half of the male members of The Committee, like Howard Hessman, Carl Gotlieb, Christopher Ross, had gotten into The Committee by being light men first. They proved their skills that way and also got their education, because you have to watch everything that goes on on the stage, thirteen shows a week.

So, for a year I did that job and learned so much watching, because I was in the wings, off stage left with the light board. I did sound-effects, lights, voice-overs on the mic and got $10 a night, while being a social worker in downtown Los Angeles. I eventually started improvising with the cast in the second show. The second show was the improv show. The first show was to present the material that had been created through improv and a little improv was done then, but the second show was where we created the material through improvisation in front of the audience that eventually became part of the next written show.

I started creating my own characters and material and I was eventually invited to join the company. They closed in L.A. They had split the company actually. The San Francisco company was split in half. They kept two companies going. The Committee was in LA for two and a half years. Part of that time they were guest starring every week as regulars on The Smothers Brothers Show on CBS, while I was lighting them. I was asked to join the cast. I became a member of Actors’ Equity, moved up to San Francisco and did that for a couple of years. That’s where my show business career really started. Because of that experience and the reputation I had, when I moved back to L.A. I had the credibility to teach acting and improvisation, which I’ve been doing since 1972.

JF: So, what was so appealing to you about that first show that you saw in Los Angeles?

GA: Boy, I don’t know. I loved everything about it. I guess, let’s start with the style of acting. I had never seen that style of acting that the people did. Understand that, except for one or two improvs, they were doing written material, but the material they were doing had been developed through improvisation. In other words, they did the improvisation in the second show in San Francisco so many times that it eventually became the same every night.

Nothing was ever put on paper in The Committee. We had ten years of material. It went from 62 to 72. There were only forty members of The Committee during that entire ten years. And all of the material was in people’s brains, in their memory. Nobody wrote anything down. That fascinated me.

There was a certain style to it that could only come from having been improvised. It couldn’t have been written. You couldn’t write that kind of material. Just like Nichols and May, you couldn’t really write that material. It had to come from improvisation. The techniques of improvisation create a certain kind of material, and I had never seen that kind of material before. So, the style of acting, the kind of material. It was incredibly entertaining stuff. Everything worked. Nothing was boring. There was no waiting for the piece or waiting for the next scene. There were no dull moments. The actors were incredibly real and natural. There was no pretense or façade or fakery. There was no stagey-ness to it. It was all real people whether they were playing themselves or characters. Real people who were totally present with each other. I had never seen that kind of theater and I wanted to do it. It had nothing to do with whether it was funny or not, nothing to do with that at all. Comedy, the word comedy, I never use the term. I don’t care about the term. I don’t care about funny. I just care about telling the truth onstage, holding an audience’s attention and having fun doing it. That’s all I care about. I don’t care if it’s funny or not. And I’ve done the classics. I’ve done Chekov, Shakespeare, Ibsen, you know.

JF: So, what were those early workshops like, especially with Del Close?

GA: Outrageous. They were very free. I had never been allowed to be that free on a stage. And it was the 60’s, so it was very touchy-feely, and very psychological and emotional. …What do I mean by psychological? I don’t really mean that. It was doing things onstage that you wouldn’t normally think would be entertaining to an audience. We had a piece called ‘Loving,’ an improv piece. This was the Monday show. This isn’t The Committee. This would never have been done in The Committee. The Committee workshop was very experimental, much more than The Committee was. ‘Loving’ was an exercise where you put 4 couples on stage or maybe 6 or 8 couples even, it was all heterosexual couples, and you have them make-out for ten minutes without talking in front of the audience. The task of the exercise was to touch your partner in ways that you hadn’t touched someone before, in new experimental ways, to find new ways to touch your partner in love-making, fully-clothed of course. And the audience loved it. Keep in mind this was the 60’s. I don’t think that could happen now. I don’t think actors would care to do it. Well, they might. But certainly an audience wouldn’t sit for it.

That was one thing. Many of the games were Viola Spolin games and games that Del had created and games that The Committee had created over the years. See this was 1968. The Committee had started in 1962, so they already had 6 years of history and things they had developed. So, we were doing scenes, and monologues and characters and theater games and so on.

JF: So, how did you take to improvisation and how did you incorporate it with your acting training?

GA: At the time, I don’t know if I thought a whole lot about it, except that I remember the first time I got onstage in the very first workshop I went to in The Committee. We did a Spolin game called ‘Madam in the Middle.’ Now we call it ‘Person in the Middle’ to be politically correct. It was my first time improvising on stage in front of all those 50 people and got huge laughs. I went off stage and the guy who was the light man/stage manager at the time, who was the guy who gave me the job as light man/stage manager. The light man/stage manager got to pick his next successor, which was very odd. The director of The Committee didn’t even pick that. He allowed the light man to pick his next guy. Anyway, Jim Crana, who I hadn’t met until that day, said ‘You’re really good at this. You’re terrific at this.’ I said ‘I am?’ He said ‘Yeah.’

What immediately occurred to me was that I didn’t have to rehearse for that. I didn’t have to prepare for that. I didn’t have to study the play or study the character in order to entertain an audience. I got up there and simply by following the task of the exercise, doing the rules of the game I was able to entertain an audience just as fully as I ever had in my life when I had done a play that I that had rehearsed six weeks for four hours a day. I thought ‘Wow, that’s very cool. I can do the same thing without rehearsal. Yea!’ [laughs]

JF: Who were some of the influential teachers you had when you were at The Committee?

GA: Del Close and Alan Meyerson, and Larry Hankman, who was one of the original cast members of The Committee and part-time was director. Those three people had a great influence on me. Alan Meyerson was the owner and creator of The Committee, and Del was, well, Del was Del.

JF: How did Del become involved with The Committee?

GA: Well, he was already involved in The Committee, because The Committee came from Second City. Alan Meyerson was helping Paul Sills direct Second City. Paul Sills was the director Second City, but very often in The Committee or Second City there was someone else around who would be a second director, almost a co-director. Well, Alan was helping Paul at Second City and they had a philosophical disagreement, which led to Alan leaving and forming his own company called The Committee in San Francisco, which was named after The House ‘Un-American Activities Committee.’ Well, Alan had already been working with Del, because Del had been at Second City since day one. It was already a big family. So, Alan took several Second City people from Chicago took them to San Francisco, and hired some people who lived in San Francisco and put them together. That was The Committee in 1962.

So, in a sense The Committee and Second City were one big happy family. Well, I shouldn’t say happy. They were one big family in a way. They were extended family. We had Second City people like Peter Boyle coming onstage and joining us all the time in the shows. Avery Shreiber, Peter Boyle, and just before I joined Bill Cosby would improvise with us. Lots of big stars would come in and improvise with The Committee.

Ian Roberts Part 3 - 2/16/07

2007-02-19T21:37:00.000-05:00

JF: It sounds like getting the specifics in there at the beginning, that’s the key element.

IR: Yes, if you’re working from neutral, when you’re working off of a one word suggestion.

I believe that the degree to with which you come in with a premise is inversely proportional to the specificity of the information you’re using to start. So, if I start with a one word suggestion, there’s really not much of a justification for coming in with a premise. If I do, it will probably be generic and the kind of thing that I’m saying you’ve learned from ‘I Dream of Geenie’ and ‘Bewitched’ re-runs. It probably won’t be very good. So, you want to start yesanding, waiting until something happens that’s unusual, then discover what pattern that partakes in. Start saying ‘if-then.’ If this unusual thing happens, then this would happen, then this would happen.

On the other end of the spectrum of suggestions is it comes from something as full as a good comedic monologue. If you’ve got that, I think it’s more than justified that you would come in with a full-blown premise. Come out with a first line the purpose of which is who we are and what I want to happen, what I want the kind of game to be. My justification for that is why do a monologue if not for that purpose? In a long-form, a don’t feel the purpose of a monologue in an opening is to be entertaining in and of itself. It’s to be inspiration, and information to do the scene work. So, you should use the any information or inspiration to its fullest benefit.

The only things we remember in life are the days where the pattern was broken, the day that was not the everyday. It was the specific day. So, when someone steps out to tell a monologue, they’re telling it because its unique. No one tells some boring sorry where nothing out of the ordinary happened. There’s already a game implicit in this monologue that they’re telling.

So, what I suggest to students when somebody’s giving you a monologue for inspiration, the first thing you can do is look at what made you laugh in that, then take away the subject matter of the monologue, take away who was in the monologue, where the monologue took place. Say what is that fundamentally. It comes to somebody acting inappropriately for the circumstances. Or I don’t know, it’s hard without a specific monologue. You break it down to what it fundamentally is. Then you say in your mind ‘I want to come up with an analogous situation.’ Then you come out and start a scene.

Even between those things, a one word suggestion and monologue, you’ve got pattern games. Pattern games might give you a general take on the information, so go towards that.

I hate when there’s been more full information, and someone takes one word out of it and uses the location to start a scene. To me, that’s a misuse of a monologue. Say the monologue took place in an old folks’ home, but the game really had nothing to do, fundamentally, with the old folks home. That’s just the location of it. So, why use that information, [why have the monologue,] when it could have been someone yelling out ‘Old folks’ home’ and you start a scene from neutral?

We need to address this in our own organization. There are camps developing. We don’t believe that it’s more pure to have no idea what the scene’s going to be. At the end of the day, there’s still huge improvisational elements involved in laying out a premise from a monologue, but some people in our organization say that’s not real improv. It’s kind of like… At the theater, the emphasis is more on comedy for us. If that’s how you get to good, unique comedy, [do it].

The benefit of working that way I suggested of yesanding until you get to something unusual, then once something unusual happens you start asking ‘if that happens, what else happens,’ the value of that is to make you be unique, and specific and hopefully do great comedy, like improvise a great sketch. But you can have a great sketch taking the unique thing that this person shared with you about their life. That only happened to them. That’s their story. So, they have done that work to take it to a unique place, so go ahead. Use it to your benefit. Hit the ground running. Come in with a premise. Because it’s not some generic regurgitation of a sitcom premise, it’s from this person’s real life.

So, whatever it is that keeps you unique and specific and not just doing an imitation of an imitation of an imitation of old-fashioned stuff we’ve seen in sitcoms and movies, that’s fine with us. Get there however you get there.

JF: What do you have to say to people who are like ‘I just can’t initiate with a game in mind. That’s just not the way I work’? Do you think they just need to work that muscle more or do you think it’s legitimate where people are like ‘I’m not built like that’?

IR: Since it can be done, there’s no such thing. Yeah, I guess I’d say, going off of what you said, it’s something like working a muscle. I’m sure when someone who’s driven an automatic gets in a clutch car you would say ‘I just can’t do it. I don’t drive that way.’ Yeah, well no kidding. You’ve never been in a car with a clutch so you don’t drive that way. I’d like to teach you how to drive with a clutch.

So, yeah, I don’t find that a legitimate [argument]. Like I said, if someone tells me ‘this exercise puts me in my head,’ my answer is of course it does. [laughs] You’re good at what you’re good at, and you’ve practiced, and you’re not good at what you haven’t practiced. But, I mean, you can get by. It’s great working from neutral and finding a scene. It’s fantastic, but if someone wants to come out and layout a premise for you, it’s the same thing. Just like would know how, if a game crept up on you, how to be your side of it, how to be the yin to their yang. But you’re saying what if somebody says ‘I can’t do that myself’?

JF: Yeah.

IR: Well, if you can’t, go ahead. It’s not going to hurt to take away one thing from a monologue. The only thing is I would challenge people with is ‘Why on earth are we listening to that monologue?’ I guess you could say it’s a multimedia show with one part of the comedy is people telling personal monologues, but that’s not the way I’ve ever looked at it. I look at it as the improv I do is scenic improv. Everything else is inspiration for scenic improv. So, then I would like Socratically ask them ‘Well, then you tell me what the monologue is for? Why do I need to hear some monologue that has a good comic premise in it if I’m only going to take a word away from it? Why not take three one word suggestions from the audience? Why are we even fleshing out the information then?’

The opening has three purposes. One is to develop a feeling of ensemble, start working together, develop a group mind. Two is to be, in and of itself, is to be interesting to listen to and look at for the audience to watch. But three, and it’s huge, is to provide information for the piece. So, anything that’s happening there I would use that information presented to its greatest benefit.

JF: As far as the information contained in an opening, the more closely that information is aligned with a game the more successful the opening is in your opinion?

IR: No, it’s not better. It’s nothing. It just is what it is. Use what you want. If you go with a monologue, use the monologue, but then if you don’t want to use the monologue you can start… I don’t think that everybody has to start scenes within Harolds with premises, absolutely not.

In ASSSSCAT, we tend to do a very much of a layout the premise type of show, that’s because the whole thing is monologue-based. We kind of break down the monologue and use it to start comedy scenes, but no I don’t think it’s more successful, because then it would come down to ‘Well, let’s do all monologues, so we can all have ideas of what’s going to be funny and a starting point of what the scene’s going to be like to begin with,’ and I don’t feel that way. It can be either or.

That’s what I’m saying. It seems like there are these camps developing within our organization. I need to write an email. We need to start talking about this, because it’s just like ‘No, there are no camps. It’s the same thing.’ Like I say how I think it’s bogus for people to set up camps of game and non-game improv. It’s like wake up. There are no camps. If you’re doing comedy, the game has got to be there, just do the game well. If you’re going against the game, I guess you’re not seeing it done well or you’re not doing it well. So, let’s not develop factions about how you have to start a scene. Just don’t say one or the other is invalid. They’re both valid.

JF: So, what are some qualities of a good teacher?

IR: I think to always be able to bring your comments down to a rule. What I’m never into is what I call ‘Master Blaster Teacher,’ that’s a reference to a Mad Max movie where the little guy rides on the big muscular guy’s shoulders and tells him what to do. If a teacher is just telling you what they think is funny, that’s not helpful. If you see a problem with someone’s scene, you need to be able to tell them ‘Here is the rule that you could apply to help avoid the problem in that scene.’ If you can’t do that, it’s bogus. It’s bullshit. I can’t be there and ride on your back and tell you how to be funny.

Like I tell people, so often you or your scene partner will frame the unusual thing. I explain that like this: it’s like our brain has three holes. One’s a square. One’s a circle. One’s a triangle. All day we have squares, circles and triangles come at us. You’re almost on autopilot. My kid started to talk. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that before. Goes in the triangle hole. They’re so funny. They reach for everything. They’re always pulling things down. Go it. Whatever. He did the strangest thing. He took the pillow down from the couch, tied it around the dog like a saddle, and rode the dog. He rode the dog? I haven’t heard that before. So, you’ll frame it often. So, often in life you’ll repeat it back to the person, or we’ll go ‘What?’ You frame it because it doesn’t fit.

So, that might be something that I tell someone. You went right by the unusual thing and continued to yesand. We needed at that point we need to start exploring the world where if a kid ties a pillow around a dog and starts to ride it, then what else? Are they on an adventure? A kid who’s incredibly inventive? A kid who torments animals? Are they obsessed with Western culture? What pattern does it partake of? So, we need to build that pattern. We need it to heighten. You stayed on the same level too long. People will get bored.

Then you can drill them to make sure they’re doing it consistently. You weren’t playing it straight. You rolled with the guy who wanted to chop up the dresser for firewood, instead of getting some from outside. You said yes to that. You weren’t the wall for that person to play handball against. Be a human being. Be at the top of your intelligence. Tell him to go out and get some firewood. Don’t be a lazy fucker and chop up the dresser.

If I can tell them ‘Here is the general thing you did wrong. This is a rule. If you can drill so you consistently do these rules, you’ll be a good improviser,’ that’s what I think a good teacher has to have. You have to have a method. If you don’t have a method, you can’t teach it. You can’t teach painting. You can’t teach ballet. You can’t teach guitar. You can’t teach driving. You can’t teach operating a piece of equipment.

I am so against… here’s a school of improv that would set itself up in opposition to what we do: ‘You’ve just got to be free. Open yourself up and let the inspiration flow.’ Horse shit! What else does that? You would walk away from a driving teacher in two seconds who said ‘Just go! Just do it!’ ‘What do you mean!? I don’t know how to do it! What do I do!?’ ‘Just go! Follow your instincts!’

I think why people do that is because improv looks like talking and walking. The assumption is we talk and walk all our lives, just go up there and talk and walk, but no. We’re creating fiction. You’re doing what a writer [does]. A writer has a concept, finds a game, writes a short intro that doesn’t meander. So, we’ve got to give you rules that help you do all those on your feet. Just going up and talking to someone and moving around won’t do it.

Same thing with basketball players. Think of Michael Jordan. People describe what he does as poetic or as having artistry. I guarantee you if he had never seen a basketball, never knew it existed, and at the age he is right now handled a basketball he wouldn’t do what he did. He couldn’t. He’s as good as he is because he drilled the fundamentals endlessly, and plays hours and hours and hours, and had coaches who told him what to do. Like I said, I love the title ‘Respect for Acting.’ I encourage people to have respect for improv.

If there’s not a method, why on earth would you take a class from me? I can’t teach you how to be inspired. I can teach you a bunch of rules, that when you do them, allow inspiration to come out, that allow you to find things you didn’t know were there. Michael Jordan knows his fundamentals so well that he creates opportunities that seem insane. That’s because he’s seen the floor so many times, and he’s seen these scenarios so many times, and he’s practiced these moves so many times they just come. That’s the same thing with comedy, improv comedy. You learn these fundamentals to the point you can depend on them.

JF: One of those rules I’ve heard ascribed to you is ‘only say no once.’ Why is it important to only say no once, and do you need to do anything else in addition to make that work?

IR: I don’t understand that one that’s been ascribed to me. I don’t even understand it.

JF: So, if someone’s asking you to do something crazy, you say no once, then if they ask you to do it again you’re like ‘Ok.’

IR: I disagree.

JF: Really!? I’ve heard many people say that, that Ian Roberts says.

IR: Ok, I’m in a scene, and my scene partner says ‘You know what? You should just jump out the window. Say ‘screw you’ to ‘the man.’’ And he opens up the window and says ‘Come on.’ ‘I can’t jump out of the window.’ ‘Come on, man. I thought you were a radical.’ If I jump out that window, the scene is over. No human being on earth would jump out that window. It’s less than likely than anyone but one idiot would think that’s a good idea. I’d say no to that all day.

Here’s something that gets misinterpreted. People hear ‘Don’t deny,’ and they think don’t deny means don’t argue. My response to that is that’s the craziest comedy rule I’ve ever heard, since the heart of much comedy is nothing but arguments. The Parrot sketch [in Monty Python] is nothing but a protracted argument. Not that I think it’s great comedy, but Neil Simon is never ending two hour arguments, his movies or his plays. So, can you argue in support of a game? Absolutely.

What don’t deny means is that in the yesanding process don’t deny someone’s reality they’ve set up. ‘Hey, your dog went to the bathroom on my lawn.’ ‘I don’t have a dog, Jack.’ Well, ok, scene’s over. I’m crazy. ‘Man, it’s freezing out there.’ ‘It’s the middle of July.’ Ok, I’m an idiot. I’m crazy. That’s denial. If someone is offering me a cup of coffee, can I say no? Of course, I can say no. ‘No thanks. I’m good.’ That’s just very basic.

So, no, I don’t agree with that. Was that ascribed to me or our organization?

JF: To you.

IR: To me? [laughs] Well, I think I have something. I know have something in my notes. I think this might be it. ‘Sometimes when people say no, they’re trying to express how their character feels about something.’ For instance, you’re playing a guy who you think is the last person on earth who would want to go to the opera, and the wife says ‘Come on. Louis, let’s go to the opera tonight.’ ‘Ahhh, the game’s on tonight. It’s the quarter finals.’ ‘You promised.’ ‘Can I bring my radio with me with earphones?’ ‘No, I want you to watch it with me!’

If you can, don’t ever say no just to show your character’s opinion about something, but if it completely rebels against the logic of the character of any rational human being you need to. You need to keep at the top of your intelligence. So, I think that may be what’s been attributed to me. If you can say yes and still get across how you feel and move forward, go ahead, but if you need to say no [say no]. If you would leave the room, it’s better to just walk off stage. You know what? More likely than not, they’ll stop you. That happens in real life. If I’m having the balls-out, worst fight in the world with my wife and I’m about to storm out, more than likely she’ll yell ‘Stop.’ For the guy who wants you to jump out the window, the biggest favor you can do him is say no, because he’s going to now try to talk you into it. He’s going to have to keep answering you. You’re saying no, but now you’re being the wall for him to play handball against. If you didn’t, the ball will dribble away. Jump out the window and the scene is over.

It’s going to make him play his game more. ‘Ok, how about this? Let’s disfigure ourselves, just to say we’re not interested in cosmetic beautify and all that bullshit.’ ‘No, I don’t want to do that either.’ Or the guy gives you the reason why you should jump out the window and the effect it’s going to have. ‘Just like 9-11 it will live on.’ ‘No, no one will care. We’ll just seem like two crazy guys who jumped out the window.’ ‘No, we’ll seem like two guys who made a statement.’ Maybe he compares himself to the guys who burned themselves with gasoline because they didn’t want to go to Vietnam. ‘But no one even knows what we’re against! You’re against what, the world?’ ‘Yeah.’ That gives the guy a better chance to play the game.

Now, there’s two totally different ways to approach your scene once you know you’ve got something unusual going on. It’s either kind of everyman, kind of straight man thing, or it’s peas in a pod. And that guy [peas and a pod] might go along with the guy. Although in that case it would be unfortunate, but taking away that extreme circumstance you could play it, I call it mirroring each other. Instead of being this wall to play handball against, the other side of the yin yang symbol to the guy, you mirror each other. You make the choice of ‘I like everything you like. I hate everything you hate. I have the same prejudices as you. I have the same educational background. I’m from the same region of the country.’ Both of those ways to play the scene are completely valid, because they both exist in life. Sometimes bozos with idiot opinions who do stupid things find each other. They cliché is birds of a feather flock together. An example of that in scripted comedy is ‘Dumb and Dumber’ or ‘Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.’ I’m sure there are others.

And they don’t always have to be idiots, like two gonzo cops. In that circumstance, the straightman is implicitly the rest of the world. The audience knows the way things generally go. We think these guys are off. So, these two ways to play a scene are just as valid.

That’s the thing about improv, most of these improv rules are also life rules. We do them in because that’s what happens in life. Why do we [say know each other in scenes]? Because we have conversations with people we know. I’ll ask ‘What was the last conversation like that you had with a stranger you were waiting on a subway platform with?’ The answer is typically ‘I didn’t have a conversation with a stranger.’ That covers one of the rules. In general, why do we say ‘Don’t do scenes with strangers?’ Because, in general, they don’t happen. Our lives don’t happen with strangers. Are there a million exceptions to that? Yes.

In general, don’t do transaction scenes. Why? Because once the transaction is over, the scene is done. That doesn’t just mean a business transaction like ‘Give me a pack of cigarettes and a candy bar’ and paying the guy money. It means starting a scene with something like ‘Can I borrow the car tonight?’ If the person says yes, if they give you the keys, then go. So, don’t start scenes like that, because they don’t go anywhere in life. They’re just transaction scenes.

Yesanding comes into that category. Why do we yesand? Because it creates the type of conversation that happens in life. When we talk to people, we’re able to talk to them because we have the same frame of reference. That’s what yesanding is. I agree with your reality. ‘I live in the world where it’s snowing outside. I live in the world where we had a big party in the house last night. I live in the world we’re both fry cooks at the same restaurant. When you say that thing about the manager, I know because I work with him.’ So, with yesanding that’s what you’re doing. When I add more information in my line, it makes it sound like life.

So, those two things are life rules. So why do we either be top of our intelligence and react to the unusual thing the way you would react to the unusual thing if you weren’t on board for it, or the other way we said I mirror you [the two methods of playing the game described]? Because that’s the way life goes. Either things are unusual and you shock us, or they’re unusual, someone else might find them unusual, but you’re into it. Say you have two guys who are working out and they’re both those kind of bozos and scream at each other going ‘Come on you pussy! Don’t you wimp out on me, fucking you puss! Push it! Push it!’ If the other guy does the same thing back to him, that can be a really funny scene. That makes sense for them. They’re two maniacs and they found each other. They love to scream at each other while they work out. Or you can go the opposite way. You can find a comedy scene with a guy who’s working out with one of these maniacs and he’s just trying to get a regular workout. And this guy’s saying ‘I will punch you in the face! I want you to die!’ ‘Oh my God! Please help me!’

JF: In your opinion is there anything that improv can accomplish that sketch can’t accomplish?

IR: I’m not sure I understand the question. In what realm accomplish?

JF: Is there anything that makes improv unique as an art form to you?

IR: Well, yeah, excitement for the audience. There’s that. I never want improv laughs to be ‘Oh, look how we’re screwing up.’ You can get laughs like that, where it’s kind of post-modern, the audience appreciating the difficulty the performers are having, but that really to me is the lowest accomplishment in improv. To me, the highest accomplishment is to do stuff that appears to be scripted. So, at it’s best I don’t see it as, in what’s done, very different.

Ok, here’s something. You should write this way. You should write in a way that takes you to your unique point of view on things. When I teach sketch writing, I’ll encourage people to think of their memories, because their memories will tend to take them to unique places. Don’t sit there and try to create absurd premises or bizarre takes on things. More let them come to you. What have you observed? What do you know? What have you experienced? What have you done? But a lot of people don’t do that, and I think a lot of the benefit of improv is taking people to places they didn’t know they would go to help them to be funnier than they might think they are.

That’s why I beg people to trust in the process. Don’t come up with a comedy scene. Come up and just be looking right in front of you. At the beginning your responsibility is to just yesand that line that I just heard, then when something unusual comes up my responsibility is to recognize that. Now, my responsibility is to do something else or to do something else in keeping with that unusual thing. The end of it all will have been having done a good comedy scene. When people try to be funny, that’s when they suck.

So, I think what it does for a lot of people is it helps them get in touch with far more unique things than they might if they sat down and tried to be funny. I believe the way we teach, teaching the game, is most applicable to writing. At some point all writing is improv. Before you type it, that line didn’t exist on the page. You don’t know what the guy is going to say next until you write that line and imagine what the guy is going to say next. In fact, in my writing we literally talk out loud. We do the dialog back and forth and it is improvised, but that’s nothing special. All writing is improvised in that it didn’t exist then it exists [laughs]. If you’re composing music, you’re asking ‘What seems to follow. What seems to follow?’ So, some times improv can make a person a better writer on their feet than when they’re sitting in front of a computer.

Like I said, I think the other aspect of it is just for an audience’s enjoyment, knowing ‘Holy shit. It’s happening. This is happening right here.’

JF: Do you have anything that you would like to say anything to the improv community that we didn’t get out?

IR: I think I said a lot of it. [laughs] It’s so self-serving. Is this written or do you play the tape?

JF: I transcribe it.

IR: Ok, you’re going to have to get across that I’m laughing at myself, because I kind of would want to say ‘Guys, you’ll be happier if you do things our way.’ [laughs] But that’s so self-serving.

I guess it’s kind of that I don’t buy these divisions. I don’t buy this wanting to set up camps. It’s crazy. I know it sounds like you’re a Nazi, but I don’t buy it. It’s this thing that’s out there that I’m only identifying. I want people to be happy. If you want to be happy, please don’t reject the game. Show me all the comedies you love, the movies, the sitcoms or the sketches, and I’ll show you the games. So, you do need to know how to find the game. Maybe what you’ve seen with the game has had its shortcomings with the way it’s been played. If you want to do comedy improv, don’t reject that.

Relationship is covered. It’s covered in the yesanding, but when you abstractly go after it, the same way you can’t just try to be funny, when you try to do relationships, just yesand. How could the characters agree with and add to each other’s realities if they don’t know each other?

So, I want to get rid of the divisions, but that can be interpreted as this: I don’t believe in ‘[Sing-songy gibberish] We can all…’ I’m against some schools of thought. I’m not touchy feely like ‘The improv community should just get along. Do it that way or do it this way.’ No, just the same way as there’s only one way to drive a stick shift. Take your foot off the gas, put your foot on the clutch, change the gears, take your foot off the clutch and put the gas down. There’s a way to do things. You may do what we’re doing wrong and have it be bad, but when it’s done right I’m not sure why you would be against it if you want to do comedy improv.

Ian Roberts Part 2 - 2/16/07

2007-02-19T21:36:00.000-05:00

JF: So, what was the audience’s response to The Horror?

IR: [laughs] The audience response would be like ‘Waaaah?’ There was no reason to expect anything but comedy from Improv Olympic. The first night we did the show, I can’t remember what it was but it definitely was along the lines a rape, a child molestation, some horrible murder. There was just silence in the theater, then from the back you hear ‘HAHAHAHA’ [laughs]. He just loved that the audience was so freaked out by it. I think people were also kind of interested.

Those were some pretty good shows. The first one was ‘3 Mad Rituals.’ The second one was ‘Dynamite Fun Nest.’ That name was come up with by some word generator Del had. Both of those shows were great. I think people were at least interested in that.

It was amazing working with Del. It’s like I’m coasting [now]. I’ve worked on improv tons as a teacher, but I’ve never [been as submerged as deeply in it as I was then]. I think improv’s kind of a young person’s thing, because you never get paid for it. To be good, like any thing else in the world, you have to be working on it minimum three days a week, minimum. If you really want to be great, why wouldn’t you be working six days a week and then really why not seven? What pianist wouldn’t? What dancer wouldn’t? What painter?

But very few people get the opportunity to put in the effort you need to get really good. For a while there, the guys from the Upright Citizens Brigade all hung out together all the time. We were either rehearsing for Upright Citizens Brigade shows or hanging out together. When we hung out, we would do bits constantly, so we were honing our game-finding ability. We were always playing games.

Then we got this very formal work with Del, where we’re rehearsing three to five days a week for months on end. As a performer, that’s my big base that I got one time in my life. At the time, it’s conceited to say, but what the hell, we were a great team. There’s no secret to it. We were naturally talented guys, but we worked our asses off for a while there. And we had a great sense of ensemble because we hung out together all the time. Still when we get on stage together it’s effortless, because we just know each other so well. It will always be there.

JF: Why did The Family break up? And do you ever regret The Family breaking up?

IR: No, you can’t. We broke up because improv comedy doesn’t pay. People get gigs and that’s the end of it, you know? Adam McKay got hired by Second City. I got hired by Second City. Neil Flynn was always pursuing acting and he moved to L.A. eventually.

It’s too bad the world isn’t into improv and that can’t be a thing in and of itself. Basically, I think that no improv team can stay together [forever]. Like I say, even getting good at improv is a young person’s thing, because how can you commit? It doesn’t pay, so you have to do it in your off hours. You do it at night. Or, we were such a bunch of bums we actually did do it during the day, because no one had jobs. But once you’ve got a wife and a kid you can’t be going away every night and doing shows and rehearsing. It doesn’t pay.

When I’m teaching, I say ‘You want to get good at this? How many of you are in an ensemble? You’re on a team at a theater or have a practice group. How often are you rehearsing?’ It’s like ‘Once a week.’ I tell them ‘You know what? You will never be a great team. It’s going to take minimum, minimum three days a week.’

I always tell them how I love the title of the book ‘Respect for Acting.’ I don’t really love the book. I don’t really think it’s a great book that teaches acting, but I love that title. I love what that means. You have to have a method to do it. You have to practice it like anything else. The whole thing about my, our teaching is that everything has rules. We have lots of rules to teach improv, because if you didn’t …because you hear a lot of bullshit. How can you have any way to do it, because they’re not teaching you anything dependable like you would have in other art forms? Do this. Do this. Do this. Here’s a way to do it.

I used to hear when I would do exercises in improv class ‘This is putting me in my head.’ It’s a subtle criticism. It’s kind of saying ‘How is this a good exercise? I feel less good working on this than when I started.’ And it used to challenge me. I’d feel bad. ‘Wow, am I teaching them poorly?’ Then I realized of course it puts you in your head. [laughs] By putting you in your head, you mean you’re having to consciously work to try to do this. It’s the same thing when you’re learning a sport. When you learn the fundamentals of a sport, you had to concentrate to do them, so you can be ‘in the zone,’ unconscious when you’re actually playing. You’ve practiced these fundamentals so much now they feel like second nature.

If you buy the concept that we’re not instinctual animals, we’re habitual animals, we learn what we do by habit, then how do you work to make this a habit? I always use sports analogies when I teach improv. There’s a saying in sports: ‘Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.’ Don’t just get together with a group of people and improvise five days a week. Have a focus in your rehearsal. What are you working on to get better? What exercise are you going to work on? The same way they might drill with some sport. Work on some fundamental of it.

JF: How did the UCB start and what did you hope to get out of the UCB that you weren’t getting elsewhere?

IR: One thing was to do scripted work, and also to do concept shows. The beginning especially they were concept shows. The first one was Virtual Reality. That was one that seems like so nothing now. One of the guys in the group introduced me to this new thing, virtual reality, putting on goggles. You feel like you’re in a different world. It was brand new at the time.

Half of the show was improvising with audience members. We’d bring them up and I’d be this guy who was supposed to be a holographic projection, Cyber Guy John. Cyber Guy John would bring you up on stage and you’d participate in a scene. They’d be the President of the United States in a crisis, and we’d improvise around them.

One of the cool ones was a virtual road trip. Adam McKay would take out an audience member in my crappy Ford Festiva. We’d film it. He’d take them all over town as though they were going cross country, then we’d come back. Somebody would edit it back stage, and we’d show it during the show. During that road trip, McKay or one of the guys in the group would hit Horatio Sanz with my car. The audience would think it really happened. He’d get up and run back to the theater. Then later in the show we’d show that virtual road trip and you’d see from the inside of the car Horatio Sanz getting hit by my car. So, it was crazy conceptual type of stuff.

But how it started was there was a group before the Upright Citizens Brigade called Cerebral Stripmine, then that broke apart. McKay and Besser and Horatio Sanz, that was really the core. There were guys who did peripheral stuff, film stuff and bits during the show. Then they asked me if I wanted to start the Upright Citizens Brigade, and I did. I wasn’t improvising with them. I was on some other teams. I guess they liked my work and asked me to be in it. Thank God I was the kind of guy who said yes to anything at the time. I say that to any young performer: ‘You don’t have something booked that night of the week? Say yes.’ [laughs] You want to do this? Let’s do it.

We had just a blast. You asked before about why was it formed? I’ll say this, maybe, the only one I can think of who might have been thinking ahead, because he’s always been more motivated and goal-oriented, Besser might have been thinking that way, but I think the rest of us were just bums, just doing it because it was fun. I think that was actually so to our benefit. We just followed what we wanted to do. Nothing was geared to make history. Nothing was made to be palatable or get us ahead. It was just whatever occurs to us that we think is interesting.

I think it was a great thing for us. We were just pursuing comedy and found our sensibility. At the very end, when we started thinking about going to New York, then we made it pure sketch shows. It had never been pure sketch shows, but there were still elements that were interesting. We used the Harold format in our scripted material, having scenes come together, tie together. That was something that still made it not just a straight ahead sketch show. We definitely became a lot more straight ahead than we had been for the last four or five years, whatever it was.

JF: Did you ever want to get more experimental with your TV show?

IR: No, we were happy with it. There’s no regrets for the Upright Citizens Brigade television show. I mean that was pretty frickin experimental. [laughs] That was the Harold format on TV. Nobody had ever done exactly that. Monty Python had that great form of the tangent flow of the show. One element takes you to the whole next scene. You follow one tangent that goes all over the place. You always hesitate to profess to have invented the wheel, but I don’t know. I don’t think anybody else did that Harold format before, where you have these scenes that seem unrelated and by the end the elements come together. We always did that in the Upright Citizens Brigade shows.

And that frame was kind of crazy, guys who are patrolling the world, secretly causing chaos. It wasn’t the most straight ahead show in the world.

JF: [laughs] Yeah, that’s true. So, what was the experience of moving to New York like? And what did you think of New York the city and the artistic community when you got there?

IR: Personally, I can’t speak for the other guys in the group, but in Chicago I felt completely not goal-oriented. It was like looking two inches in front of your face, or thinking one minute ahead. It was just like ‘Whatever. Let’s do this. Let’s do this.’

Moving to New York, that’s when the group became what it became, the one that’s cemented the Upright Citizens Brigade, me, Walsh, Besser, Amy. It was that group. We sat down at the Salt and Pepper diner, which was near where the Improv Olympic was. We said ‘Look, we have to move, to either New York or L.A.’ I think the what happened was Besser had a manager from 3 Arts, Dave Becke. So, all this time Besser was telling Dave Becke ‘You’ve got to see my sketch group The Upright Citizens Brigade.’

So, we finally went out in did a showcase of the show we were running in Chicago in New York. People responded to it. Dave Becke signed us up off of that show, I believe. He called us back and said ‘Hey, some people didn’t get out for the first time. You’ve got to come back. Some people still want to see you.’ So almost two weeks later, we went out again to do another one time show. Then after that we sat down in that diner and said ‘Look, we’ve got to move.’

It was really rough for Amy and Walsh. Besser and I were instantly up for it. We were like ‘Whatever. We’ll go,’ but Walsh had his whole family in Chicago and was doing Second City and that was an option. Amy had been offered to get one of the Main Stages, either the ETC or the Main Stage of Second City. It was like ‘Wow, really? We’re going to go?’ Then we said ‘We’ve got to go. This is huge. We’re good. We could get a TV show.’ We just agreed. We made a year commitment that we would do nothing else that would take us away from the group completely. So, I didn’t even audition for anything. You could do day work, like be on the Conan O’Brien show, or a one day role on a movie or something like that, but it was complete commitment to the Upright Citizens Brigade, that was what we were pursuing.

We came to New York with two scripted shows and doing an improv show, and going to the big open mic at the time, which was ‘Eating It’ at the Luna Lounge. It was an open mic for alternative comedy. So, we were basically onstage four nights a week almost instantly. I think the feeling was ‘Who are these guys?’ We didn’t kind of like just slowly come up. We had been doing that away from New York. We didn’t need that. We had been doing shows quietly just for the sake of doing shows. When we got there it was like ‘Boom. Let’s go. Get industry to the shows. You can see us any night of the week.’

We put up two sketch shows at the same time at different theaters, started ASSSSCAT our free improv show, and we would do Luna every week. No one did Luna every week. We’d go there every single week and work out a new bit. Improv was really helpful with that. Some people really need to script things and memorize them perfectly. We would, the day of, throw out some concepts, pick a concept, basically kind of beat it out, then improvise through it. And industry came to that. So, we kind of quickly saturated people’s awareness of the Upright Citizens Brigade.

What it was like improv-wise, there was really no long-form improv. Off of ASSSSCAT, we started teaching classes and at the beginning we got this crazy, crazy high-caliber of people. They all started taking the classes. They were great already great, but hadn’t found a place to do what we were doing. It was kind of the same way that I came to Chicago, but in reverse. I came to Chicago somewhat waiting to be activated, to find the thing that I was good at. That happened when I found Improv Olympic. But it kind of worked in reverse in New York. There were tons of people with great skills who wanted to do open improv, but there was no place to do it. You’re kind of hesitant to make the ‘We invented the wheel kind of statement,’ but I think that we kind of introduced long-form into New York City.

JF: So what were those early classes like in New York? How do you fine-tune these improvisers who have a lot of experience, but want to do long-form?

IR: Most people who are funny have some sort of naïve understanding of ‘the game.’ There is something to having that formalized for you, and no longer depending upon inspiration. You know the fundamentals are there for you. I think that’s the difference. I don’t want to name names, because to do it you’ve got to first say that they weren’t as fantastic as they’ve now become, but suffice to say, there are people now in New York who blow people away, they’re fantastic, they’re some of the best comedy improvisers in the country, they had some bad habits. They would make jokes, and kind of wreck a scene by trying to be funny instead of following the game. I think what’s good for people to understand is ‘Here’s what we’re doing. Here’s how you do this.’

I think the best compliment you can get, if you’re doing what we’re doing well, is for someone to say ‘No way was that improvised. That was a written scene.’ What we’re trying to do is kind of to improvise a sketch. A sketch has a game. Someone wrote it. They know what the focus of the scene is. If you improvise the way we teach to improvise, at it’s best, that’s what it’s like. It seems like a scripted scene. I think that we help people be able to more dependably do improv that seems like a well-written sketch.

JF: How much input do you guys have at the UCB Theater? And do you guys have a goal with the UCB Theater or is that goal just to let people do what they enjoy doing?

IR: I’d say that what goes up in our theater is every kind of comedy except for mainstream sketch. I think there’s no other theater in New York that’s exactly that. We’re not an improv theater. We’re a comedy theater, but improv is kind of the big teaching base with that concept of the game pervading everything that’s done there.
I feel that the game is at the heart of all comedy: patterns, narrowing the behavior of people. The same way caricature kind of exaggerates certain physical characteristics of a person, the game sort of takes life and exaggerates certain aspects. Instead of something being one awkward, unusual behavior, it becomes a dependable pattern. That’s basically what the art of all comedy is. We have all kind of comedy at our theater. We even have stand-up. It tends to be more alternative. We do comedy musical stuff. We do one person shows. We do improv, sketch.

The goal of the theater is to be a place where that if you’re good, we’ll put you up at our theater. Like when people try to define pornography, they say ‘I know it why I see it.’ When there’s something that matches well with the UCB Theater, we know it when we see it. Is it funny? Is it not generic or old-fashioned? Is it a unique point of view? All this sounds pretentious, but is it challenging? We pick Artistic Directors who are some of the best people at our theater. We feel like they have a good idea, and that they’ll like what we like. The whole idea is that when people come to the theater they feel like they’re seeing an Upright Citizens Brigade show. ‘Oh yeah, that’s the kind of stuff that gets done at that theater.’ The Aspen Comedy people come to our theater to find great shows to take to Aspen. I think it’s now coming to the point where the industry knows that ‘Yeah, we should go to the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater to cast comedy stuff.’
I know that’s kind of general, but I think our goal is to have great comedy that’s not mainstream boring. At one end of the spectrum, there’s the most easily digestible sitcom that’s on TV. We hope to be somewhere on the other end of the continuum. Hopefully, it’s challenging and unique.

JF: Do you think that ‘the game’ ever gets a bad wrap?

IR: Yes, I think that there are a lot of places that position ourselves in opposition to us. They kind of refer to the game derisively, and say that ‘We do relationship-based improv or we do slow improv,’ or something. I find that very bogus.

If it’s funny, it is the game. You can do the game badly or you can do the game well, but there is nothing to criticize about the game done well. This thing about relationship scenes, we do have relationship in our scenes. My explanation is relationship is covered by the yesand part of improv. I kind of divide finding your scene into two aspects. The beginning is yesand part where you’re kind of fleshing out the world of the scene. The game part is the if-then part. You’re not just agreeing with the person and adding more information. You stop adding information and narrow it down. You start playing a pattern. If this happens, then this would happen and this would happen. That’s the game part of the scene.

As far as relationship, that gets developed in the yesanding. In yesanding, I say something that acknowledges the reality that you just brought up and adds information. I can only do that with someone I’m in a relationship with. How can I add to that reality if I don’t share that reality?

What I see in people who set themselves up in opposition with what we do and say they do relationship improv is people calling each other ‘Ma’ and ‘Pa’ and speaking in Southern accents, doing unfunny improv that meanders and is lousy. I think to sell themselves they need to offer something unique. Often the thing the unique thing they’re offering in terms of comedy improv [is unsound]. I’ll debate anybody on this: if there’s no game, there’s no comedy. If you’re setting yourself up as ‘We’re anti-game.’ Well, go ahead. I’m not interested. If it’s funny, they are doing the game, despite the fact that they’re not acknowledging it. This other thing of slow improv, you know, whatever. Speed has nothing to do with anything.

So, yeah, I think it does get a bad wrap. It’s completely fake. It’s completely false. Anybody who’s criticizing the game is just trying to sell a product. They’ve got to say they’ve got something different than what we’re doing.

Now, the game can be done badly. That’s a thrust in our organization, to make sure we keep our people [on point]. For us the [crux] of comedy is the game, but you’ve got to play things at the top of your intelligence. What does that mean? It doesn’t mean use big words, or share specific information that only you know. What that means is react like a human being. If people aren’t doing that, well, that’s part of good improv. That sneaks out sometimes. People are playing the game, but not reacting like they would. I always teach people in classes ‘When you start playing the game, do think ‘Oh now I’m doing comedy’ and now you stop being a human being.’ Almost every time you do a scene basically as crazy as that seems it’s probably happened, in the grand scheme of things.

In comedy, you’re showing the day that broke the pattern. The only memories you even have in your life are the days when things didn’t go the way you would have them go. You remember the day that you got the crazy cab driver or you made a fool of yourself or you messed up the dinner. So, when you’re playing a game, don’t now go into some freaky comedy acting. Just respond. Just be a human being. It goes on both sides. When you are kind of driving the game and exhibiting the unusual behavior, realize no one sets out to be an idiot. If you agree that people are pursing pleasure and avoid pain, that’s the best choice they could make at that moment.

Stuff like this gets brought up in straight acting. There’s this quote from Lee Marvin. They asked him ‘How do you feel about having played so many villains through your career?’ He said ‘I’ve never played a villain. I’ve played people who were making the best choices they could given the circumstances they were given.’ Like they say when you’re a villain and you’re acting, don’t twirl your mustache. Don’t ‘be a villain.’ Just be who you are. It’s the same thing. When you’re being an idiot in comedy, think of your own life. Think of all the idiotic, stupid things you’ve done. At the time just before you did these things you said ‘Yup, let’s do that,’ and you pursued it with belief that made sense.

I think sometimes when the game gets a bad wrap it’s because people aren’t doing all the work involved in playing the game. There’s also an acting aspect of it. There’s ‘play at the top of your intelligence,’ which means pursue it like you belief it’s a worthy goal.

We meet these people in life. If there’s someone you can think to imitate, the reason you can imitate them is because you can paw them down to some salient qualities. You’re like ‘Oh, that idiot,’ but they’re a human being in their life. They’re not a comedy character.

So, I don’t know. I think sometimes people aren’t doing all the work, and they’re going around saying they’re doing game improv. They’re just not doing it well. But done well, I don’t see how you can have a problem with it. Improv that uses the game, that’s basically every Monty Python scene, every Kids in the Hall scene, every Upright Citizens Brigade scene. Scripted comedy has a game. If I can make my improv comedy look like scripted, which is what happens if you play the game well, if you don’t like that, then I’m not interested in doing something you like. So, go ahead. You do your thing. I’ll do mine.

JF: With the students that you’ve taught have you found it more important to focus on acting skills or more on playing the game skills?

IR: It changes. I think at the beginning you focus a lot on the game. When I teach I tend to teach a level four, you have to have a couple early classes, and I work a lot on the acting aspect of it, the playing it real. What would you do? That can kill a game [if you’re not acting properly]. A lot of times I compare it to handball. You need to be a wall for somebody, a solid wall. If someone hits the ball and you don’t come back with what you would do, the ball just kind of trickles off and the other person is left hanging.

It’s stuff like that. The person who’s driving the game, they have a pattern of behavior that’s unusual. It might be required that you just respond the way that you would respond. This is somebody that you are in a relationship with and they’re doing this. What would you say to that? What would you do? And the degree to which you to it is the degree to which you’re helping your scene partner. When someone’s kind of driving the game, they’ve got some sort of unusual behavior, they believe in that. If you respond to it, if you resist it, if you are shocked by it, if you challenge them on it, you give them something to do. They believe in that. They’re going to continue pursuing it. But if you don’t give them what realistically they need back, the scene dies.

I find the higher level I get I find sometimes the more fundamental I get, because you realize you still need to learn the most basic, basic thing. I used to think yesanding is like a primary color. You don’t mix anything to make it. It just is. It’s even hard to describe. It’s like what is blue? Well, blue is blue. Blue is things that are blue. I don’t know how to describe it or break it down further.

Well, here’s what yesanding is: implicitly agreeing with what that person says or even the reality, and adding to it. Then I came up with an excersize to break down yesanding to help people yesand better. This is based off of this belief that there’s this flash that happens. For everything you hear, it conjures up something unique to you, because your experience, what that means to you. So, they’ll say a line to you and you say back ‘That makes me think of…’ You’re just reporting what happened when that line got said. So, someone said that line to you and it brings up the image of a high school cafeteria from your past. ‘That makes me think of my high school cafeteria where this was this woman who used to shake. When she brought the fries to the plate, you’d lose half the fries, because she shook so much.’

Then you develop a fictional line that uses that specific information of yours. The hope is that you drill that enough that when someone says a line to you you’re in touch with your specific reality of what that brings up to you, and you fictionalize it. What’s that going to do is it’s going to give you a yesand line that’s unique and has specific information in it that only you could bring to do to the scene. When they do that and do it well, working from a one word suggestion in open scene work, not based on a monologue, bringing no premise to a scene, within three lines something comes up that’s unusual and specific that gets them on the path to finding the game.

So, that’s an example of working on a thing that’s so fundamental, but it can be incredibly useful. I said that my ideal of improv would be to do a scene where someone comes up and says ‘There’s no way that was improvised. It was too perfect. That was a written sketch.’ Well, a written sketch, since it’s only three to five minutes, has a set-up that’s incredibly short. You do have this need to set up the world as it is, as it was, before the comedy, so they know why it’s funny. In movies, they call it ‘The World Before.’ It’s that ten to fifteen minutes that shows how the world was, the inciting incident happens, then we go on to the whole comedy of the movie, then we resolve it and return order. You have something similar to that in sketch, typically only two to three lines, which kind of set up the normal expectation: the generic, neutral way we’d expect things to go, if it was like the way we hope most things go, which is to not be bumpy, to not be extreme, to not upset the order, but then you right away start having the comedy come in.

What happens sometimes with people working from neutral in improv is you get a minute and a half of yesanding with no comedy. Nothing unusual has happened yet. I think that’s because people are yesanding too generally. They’re not using their specific reality. They’re not yesanding very well. But with this exercise you’ll find invariably, there I go again, there’s some slight variation, they’ll get to the unusual thing in the scene within five lines maximum and so often three. If you can get good at that, you can be consistently a better improviser, because you’ll have scenes that will be funny really quickly.

That’s the thing when I hear about this slow comedy, or as if there’s some value to not getting to the game, how is that valuable? If that’s what it means. If that’s what the outcome is. Would you think it was a good sketch, if a Monty Python sketch had a minute and a half that wasn’t funny? You’d say ‘They’re usually better than that.’ Or any sketch team that you admire. In my mind, when we’re doing long-form, we’re doing improvised sketch. So, let’s have it get to the comedy the same way sketch does.

Ian Roberts Part 1 - 2/16/07

2007-02-19T21:31:00.000-05:00

Ian Roberts is a veteran actor, improviser and writer. He studied improvisation at the Improv Olympic in Chicago where he a member of the legendary team The Family. He is a member of the Upright Citizens Brigade with whom he has founded two comedy theaters and training centers and created a long-running sketch show on Comedy Central. He currently lives in Los Angeles.

JF: Where were you born?

IR: I was born in Queens, NY.

JF: What were some early influences on your sense of humor?

IR: Abbot and Costello was one of the first ones. My dad and I used to watch it. When I got older, I would say Monty Python was the biggest influence in my teen years. Those are the conscious [influences], but then the honest, horrible answer was old sitcom re-runs that they didn't have to pay any residuals for like ‘Bewitched,’ ‘I Dream of Genie,’ ‘Gilligan’s Island,’ and ‘F-Troop.’ That’s the horrible truth of the matter. That’s why, when I teach improv, I try to tell people not to try and use their conscious mind to try to be funny, because when you do that I tell them that when you do that you’re pulling from a storehouse of awful comedy.

JF: Do you see the influence of any of those early comedy shows that you watched in your comedy now, especially with Abbot and Costello?

IR: [laughs] Perhaps. I don’t think I do it consciously, but I know I like comedy where there is a straight man, kind of a harried straight man. Now-a-days, I would say that the guy who’s cornered market on that is Ben Stiller, you know? There’s two ways of looking at a straight man. One way is like an Abbot: a dry one, who’s always above the stuff that would happen to him. I guess when I use the term what I'm talking about is a guy who’s reactive. Crazy things happen to him and he reacts. That’s kind of the Ben Stiller movie, like Meet the Parents, what’s the one when he goes looking for his real parents...

JF: Oh yeah, with Mary Tyler Moore.

IR: Yeah, so funny. That’s another one where does that shtick. Along Came Polly. Something About Mary. I love that in comedy, a guy who’s basically not being funny. Then he has a whole other way that he does in comedy, where he’s a big character, like in Zoolander or Dodgeball, but I love this other thing that he does, which is what I love in general in comedy.

As far as Python, I don’t know. Del Close said ‘Whatever relates to art to drugs.’ [laughs] He said when he took heroin it was like the world opened up to him. It’s like [laughs] ‘Oh my god. The world can be this whole different way.’ It’s like that with Python comedy-wise. I’m not sure what the specific input is, but everything I do is somewhat influenced by that. That that absurdist sensibility, even if I’m not doing something absurdist, and intelligence, whether I achieve it or not, it’s something I admire.

JF: When did you know that you wanted to be a performer?

IR: Somewhere in my high school years. Not that that’s when I started being funny, but that’s when I started thinking secretly [about it]. I went to college and I was like I want to do theater. I did two plays in high school, but mostly played foot ball, did some drugs and drank and kind of was the class clown. But somewhere around there, I was like ‘I should check out the theater program of these colleges that I was looking at, because I think I want to do that.’ So, I went to college trying to reinvent myself. I thought I’d get into theater, but I never told anybody really. I tried to do a couple other things, like being an English major or a Psychology major.

I kind of got it all backwards. I’ve had to come full circle to do the most natural thing, which is improv comedy and now my main focus is writing screen plays, that’s how I spend most of my time and make most of my money. It went from kind of being a class clown and making people laugh, from that my Dad said ‘You know you should go get in a play.’ I guess it seemed like I was extraverted or whatever, or goofing around all the time.

I didn’t want to do that in high school. I was scared. Luckily, I had an out. The play had rehearsals during foot ball practice. I came home and my dad was like ‘You try out for the play?’ I was like ‘I couldn’t. I had to do foot ball practice.’ My dad was like ‘They can’t discriminate against my son! I’m going into the school.’ [laughs] The school was like ‘No guys auditioned. We’d love to have him audition.’ That’s how I ended up getting into a play. [laughs]

Yeah, I went to college and I always had this impulse to be funny and try to entertain people. I tried to find what I thought was a channel for that, which was scripted acting. So, I spent all this time with scripted acting. When I got out of college, I did all these plays in Milwakee. At the same time, I was doing ComedySportz, which is short-form improv. It wasn’t quite what I wanted to do.

When I got to Chicago, I discovered long-form improv, finally. It was kind of what I had done my whole life. I kind of had taken on characters and intuitively done scenes with people when joking around. The first time I remember improvising was with my brother on vacation as kids in Colorado. We did this bit where we were playing these guys who would complain how much they hated the food, while stuffing their face with lobsters. ‘Oh this is terrible!’ We’d be shoving food into our faces. We were always joking around a lot. So, it was kind of this long, crazy path to get to this thing that we did completely naturally.

JF: So, what was that experience like as a theater major and doing plays? How did change you and what were some lessons that you took from?

IR: I always tell my classes, when I try to get them to be willing [to fail], the only kind of student that frustrates me is the student that thinks they have nothing to learn. I always try to start the class with ‘please, be willing to fail. I could care less. Why would you be here if you knew how to do it?’ I try to say please don’t be the kind of student who’s taking a class so I could discover them. I’m going to look at them and see light around their face, and say ‘Oh my God, you are the Chosen One. I have nothing to teach you. [laughs] You have come to me fully formed.’ You always have to be willing to make mistakes.

In that little speech, I would always tell them that my only skill as an actor was knowing that I was no good. And I wasn’t. I was terrible. But at least I knew I was terrible. But I would notice the difference though: some people would get very comfortable doing this terrible, fake acting. By the way, I’ve come to consider myself a very average actor, but at least I’ve worked my way up to average from awful. But as an actor I was always trying to pursue being more real. My first answer was that, it was funny, was nonchalance, not real, but kind of everything was matter of fact. Kind of ‘Oh,’ off hand, kind of ‘Oh, loose delivery,’ but that doesn’t work. The point is do whatever. Do whatever you’re supposed to be doing. I think that’s the biggest thing.

I went to a school where theater couldn’t have been less important in the school. I went to Grinnell College. If there were twenty theater majors, I’d be very surprised. There definitely weren’t. There were maybe five theater majors at a given year, but that meant I got every play I auditioned for basically. And it was very relaxed. There was one teacher who was pretty good in that he wouldn’t push you to do anything that was too bullshit. He kind of let you find your own way. And he did kind of experimental theater. We did these interesting shows, so that was something that I kind of got out of it, but the biggest thing I got out of it was finding my own way.

Also, in college I got in my first improv group. I took one semester away from school at a place called the Eugene O’Neil Theater Center. It was a semester long program in Connecticut. Also, I went to a summer program run by the National Shakespeare Conservatory, which I don’t think exists anymore. It was some acting program run out of New York. So, I got really into acting and came back, and at Grinnell they had basically no acting program. We had two acting classes. One was a special one time only and the other was intro to acting and after that it was done. I took this other girl I knew from Evanston who had been involved with the Piven theater company. They do a lot of improv and story theater. I said ‘Lets start this acting workshop. We’ll get together. We’ll work out of acting books. We’ll do the exercises. And three days a week we’ll be able to have a little acting class.’ She said ‘That’s interesting, but here’s my idea.’ She also came back all inspired from the off season, and wanted to start an improv troupe and work on story theater. She said ‘I think if we both start something like this I think we’ll split the people who are interested in theater at the school.’ So, I said ‘Ok, we’ll do yours.’ With that we got a bunch of non-actors involved too and started a group called Proteus. That was the first time I started doing comedy improv. That was a blast. It was basically long-form. We did do theater games, but we did a lot of just open improv. That was the first time I got to formally use this skill I had been naively develop over the years.

JF: So, what brought you to Chicago?

IR: Well, right after college I went to Milwaukee for no better reason than to follow a girl I was dating at the time. I kind of had a, I guess the old fashioned term was a nervous breakdown. My senior year I got my first bout of clinical call depression. I was like ‘What hell the am I going to do? I can barely function.’ I went to Milwaukee and rented a room in some guy’s house. His parents had died and he had the whole house free. I got a job on a grounds crew. My girlfriend broke up with me not far into that summer.

Inertia kept me in Milwaukee for a couple years. I did a couple of plays and got involved with ComedySportz. Then this girl I had gone to college with, who was a theater major, wrote me a letter about how inspired she felt. She just graduated from grad school, and how she was working with this repertory company and how excited she was. I was like ‘Man, I have to get out of Milwaukee.’ [laughs] It was a good place to heal my wounds in a way, kind of get my feet wet, because when I got out of college ‘I was like I don’t know if I want to do theater. I don’t even know if I want to get up in front of people right now.’ It seemed too daunting.

So, I got that letter and I was like ‘I have to get out of here. I have to take the next step.’ What I enjoyed the most was the comedy and improv, so like so many people I thought ‘I’ll go out and do Second City.’ I thought I’ll go there, boom, get in. I went there, sent a headshot, sent a letter saying I was interested in auditioning. Really soon after I got there they said ‘Come on in and audition.’ I tanked. Didn’t get in.

At that time it was a very closed shop. You had to wait tables and work the door and do all this stuff so you could kind of be in the community, then work your way up. It doesn’t mean the people who did that weren’t funny. There were people who knew the way it worked, played that game and did that. I didn’t want to do that, so after two or three times auditioning I thought ‘Screw this. I guess I’m not going to do Second City.’

At the same time, when I first got there, one of the first weeks I was there, I saw Improv Olympic in the basement of this place called Papa Milano’s and saw ComedySportz. I know two guys in the guys in the show I saw I still work with today. They’re still in the community, Kevin Dorff and Dave Koencher. I saw it and I was like ‘Oh man, that’s what I want to do,’ but it started weird, because it was a Harold, so the first five to ten minutes was an opening. It was kind of a weird poetry slam, group happening. [laughs] I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know what it was, but I didn’t think it’d be something that I’d want to be doing. Once they got to scene work, the heart of the Harold, it was like ‘Great, open scene work!’

The frustration with ComedySportz for me in Milwaukee when we’d rehearse we’d do open scene work and I’d do really well. I’d feel like ‘Oh, I’m one of the good guys in this group.’ When we did the show, it was short-form and I was at the best adequate. So, I just felt it wasn’t what I wanted to do. At the same time, when I got to town I also joined Player’s Workshop, which I thought was the training center for Second City, but it turns out it’s like a pyramid scam. They’ve got that, and they’ve got the Training Center of Second City, which has two crazy parts of six levels a piece. So, I get to the second to last class of the sixth class, it takes a whole year, and someone said ‘So, are you going to do the training center?’ I was like ‘What do you mean? This is the training center.’ ‘No, no, no.’ They had a whole other six levels of classes. [laughs]

JF: Uch.

IR: That really had no benefit to me at all, Player’s Workshop, as far as learning about comedy, but I did make a couple life time friends from that. It was good to have a bunch of people who I knew in Chicago, but it did nothing for me training-wise. Improv Olympic, I met the guys from the Upright Citizens Brigade through that. Ultimately, I got on a great improv team. That was pretty huge. So, that’s a long answer to how I got to Chicago.

JF: How did your experience with short-form affect you while doing long-form? Did it help you or hurt you, or both?

IR: It did nothing. I think anyone who has skill at long-form can do short-form. It’s a game with one rule that’s predetermined. That’s all short-form is. I didn’t do anything negative or positive. It wasn’t particularly satisfying. To an uninitiated audience, in the Milwaukee audience no one had seen long-form improv, so people loved it. People loved ComedySportz shows. We were packed every night. We did six shows a week, then did touring shows. But I can’t say that it had any affect on my work. It didn’t mess up my work, and it didn’t teach me a thing.

The only thing was I got more practice doing long-form in rehearsals, so I got a little more experience without someone still formalizing what I was doing. I was getting better at it and understanding it more. I remember I even got sent down to open a ComedySportz somewhere in a suburb of Milwaukee. When I went there, I was naively trying to teach them to do long-form. I wasn’t trying to focus on any one game, but basically kind of getting them to understand how to be funny. [laughs] How to, basically, find the game. I think I called it ‘finding the hook’ of the scene. I was like ‘You’ve got to do more of that. You’re a guy who does this, so you’ve got to do more of that.’ I have a vague memory of someone doing a scene in a supermarket and they were somehow trying to find frog-based products. Somehow I knew you have to keep doing this. That’s what special about you in this scene.

I guess what it did [laughs] was it kind of helped me heal. I was up in front of people all the time. I realized that even though I got so depressed, …kind of at the same time I was medicated, got myself out of therapy, and was getting my head straight, it was good to get up on stage all the time and have that effect.

JF: Who were some of the early groups or people who influenced you? And what did you take away from them?

IR: There were many. That one I went and saw. They were a really good group. If you want the era, it was this group called Blue Velveeta.

JF: Was that the group that you saw?

IR: Yeah, I believe. If it wasn’t the exact group, I know they all had an affiliation with that group. At least it describes the era that I’m talking about. It was just a one time thing. It was just seeing them. It made me think ‘Oh, I want to do that,’ then within a pretty short time, within a few classes I was on some team, then within a very short time we were the house team.

There was some big shake-up. That team kind of screwed Charna. They took off. In fact, they took her space from her. They talked to the owner of the space and said ‘Look, we’re the real reason why people are coming here. Get rid of her.’ They called themselves the Comedy Underground. They took over her space, and she had to start over. She moved to this place called the Wrigleyside. We played upstairs at the Wrigleyside. My era came with that change of the guard. So, really quickly I was on a house team.

There were two teams that were the top teams, The Victim’s Family and Corky’s Callback. I was initially on Corky’s Callback with Matt Besser, then he jumped over to The Victim’s Family, because all these guys who ended up being Upright Citizens Brigade were in that group. Then I went over to that team. Then one guy in that group died. He drove a cab and he drove the cab into the Chicago River and died. Then The Victim’s Family seemed like a macabre name for the group, so we changed it to The Family. That became this really good group that got directed by Del Close. We did two [runs of] shows.

I’ll tell you something that had a direct effect. There was this really good group called …oh shit, I can’t remember. They played this place called the Remains Theater. This is actually kind of important, because it actually challenged Del. Improv Olympic was doing this thing where they had two teams go up per show, and we’d do kind of a short-formish game at the beginning, middle and end of the show, then two Harolds. We’d do a dream. We’d do a machine, [laughs] then we’d do a musical option. We’d do all these short-form type games, but the heart of the show was two Harolds. It was kind of stuck it that. It was doing that for years, then I went and saw this group and …I can’t believe I can’t remember the name.

JF: Jazz Freddy?

IR: No, it preceded Jazz Freddy.

JF: Ed?

IR: Ed. There you go. Been doing your work, huh? Ed blew me away. Ed was something that really did impress me. I was the only guy involved in our [class] who saw that. I think we all possibly felt ‘We don’t want to see anybody else. We’re all doing the best stuff.’ So, I went to Del, I was taking a class with him, and said ‘I saw the most amazing show. They took one suggestion, one, and went for an hour and a half.’ And it really ticked Del off that I was saying to him something that wasn’t his that really impressed me more than anything else I’d seen. He was like ‘Wa? I’ve never heard of this.’ [laughs] He was kind of pissed off. I think he was like ‘Fuck that. We’re going to do something.’

Then with The Family, we approached him and said ‘Let’s do our own show where we go for an hour and a half.’ We did not to it by taking one suggestion. We did it by developing these forms. He had been working on it for years, but we were the first to do it as a performance form, The Movie. The Family did that. We did the Check-in Deconstruction, which was something he had gotten off of this one woman who had been on Hill Street Blues. She was a former Second City person. She now directs. Anyway, she had a group of all women improvisers. She introduced Del to this thing they did to start their rehearsals, where they checked-in and told interested things that happened in their day, because they didn’t get together enough and thought they were loosing touch with each other.

He took that and used it as the starting point for a form. It was the Check-in Desconstruction. You’d come in with your day and act it out. You’d play yourself for the day and kind of imply everyone else. You had to fudge your dialog, like a Bob Newhart phone call, where you get what the other person is saying. Like ‘No, Mr. President, I don’t think you should change ‘Four score and seven years ago,’ to’ I don’t know, whatever. So, you’d act out your whole day, then we’d break down that check-in and use it as inspiration for scenes.

We did something that really tripped Del’s trigger. He was really interested in it. It was called The Horror. The Horror was taking some disturbing news piece and basing a long-form off of that. This was not a comedy piece. It was typically about a murder or child molestation or a fire. His theory was when you do something [like that] on stage the actual moment can never play. You can never do better than that on stage. You can’t really show it. So we did everything that led up to that moment, everything but that moment: the people who the thing happened to, the person who pulled the trigger, the aftermath of it, moments before.

This is all off seeing that group, Ed, Del getting his competitive juices up, and us wanting to be the undisputed big shots of Improv Olympic. Nobody had their own show. It wasn’t run that like that. Everybody just did Harolds. We had our own show once a week that was an hour and a half to two hours.

Jazz Freddy, I would say that Ed was a huge influence on them. That same guy who worked on Ed worked on Jazz Freddy with them. Jazz Freddy was really good, but I didn’t find them seminal in the same way that Ed was. Ed really was ‘Wow, that’s a whole leap there.’

David Razowsky - Part 3 - 2/15/07

2007-02-19T21:11:00.000-05:00

JF: How would you like to see improv change in Los Angeles?

DR: I would like there to be more acting in the improvisation and less fucking around. I remember when Andy Dick did something at Improv Olympic back in 86 or 87. He was up on stage and I was looking at him like ‘What the fuck are you doing? I don’t know what the fuck you’re doing up there.’ I felt like he was disrespecting the stage. He was just taking advantage of me sitting in the audience watching him. Andy has since found his own voice. We’re all happy for him. But as far as what I would like to see change, better acting. That’s it. Better acting. Connections. No hot-dogging.

JF: How do you think Second City has changed over the years? And do you think it’s become more open to improv, or putting up improv?

DR: Oh my God. The last show I did at Second City was the thirty fifth anniversary show. It was a retrospective. We looked through every scene in the thirty five year history. Now we’re at forty seven.

I left. The next show was called ‘Pinata Full of Bees,’ which was Adam McKay, Scott Adsit, Jon Glaser, Rachel Datch, Jenna Jovolitz, Scott Orman. That show suddenly had the sensibility of a long-form improvisational show. Those people all came from IO. Suddenly, you weren’t shackled to a button at the end of a scene. One scene moves into another scene, moves into another scene. There’s a fluidity that the shows there have now that they didn’t have before. There’s also callbacks. They’re demanding more of their audience. We watch more TV and movies now than before. There’s a sophistication level that wasn’t there before. They want to see a character come back. They want to see an arc. They want to be surprised. Audiences don’t always want to be surprised, but they want to be surprised in a way like ‘Oh, I forgot about that character.’ In that way, the material is smarter. Well, comedy has changed.

One of the things I rail against is men and women not getting along scenes. I don’t need to see that anymore. What do I want to see now? I want to see a scene about immigration that makes me feel like ‘Oh my God, I need to learn more about what’s going on in the world just to get that joke.’ See in L.A. people don’t even know who the fucking mayor is. They only know who the Governor is is because he’s a famous actor. That’s the only reason. In Chicago, there’s a sensibility of knowing who the governor is, knowing who the Lieutenant Governor is, knowing who the mayor is, knowing who the alderman is. People are smarter now. There’s more of a global reaction to Kofi Anan.

I believe that Second City has changed in the way that long-form now is the basis for a lot of what we do. Because Improv Olympic is developing such great actors, really great directors, smart people, and we’re demanding that from our students now. I’m demanding it. I’ve got a bully pulpit so I’m able to get up there and go ‘How the fuck did this bastard get elected a second time?’ I had a student come up to me the other day and say ‘I know you’re really against Bush. I voted for him twice.’ I’m like ‘Jenny, no! You didn’t. No! Why?’ It turns out that she wasn’t aware of the facts. You’ve got to be aware of the what’s going on in the world. [inaudible] The audiences are smarter, or they’re feeling like they have to be citizens of the world.

JF: So, do you think that’s maybe how IO and Second City have helped each other out?

DR: Absolutely. They help each other out. I know there’s a competition there, a healthy competition, more in Chicago than out here. There’s not really a competition in L.A. I think part of the reason for that is that I’m good friends with James Grace, who’s the Artistic Director over there. I was his first coach on his IO team. Farley was on that team. Pat Finn was on that team. So, there’s no competition here, but there’s competition in Chicago.

JF: In your opinion, what makes a good improv team?

DR: People supporting each other. People taking care of each other. I’m so tired of with people arguing. I’m tired with people being negative. I’m tired of looking at a scene where the people are yelling at each other at the top of the scene. I’m thinking ‘Why are you together?’ The husband and wife are yelling at each other at the top of the scene. Why are you together? I don’t want to see you.

I think in a good ensemble they like each other. Their characters like each other. They’re willing to challenge each other. They’re confident in who they are as individuals and who they are as a group. It doesn’t matter what level of sophistication your at, if you’re confident and you challenge each other without getting personal, then the only mistake you make in improvisation is casting. That’s it. If everybody likes each other and gets along, then your show is going to be great.

JF: What does the term yesand mean to you?

DR: It means accepting whatever comes your way and being courageous enough to say whatever you want to say after that’s connected to that, knowing that it will be accepted by your partner.

JF: In your opinion, what makes a good initiation? And do you find there’s a pattern to how you initiate typically?

DR: Oh yes, my pattern is always be emotionally connected to your partner the moment that you hit the stage. Check in with your partner. The moment that you see them what does their body language tell you? And how do you feel about what their body language is telling you? A good initiation, the top of the scene, is looking at your partner and assuming that they are at the end of a profound statement, and respond to that statement. Do you understand what I mean?

JF: Um, kind of.

DR: Ok, so you have a look on your face that has one eyebrow up, one eyebrow down. You never intended that. It’s just the way you look. I’m going to assume that you said something based upon how you look. I’m going to start in the middle.

What I teach my students is I don’t give a fuck about who gets the who, the what, the where out at the beginning of the scene. The minute you talk about the who, the what, the where you’re going to continue talking about the who, the what, the where. Then you’ve got to invent a way to connect emotionally to your partner. If you start emotionally connected to your partner and be aware of your where through activities, your where will come out.

JF: Do you find there’s a difference between how you initiate in a two person show, like you’re doing now with Carrie Clifford, and maybe a faster show with seven or eight person show?

DR: Absolutely. What I will do in say a five person group scene is I will turn to the first person I see and I will react to her, then I will turn to somebody and say ‘Can you believe what Tina just said!? That is just wonderful! That is a wonderful thing to say!’ Tina being the character’s name. Everybody from that point can say ‘I fucking hate Tina. Fuck that cunt. I don’t like her,’ or ‘I agree.’

JF: What do you feel the difference is in how you approach a two person show, on the whole, as opposed to a larger cast show? Do you play slower with the two person show?

DR: I play slow all the time. My new thing is I’m not in a hurry. The audience is sitting there. They’re watching. I can be up there and be compelling by saying nothing. If I’m interested, I’ll be interesting. The way I look at a two person show is I have one person to focus on, that’s it. With a larger cast scene, my approach will be I’ll be a party to initiating something between two people, and I’ll be aware that I have to exit that scene so the audience can get to know the relationship between these two people. I’ll be off stage listening and come in with information later on that I heard from their relationship.

JF: How do you get into character?

DR: My first step onstage informs the way that my body moves. If I find that my first step onstage is a heavy step, my next step is going to be a heavy step. I move up from my feet. I always begin my scene with ‘How did I step?’ I let that move out from my feet to my ankles to my knees and I adjust my body accordingly. I am always aware of how my feet have hit the stage. With every character I look toward ‘What is the energy of this? How does this character turn to the right? And how do they take that step to the right?’ Just follow through on that.

JF: So are you basically a blank slate when you walk on stage?

DR: I’m a blank slate before I walk onstage. The moment I hit the stage I’m suddenly being informed.

JF: Do you have any characters that you tend to redo?

DR: When I walk offstage, I think to myself ‘What kind of characters did I play? Were they high status or low status?’ If I played high status this week, did I play it last week? If I did, I’d better shake it up, because I’m getting in a rut. I think one of the problems improvisers have is they walk offstage. They go to a bar and they drink. What we do is we go offstage. There’s a little green room. We sit in there and we go through each scene that we did. I have to connect with what it is that I did, because I’m not doing that scene again. I’ve got to challenge myself with the characters I do.

JF: What does the term ‘the game of the scene’ mean to you, and how much of a role does it play in your improv?

DR: A lot. The game of the scene is the rules of engagement that two people perform. It’s the understanding that we are living in the same universe. Each scene is its own universe. Each universe has the accepted rules of behavior in that particular universe. The first thing that somebody says I’m thinking ‘Alright, how does this work? Ok, how can I create a game with this scene.’ By now it’s just rote. It’s just natural now. What’s important for an improviser is to remember what a pattern is. When a pattern ends and when a pattern begins, or when a piece of a pattern begins and when a piece of the pattern ends. And how can I repeat that. I tend to get kind of esoteric about this stuff. If you don’t understand please tell me. Unfortunately, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this shit.

JF: Oh, I’ve been doing it three years and I’ve spent a lot of time during those three years thinking about it. So, although I haven’t been doing it as long as you have, I’ve probably spent too much time thinking about it as well.

DR: Absolutely. What I love about it, what I love about teaching is I say to my students regularly ‘Can you fucking believe this stuff!? Can you believe how deep this is!? Because it has to do with your psyche. It’s got to do with who you are. This is changing your life because you have to think differently and get the fuck out of your head. And go ‘Oh, there’s a pattern here? Oh, ok.’’ I teach six classes. Four of them are grad students from our conservatory, and two are called advanced improv. It’s with people in the conservatory. It’s basically whatever the fuck I want to teach that day. If I see an apple falling from a tree, we’ll do scenes about gravity. Whatever I feel like doing. So, I’m always coming up with new exercises and it blows me away with how profound this shit is.

JF: How do you balance playing the game and being real and going moment to moment? Is it ever difficult for you to do that?

DR: No, it may sound weird, but nothing’s difficult now. And nothing’s difficult anymore for one reason: I walked offstage one night and I thought ‘That was a good show. I don’t feel badly about it. Why do I feel that way?’ Then it occurred to me, I don’t care. I suddenly don’t care anymore.

JF: How long did that take?

DR: I don’t know, at least five years. Everybody gets to that point on their own. What happens at that moment is you remove self. The moment that self is gone your ego’s gone. When your ego’s gone, you get to play and there are many psychic ramifications of whatever it is you do onstage. Once self is gone, and this is why that book ‘Buddhism Plain and Simple’ is so important, you become awakened. You’re enlightened. I’ve had scenes where I was me and I was totally awake and connected to everything, and that’s because I wasn’t holding onto self. I don’t mean to get Buddhist, but the shit is plain and simply Buddhism. That’s it.

JF: In your opinion, what makes a good coach or teacher?

DR: Patience. Patience, lack of ego and someone who’s in the trenches with you. They know when to give you a note that’s harsh, and is able to give a harsh note without making it personal. Knowing how to give a note and treating each actor differently in terms of how to give that note.

JF: Was it ever difficult for you to be that patient or to get to the place where you thought you were a good director or teacher?

DR: My frustration lies when people don’t listen to my notes and I have to give them the same note again. My impatience comes from that. Listen to me, because I’m really, really trying to help you here. I’m a patient director and teacher, because if I become impatient with the actors I’m just impatient with myself.

Really the important thing is listening, listening to every fucking thing that goes on up there and missing nothing. My slogan is ‘Everything matters.’ Every move you make onstage matters. If you’re missing out on those moments, point it out to the student, because they have to know that the world is opening up and that everything is material.

JF: How has improv changed your life and changed your personality if at all?

DR: It’s changed me tremendously. It’s given me permission to talk to people. It’s made me very curious about the world. That was one of Del’s things, just be curious about the world. Al Gore was on Terry Gross’s show ‘Fresh Air,’ and she asked what he thought about George W. Bush. He said ‘[Bush is] incurious about the world. He’s not curious about people.’ For me, I’m curious about everybody. It’s taught me how to listen to people. It’s taught me how to talk to people. It’s emboldened me to ask questions and make assumptions, and to have a point of view about people. It’s taught me how to talk to women and put my arms around men and not feel like they may think that I’m hitting on them. I’ve gotten more intimate with people in a non-physical way.

I’m very blessed, Josh. I’m very blessed. I feel like every day I have somebody come up to me and tells me how I’ve changed their life, and it makes me cry. It just breaks me down and makes me cry. It’s given me purpose. I’ve created my own life out here. No one I know does what it is that I do. No one. No one. No one has the opportunity to change other people’s lives, and no one that I know appreciates it as much as I appreciate what it is my students give to me and what the artform gives to me and what the art gives to me. I am an artist, and that’s what it gave me. It gave me purpose. I’m also lucky in that I am very supported by all the other teachers. They look up to me. I am able to say ‘I don’t know,’ and not feel like I have to know everything. I feel more connected, and I think that’s what improvisation is about. Again, I go back to this! It’s about feeling connected, not feeling alone in the world, knowing that you make an offer and somebody has to accept it. You get up onstage and somebody has to say yes! You can take advantage of people without the risk of a Sexually Transmitted Disease.

JF: [laughs] That’s the best part.

DR: Yeah! What other occupation can you think of where you get to take advantage of people and don’t get charged for statutory rape of stalking? This is it! Then you walk offstage and the woman… There’s a woman named Isabella Hoffman, who’s a wonderful actress. I remember when she was on Main stage. She came to visit us. She had done a lot of TV shows and she’s a beautiful woman. I looked at her and thought ‘I want to kiss her. I want to kiss her. She’s beautiful.’ Sure enough, I worked it out, it’s always good to have a want, Josh, I worked it out so we would be able to have this really lovely kiss. This was in 1994 or 93. I saw her for the first time since then a month and a half ago. I said ‘Isabella Hoffman, I’m David Razowsky. I kissed you onstage. We had a wonderful passionate kiss.’ She said ‘I don’t remember.’

JF: What?

DR: I didn’t go ‘Aw.’ I went ‘Yea!’ Because that means we were both acting.

JF: That’s good, I guess.

DR: It is. I didn’t need for her to say ‘I remember it and I’ve dwelled on it for many years.’ All I thought ‘I was acting. You were acting. I didn’t see anything in it other than we’re acting.’ The fact that there’s no ramifications of anything that happens on stage, as long as it’s good touch and not bad touch, then you win. I get to flirt with women, and they have to take it! Ha, ha! We win.

JF: Do you have anything that you would like to say to the improv community that we didn’t get out in the interview?

DR: Take care of each other. Be nice to each other. Start out the scene liking each other, because the moment the audience sees that you like each other there’s something at stake and what’s at stake is the relationship. It’s simple.

David Razowsky - Part 2 - 2/15/07

2007-02-19T21:09:00.000-05:00

JF: How do you try to encourage that acting in your classes? Do you do a lot of acting exercises?

DR: No, all I say is ‘How do you feel right now?’ I stop the scenes. In my class, the scenes don’t go too long, unless they’re on a roll or I feel I’m working on something with them and they’re close to getting the point. I will stop the scene and I will say ‘How do you feel about what you just said?’ ‘Well, I don’t know.’ ‘Then why did you say it!?’ We’re not going to walk around and do the mirror exercise or any of that bullshit. All my students are past that. What I will say is read a book. The best acting book I’ve got these days isn’t an acting book at all. It’s ‘Buddhism Plain and Simple’ by Steve Hagen. It’s all about being in the moment, say what you want to say, be truthful, because I give you permission to be you. I don’t want you to go up there and be Jim Carey.

If you’re a stand-up, you’ve got to work a little harder than other people in my class, because stand-ups and writers stand on the outside. And if you’re going to be in my class, I’m going to demand, demand that you be truthful and that you be in the moment.

JF: Have you ever kicked anyone out of your class?

DR: For drinking. What else? No. No, I mean people have challenged me, and I welcome the challenge, but there comes a point where I say ‘We’re not going to talk about this now. We’ll talk about it later.’ And we will talk about it later. One time when I was teaching at Second City, it was an 11 o’clock in the morning class. I smelled liquor on the guy’s breath and I said ‘You’ve got to go, and I don’t want you back.’

JF: So, what took you from Improv Olympic to Second City?

DR: I never wanted to work at Second City. I had lived in Chicago my entire life. I would go to see George Wendt play, and Shelly Long. I think I saw Jim Belushi. I know I didn’t see John Belushi. I would go with my Temple youth group and go watch a play and go ‘Oh my God, these people are hilarious!,’ but I never thought I would work there.

When I was at Improv Olympic, my father would ask me ‘When are going to Second City?’ I thought ‘When I’m ready. When I’m ready to go.’ I auditioned for Second City Conservatory and got in. Mick got in. He was a year ahead of me. I would sit in on every one of his classes. And I loved it. Every day that I was there I ate it up.

Mick and I both auditioned for the Touring Company. He didn’t get in and I got into the company. I thought ‘This has got to be a mistake. He’s so much funnier than I was, than I am.’ He’s such a fucking personality. He went his way. He wound up directing many shows there and still does.

JF: Did you find a difference between your Second City classes and your class with Del?

DR: Yes, because Second City is not an improv school. It’s a sketch school. Its goal is to teach sketch. What they teach you is how to repeat a certain character, how to repeat a certain beat, or how a scene works. At IO, you do a scene and it will never be seen again. At Second City, they teach you how to repeat that. The next time you do that scene you’re like ‘Ok, the arc needs to be here,’ or ‘the game needs to start here,’ or ‘This game is done. We start another game.’ You take a look at how the scenes work.

Another difference was Del was not a nice person. He just wasn’t nice. I don’t think I’m speaking out of school here. I teach at Improv Olympic out here. I’ve never said anything bad about IO. I love IO, but when I went to Second City, I had teachers like Martin DeMaat, Jeff Machowski, Jane Morris, all these great teachers who loved what they were doing. They were positive and they were young and they were bold. At the time Del was not in the twilight of his career, but he certainly was in the Autumn of it. Is Autumn twilight? I don’t know.

Martin DeMaat, again I go back to this guy and say ‘This guy was a special teacher. He was a special human being.’ When you meet people like that, you go ‘Oh, great. You’ve got so much to offer humanity and that’s what I want to do.’ I was at IO for two years and the fucker, [Del], never knew my name. He never ever knew my name. I thought ‘Ok, fine.’ He didn’t know many people’s names, but he didn’t know my name.

JF: I heard there was like a light and dark side to him, that he could definitely tear people apart if he wanted to.

DR: I remember him tearing Mick apart and Mick walking off stage crying.

JF: Really?

DR: Oh my God. He just laid into Mick one day. Next week, I don’t know if Del felt bad about it, but Mick could do no wrong. I’ve seen teachers tear people apart. I’ve never been torn apart, but I’ve seen teachers tear people apart and I’m like ‘What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?’

JF: Do you remember what happened with Mick? Why was Del so mad?

DR: I don’t remember the specifics of the scene, but Del had something up his ass that day and tore into him. He would have a phrase like ‘Fuck off turkey! Get off my stage! Get out!’ I’ve seen him kick people out of class. ‘Get out!’ People wanted a guru, and I didn’t need a guru. I didn’t want a guru. John Bergman was the closest thing I had to a guru and I didn’t need that. And I don’t want to be anybody’s guru. I don’t need to be anybody’s guru. All I’m doing is, you know, spreading the word. Ultimately it’s this: I’m saying what works for me. That’s it. I’ve been doing it for a while. I’m teaching classes, and I’m performing and I’m doing festivals and I’m still in it. I’m still in it. So, I’m doing what works for me. People are still coming to see me play, and I’m still excited to play with people. I’m working with a woman now named Carrie Clifford. We’re doing festivals around the country. She’s a student of mine. We work together. I’m still doing it, so, for me, I must be doing something right.

But now I’m an elder statesman, whether I like it or not. I have a feeling that fifteen years from now you’ll see Joe Bill, Mark Sutton, Susan Messing, Mick and I sweating in our pants and drooling oatmeal out of our mouths in some improv nursing home.

JF: That’d be great if they had improv nursing homes.

DR: Yeah, everything’s new to you if you have Alzheimer’s, and that’s the way we should look at the scenes anyway. Everything’s a revelation.

JF: So, what’s the writing process like at Second City when you’re working on a Main Stage show or just writing sketches together?

DR: The life of a Main Stage show is typically three to four months. They get a director. They’ll work with the actors from say 11 to 4 Tuesday thru Friday. They’ll come up with scene ideas. Every director has different ways of coming up with ideas. People bring in scene ideas or they’ll improvise. Mick use to like doing thirty one-minute scenes, just go boom, boom, boom, then he would say ‘What do you want to do again? Let’s put that up again.’ In rehearsal, you’d work on that and put it into the set. A Second City show is three acts. The first two acts are written. The second act is an improvised set, that’s where you throw in the stuff you’re working on. You videotape the shows. The next day you come in early, watch the tape, or maybe you watch it with the director and the director says ‘I like this idea. Keep working on this. Put it back up there.’ If it works, great, you keep working on it. Eventually, half or two thirds of the show is new material. You have previews. You set an opening date. Once the show is set in stone, you don’t change any of the running order, then you have an opening, the director leaves, and there’s your show.

JF: Did you start directing any shows at Second City?

DR: I was the director of the Touring Company, then I came out here [to Los Angeles] and directed a Main Stage show called ‘No, Seriously, We’re All Gonna Die.’ It was 2002 or 2003. They flew me in. I lived downtown. They put me up. I had a cast and I worked with those people.

JF: How did you try to generate material for that show?

DR: We would brainstorm. They would bring stuff in. We would work on stuff. It was a very hard show for me. The cast was there for 9-11, and they were supposed to open up a show on 9-12. These poor people were really toast. It was a really hard process putting together that show. We ended up getting it up.

JF: What was it like working with Steven Colbert, Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinello, who went on to do Exit 57?

DR: Yeah, and Strangers with Candy. They were a trio back then with Mitch Rouse. They thought differently. They worked differently. You never know what Amy’s going to do. You never know what Amy’s going to bring in. Amy would go to a garage sale, pick up the hoofs of a deer that were mounted on a wall, and take them somewhere so that they moved. They were able to flap around. She would call them ‘Deer Paw Girl.’ She would bring in dumbass stuff like that. She was just charming and lovely. I get along with everybody, but I know there were a few people there who felt that it was a little [inaudible]. But you work with who you work with. You work with who you enjoy working with. We try to put a cast together that can collaborate. It’s all about collaboration. Amy was, you know, had her way of doing things. David Sedaris was there a lot. He had moved there. David and Amy knew how to put a show together, knew how to put characters together. Colbert was very focused on who he was and what he wanted, very smart and very charismatic. They were all very charismatic. If you’re on Main Stage, you’d better be charismatic. You’d better connect with the audience. But there was never a lack of ideas, smart ideas, really fun characters. Amy’s wonderfully crazy, not that she has to be sent away, but she’s wonderfully crazy. Her ideas are really great. I found it all to be tremendously inspiring.

I wish I could give you dirt. I love going back and working there, and if you want to have your own fucked up time, that’s your thing, not my thing. If you want to say how you were fucked over by these people, I don’t know how you’d feel that way. When I was there, there were a lot of people who were leaving saying ‘I got fucked over.’ I’m thinking ‘How were you fucked over? You got to perform in front of 300 people! A night! Some times 600 people a night on Friday and Saturday.’

JF: They were just angry because they got cut or something?

DR: No! They were onstage. I never understood how they could be bitter, because you bring your own mishigas [sp.] to that shit. Maybe it felt that the producers fucked you. I never let that shit get to me. When I was hired one teacher, Don Depollo, said to me, I said ‘Donny, I got hired.’ He said ‘Great, don’t pay any attention to the politics, just do your work.’ I just want to say I couldn’t believe that I was there. I was like ‘Wow, this is amazing.’

JF: How long were you there?

DR: I was there for 7 years and I did 10 shows.

JF: So, from 87 to 94 or something?

DR: Yeah, I left in January of 95. My first show was Valentine’s day of 87. I remember I had a girlfriend at the time who said ‘I finally have a boyfriend that I like and now he’s in the Touring Company.’ Second City ruined Valentine’s Day for us.

JF: How did you end up performing in the Real Live Brady Bunch?

DR: Faith Soloway was the piano player for Second City. Her sister Jill Soloway went to Indiana University with Mick and Joe and Mark and all these other wonderful people. They said ‘We’re doing this show.’ I said ‘I watched the Brady Bunch. I can do it. I think it’s fun,’ so I did it. I played Davey Jones in a couple of them. I don’t know how well you know the Brady Bunch.

JF: I know he was Jan’s boyfriend or something.

DR: There’s a Prom date scene or something like that. When they took it to New York off-Broadway, they asked me to perform in that. When they took it to what is now the Geffen theater, which is now run by a former Steppenwolf person, I’d fly out whenever they wanted me to do it.

A lot of people would say ‘Yes, but is it art?’ I would say ‘If it’s in front of a lot of people, yes. Are people paying for it? Yeah, the line’s around the corner.’ Huge success.

JF: It seems like there might have been some mixed feelings about the Real Live Brady Bunch among some Annoyance people. It seemed to put Annoyance on the map, but some people felt it wasn’t really representative of what they did.

DR: Yeah, that’s what was going on back then. People were saying ‘Is it exactly what the Annoyance does?’ For me, I’d look at it and say ‘Yeah, it wasn’t exactly what the Annoyance did, but it was representative of the mentality of the space. Anything can go. You can do anything. Yeah, it’s stupid, but so what. Do it for fun.’ I think the Annoyance was starting to get known for that, when there were other shows go on there as well. Eventually [The Real Live Brady Bunch] left, and at the end of the day The Annoyance isn’t really known for that. Do you think it’s known for that?

JF: No.

DR: No, it’s not known for that. It’s known for a specific style of improvisation, a technique, and that’s what it’s known for. Again, I went in a different direction. I was a Second City, and I would go see all the shows at the shows there. Let’s put it this way. It’s not Chekhov! Alright? When you’ve got a show called The Miss Vagina Pageants, which is the real name of a show, or That Darn Anti-Christ, or Manson The Musical, to look at a show and go ‘Go, well we can’t do The Real Live Brady Bunch.’ You’ve got a show called Your Butt. That’s the name of the show. Y-O-U-R-B-U-T-T. That’s the name of the show. ‘The what? And you’re saying what?’ But then again, I wasn’t involved with the politics of that. I’m a cousin over there, not a child.

JF: So what was the Real Live Brady Bunch?

DR: They took scripts from The Brady Bunch and just recreated it. They had Faith Soloway on piano. Melanie Hutzle was in it. Jane Lynch who went to do all the Guffman movies. There was a specific kind of affected acting style that they would do for these parts, and it was hilarious! It was just hilarious. ‘Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!’ To hear Melanie Hutzle say that was ridiculous. Andy Ritcher played the Dad, Mr. Brady. And to see Andy Ritcher play something serious with a pipe in his mouth. ‘I don’t know. Maybe you should go back to school.’ It was just an affected style, that we all understood.

They said ‘Here’s the script. You’re going to be doing Davey Jones.’ I’m like ‘Ok, how?’ And they said ‘Here’s the script. You’re going to be doing Davey Jones.’ I was like ok, that’s direction enough for me.

JF: So what brought you to Los Angeles? And what were you doing in Chicago before you left?

DR: I was on the Main stage in Chicago. I felt that I had done everything I could do at Second City. My friend Kenny Campbell was on a show called Herman’s Head. He was making some money out there. That’s just where he went. I had a bunch of money from doing a Captain Crunch commercial. I played Captain Crunch’s nemesis, Dr. Sog. I had a bunch of money in the bank and thought ‘I’ll blow my money faster in New York than L.A.’ and I had a free place to stay in L.A., so I went out to L.A.

I got a commercial agent, a theatrical agent pretty quickly. I got a bunch of commercials, which really kept me going. Thankfully, I only had to do catering I think three times. I got married September of 94. I moved out here in January of 95. My wife moved out here in July 96. It was tough for us. It was tough for my wife and I. But I was ready to take the next step, and whatever that next step was I went and did it.

JF: So, did you enjoy it when you moved out there? And what was the artistic climate like out there, especially compared to Chicago?

DR: I was lucky because any Second City person who moves out here from Chicago you’ve got a community out here right away. I think I got here January 15, 95 and I think January 18, 95 I was improvising long-form improv with all these people who were my heroes from the Main stage: Danny Breen, Jeff Machowski, Jane Morris, Joe Liss. I felt this sense of community.

It would drive me crazy when I was out here, because I though ‘Fuck the weekends. I can’t work. There’s no work on the weekends.’ I got some great advice from a guy named Mark Beltzman, who said ‘Get a distraction. Get something to do.’ So, I connected with a bunch of Annoyance and Second City people who were out here. I rented spaces and started teaching classes. I connected with some former students who knew who I was and directed their show.

When I came out here, the only sense of community that was out here was the Second City family that I knew. That’s what I missed about Chicago. I missed theater. A lot of the shows out here were showcase-y shows. A show that was run over and over again by every fucking little theater was 12 Angry Men because everybody had a monologue and that was a good show you could invite agents to. There was no sense of community. There was no sense of ensemble, except for the people that I hung out with.

When I got the job as the Artistic Director of Second City, the first thing I said was ‘I’ve got to get a community out here. I’ve got to get connections with The Groundlings and IO.’ IO was just starting out. So, I taught at IO and at this theater Bang. I said ‘Let’s do shit together. Come on.’ [Now,] there are a lot more theater companies that are ensemble-based. There’s a lot of Chicago mentality out here. The Chicago mentality is ensemble. It’s about the group, not the individual talent. It’s about the people that form that group.

At our school, it went from two hundred students when I first got the job to almost five hundred students now at Second City L.A. That’s a big ass thing. That’s a huge thing. In the past year alone it doubled. I feel like now there’s a community. Now there are people who are helping other people. I’m sure there are some people who feel jealous of other people, but Bill Hader’s on Saturday Night Live now. He came from our school. This guy Masi Oka was one of my students. He’s on an NBC special now called ‘Heroes.’ Our students are starting to get work. And these are ensemble comedies, ensemble episodes. It’s no coincidence that they’re getting work in these ensemble pieces. They know what it’s like to have to work with other people and make other people look good. That’s the difference between us and The Groundlings, which is where Will Ferrell came in and all those type people. They teach you how to be a character, that’s what they teach you. Well, we don’t teach that. We teach how to connect with each other and it’s starting to spread out. And it’s really cool.

JF: Do you guys [Second City] want to get a resident company in Los Angeles?

DR: L.A. isn’t a city for a resident company. It’s too transient. We tried to put two resident companies together and just couldn’t get any audience. We don’t have a big enough space. Our space right now at the most we can get about eighty people in the seats. We don’t have a liquor license. It’s tough to get a theater together if you don’t have a liquor license. We don’t have a liquor license, and don’t have any plans for a resident company out here.

What I wish for my students is get as good as you can be, and leave. Perform with us for a while and leave. Start your own thing. Branch out. Go fly. Get out of here. I say it in a loving way as well.

David Razowsky - Part 1 - 2/15/07

2007-02-19T21:07:00.000-05:00

David Razowsky is a veteran improviser, actor and teacher. In Chicago, he was a member of the second Improv Olympic Harold team, Grime and Punishment, and a long-time writer, actor and director for The Second City. He currently lives in Los Angeles where he is Artistic Director of The Second City, Los Angeles.

JF: Where were you born?

DR: I was born in Chicago, IL.

JF: What were some early influences on your sense of humor?

DR: My mom would take my brother and I to the Adelphi Theater in Chicago on Saturday afternoons, where they would show cartoons and Laurel and Hardy shorts. Every Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve my Mom would stay home and we’d watch the Marx Brothers. So, that was the beginning right there: Charlie Chaplin, The Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy. As time went on, we’d watch Monty Python on television. That blew my mind. I couldn’t believe that things that were that ridiculous could be funny. I think that totally influenced a generation. Some of these students don’t know Laurel and Hardy well, certainly don’t know the Marx Brothers well. I’m not making a judgment call on that. That’s just the way things are, but I think it would benefit anybody to watch those films, so they can see how ensemble works, how dynamics work between high status and low status works, physical comedy, and all that kind of stuff. You can learn all that kind of stuff certainly from the Marx Brothers.

JF: So, have you been aware ‘Oh, I saw Laurel and Hardy or the Marx Brothers doing this’ when you’re doing some of your own comedy?

DR: Absolutely, certainly Charlie Chaplin, the silent stuff. I’ve always been a very physical improviser, and aware of my space, and slowness, and low status characters, and the joy of playing low status characters, and connecting with the audience with a way where you’re not attacking them. Instead, you’re saying ‘Why don’t you come on my side? It’s really fun. Look how adorable I am.’ I use that a lot.

JF: When did you know that you wanted to be a performer?

DR: In fourth grade, my family moved to a new house in Chicago. We moved from one place in Chicago to another place in Chicago. My father said ‘Why don’t you take this drama class?’ I didn’t know what drama was. I took Drama for Kids at the Bernard Horwich J.C.C. in Chicago, the Jewish Community Center. I took classes there, and the teacher of the class was also a director of many of the projects there, which had all adults in the show. She said ‘Why don’t you audition for the show?’ I did. I had one line and it was ‘Look at the bird! The bird!’ I was in a panic right until we got onstage. My friend’s mother, Devida Hodges, I’m crying stage right and she clutches me to her breast and says ‘It’s all going to be ok.’ I thought ‘Wow, I don’t even know this lady.’ There was something sexual that went on there [laughs], and I said ‘I wonder if I could do this again.’ So, that’s where that came from. At that moment I said ‘more of this,’ because I’m getting attention and I’m getting attention from a woman, although I was only eight. But I thought ‘I think I know what I want to do.’

I remember driving in a car with my Dad, and I said ‘I want to be an actor.’ And I really belief my Dad said this, although he doesn’t remember saying it. He said ‘Peter Falk is an MD. You might want to do both.’ I don’t think Peter Falk’s an MD. I remember him saying that. That was around the same time, 4th or 5th grade.

JF: He just made that up out of the blue?

DR: I don’t know where it came from. In my head, I remember him saying Peter Falk. I clearly remember where we were driving, around Rockwell and Morris in Chicago. I just remember it so well. Shit like that you can’t make up.

JF: Did you continue acting or doing theater in your teens?

DR: I’ve been solidly working since 4th grade. I don’t mean working in huge productions or anything. I don’t mean being on camera. I took five years of when I was in college. I got a degree in photojournalism from Northern Illinois University. I really fell in love with that. I became the photo editor of the newspaper there. That was a blast to do.

Then I said ‘I want to go back to acting.’ I just happened to want to get back into acting at the exact same time Chicago theater was exploding. I went to Improv Olympic back when it was on Wilton and Belmont, not that this means anything to you, but in their first space. And I took classes from Del. It was just the genesis of Chicago as a theater Mecca, because it really is.

I auditioned for one show and didn’t make it. The director of that show gave my name to John Bergman, a director from Geese Theater Company that performed in prisons. I auditioned into that. That was non-comedic improvisation. I got into that and I toured prisons for a year doing theater in prisons. We were doing mask work and very structured improv in correctional facilities across the United States. I left that after a year and started taking classes at Improv Olympic from Del, directly from Del. I didn’t take classes from Charna at all. I was on the second Harold team after Barron’s Barricudas. We were called Grime and Punishment. It was Mick Napier, Tim Meadows, Richard Label, Madeline Long and myself. That’s who I remember being on that team.

From that Mick and I and a couple other people, Mick started Splatter Theater, which was the first Metraoform show. Metraform became The Annoyance. Mick and I were looking at spaces together where we would open up the new theater. That’s when I got cast in the Touring Company of Second City. So, I said ‘This is where I’m going now. You go that way. I’ll go this way.’

JF: But it was amicable between you guys?

DR: Oh my gosh yes, yes, yes, yes. I think at the time there was Improv Olympic. There was Second City Player’s Workshop, and I think that was it for improv. It was Joe Bill, Susan Messing, Mark Sutton, Ellen Stoneking, Mick, Jennifer Eslin, Mick’s partner. We all started a company called Metraform. We were like ‘We can make an improv structure out of anything’ like ‘queen for a day,’ or ‘I won the lottery,’ structures that weren’t being done at the time. We had a bunch of people at IO working on that thing. Mick wanted to start his own company with all these great people. It was a really amazing time. They started the Annoyance. I did The Real Life Brady Bunch with those guys. I was in New York when then were in New York. I was in L.A. when they were in L.A. The people that came out of that were really good. Faith Soloway and Jill Soloway came out of that show. They went on to do Six Feet Under, to write on it. Jill and Faith were the people behind the Real Live Brady Bunch, which changed everything for The Annoyance. It changed a lot for The Annoyance, that and Coed Prison Sluts.

JF: What were those forms that you were talking about, ‘Queen for a day’ or ‘I Won the Lottery?’

DR: We would get an occupation from somebody. We would see a person have that occupation, then somehow, sometimes through a telegram or something [laughs] they would be alerted that they are now King or Queen. We see all their interactions with the people they work with or their family. It was a long-form. Those are the two I remember.

JF: I’m really curious about that first experience you had out of college with working in prisons with dramatic improv. How was that experience for you, especially with dramatic improv? How did you find it? And how would you compare it with comedic improv?

DR: The experience was amazing. It was very hard. I was twenty five years old. I’m forty seven now. I remember John Bergman, the director, saying ‘We have to beat the fucking Method out of you.’ I had to respond quicker. I became a very physical actor, like I said it was mask work. It was furious. It was visceral. It was connected. It was raw. You’re dealing with things like prison rape. You’re dealing with relationships. You’re going to prison and you’re getting the shit beat out of you by your cell mate, or getting raped by your cellmate. We would deal with that onstage. When we didn’t know what to do, we lift our masks up, ask the guys, women or kids in the audience what do we do at this point. They would tell us. We would put the masks back on and we would play the scene that way. It was intense.

When I left that and went to Chicago and there were piddly little theaters going doing things that I didn’t find very challenging, it made me want more out of theater, and it made me want more out of the work that I do. I was very cynical about profession performances. I was very into guerilla theater, hitting the street, connecting with people. What happened was, I had to let that go, because I’m not a very cynical person. I had to realize this is all a journey, and the journey is about me finding what my voice is and going into that.

I worked with the Steppenwolf theater last year, teaching with them up at California State University, Fresno at the Summer Arts Festival. That changed my life, because it made me realize everything we do is about emotions and connections, and how easy it is for us to watch you emote the yoke of the joke of the scene. It’s the same sort of scene, but it’s deeper. When I see somebody on stage doing some sort of farce, like ‘Hide in the closet my husband’s coming,’ that bullshit, it’s not interesting to me, because I want to see the truth of the scene. What’s the truth of the scene? Humor always comes from you are in a sacred space where you can say whatever the fuck you want to in front of people. This is your opportunity to say it. Do you want to dance around? Do you want to do theater games? Parlor games? I’m not good at that stuff. I’ve auditioned for it, and I’m not good at it. I really respect the people who are good at it, but to me isn’t there more to a fire than that? As Peggy Lee says ‘Isn’t there more to a fire?’

My work is all about challenging myself. This is something I learned out here in L.A.: the only person I’m in competition with is myself. When I say competition with, I don’t mean beating the fuck out of myself. I mean I did this thing yesterday, or I did this thing in a performance, I don’t ever want to do it again. Not saying it’s bad, just saying I did it. Let’s move on. It’s a work in progress my life. That’s what I realized from doing all this stuff.

I have a really blessed life. I get to perform. I get to teach. I get to be the Artistic Director of the Second City out here. I’m respected and I respect people. I just want to see people grow, because I want to grow. If anybody’s going to stop me from growing, I’m going to go ‘Fuck off. I’m out of here.’ Luckily, I don’t have to. Does that answer your question?

JF: Yeah, very much. I have another question about your training up until that point. You said you were a method actor. How did they want to change you and did that change ultimately help you as an improviser?

DR: I never realized what method meant at that point. I’ve hadn’t taken an acting class in my life. I still really haven’t, except for the classes at Second City, which is an acting school but in a different way. So, I kind of new what the guy meant, but what I think he meant was stop thinking and just be. The director would have us just go, go, go. He would have us do something called Biomechanics. It’s a series of physical exercises over and over again to break your body, to move yourself forward, then we would start doing character. He would say ‘Transform,’ and we’d have to transform the character, and transform and transform and transform. That just got you the fuck out of your head. Once you’re out of your head and realize anything could happen, then the world was open to you. It was about getting out of your way. Get the fuck out of your way. Once you get out of your way you can move forward. You can only move forward when you get out of the way. That’s what I learned there.

JF: So, what specifically got you involved in Improv Olympic, and how were the classes when you started there?

DR: I have no idea how I found out about it. I keep trying to think who told me about it, or how do I know about it, because it wasn’t that well-known at the time.

What I got out of it was, well, I had just gotten off of working with John Bergman, who’s just a megalomaniacal task master, but a genius. This guy’s mind worked really, really quick. I kind of picked up on how his mind worked and I really appreciated it, but he was really mean and that was one of the reasons that I left. I probably deserved to be treated that way in a certain respect. I was just a curious kid who didn’t know, and I was probably a pest.

When I went to take classes, again I skipped Charna and went right to Del, what I learned there was the importance of knowing as much as you can know about everything you can know, and the importance of ensemble. I learned about working with people. I learned about not making jokes. Charna kicked me off a team because I was making a joke. I had never been kicked off a team. She kicked me off the team. I was kicked off a team!

I remember the moment, thinking ‘Oh, that was a fucked up thing.’ We were doing a Harold and the topic was Cherry Coke. I found myself on my knees snorting cherry cocaine. I thought ‘Oh man, what the fuck is that?’ Right after that she said ‘I don’t know what happened to you. You used to be really great. Now you’re making jokes out of desperation, so I’m going to kick you off the team.’ I thought ‘Ok, cool. That’s fine,’ then I took a class with a Second City teacher who was teaching at Improv Olympic named Donny DePollo. Donny said ‘If there’s a problem, there’s a solution,’ and worked with me on those things. That was life-changing right there. That class was life-changing.

I pass that on: if there’s a problem there’s a solution. I always look at every student and say ‘I know what you’re problem is, and I’m here to help you, because I’ve gone through every damn thing that every improviser has gone through. I feel like I’ve gotten through it, and have overcome it.’

Then this guy Martin DeMaat at Second City who was a mentor for Mick and many wonderful improvisers, Susan Messing, so many improvisers and actors and artists. He was just so giving and open and kind. We take that and pass it on. He died about six years ago.

JF: Was it difficult for you to adjust to comedic improv? It sounds like you might have lost some of the footing in drama or acting that you had before.

DR: I never considered myself a comedian. I never considered myself a comedic actor. I knew my family is very funny, and I was told I was funny. I never really had a plan. I just kind of have been going where the wind has been taking me, and it’s seemed to have worked out. Yeah, the drama did get in the way. Well, the drama didn’t get in the way. It was just different.

The difference between dramatic improvisation and comedic improvisation is how far do you take it, how absurd to you take it, how seriously do you take what’s going on, because the more seriously you take it the funnier it’s going to be, the deeper it’s going to be, the more shocking turns it’s going to take. What I got out of that, when I kept heightening and heightening and heightening, I realized ‘Oh, that’s the difference between dramatic and comedic improvisation.’

I don’t think I answered your question. I gave you words, so…

JF: [laughs] Yeah, that’s good enough. What were the early shows like at Improv Olympic, and what year did you start performing there?

DR: Lets see, I graduated the Second City Conservatory in 1987, so maybe 1984, 85. I’m thinking in my head that Harolds were forty minutes long. I don’t know why I think that, but I think they were a lot longer than they are now. The people who I looked up to were Barron’s Barricudas, who were the first Harold team. What was wonderful about them was they really worked with Del extensively, so their reference levels were so high, and they were so confident, and they were really good actors, and they knew who they were. These were young people, twenty-two, twenty-three years old. I’m sure I’m romanticizing it a bit, but there were some shows I remember looking at it and thinking ‘I don’t know anything!’ And I don’t mean about improvisation. I mean about life. I mean about history. The shows were really smart.

I believe the difference between people doing Harolds now [and back then] is when I was starting out there weren’t many improv schools. So, people were coming out of say theater school, or …Dave Pasquesi has a degree in philosophy. They had a different background. Their source material for their work was theater. People’s source material for their inspiration now is other improvisers or improvisation. So, what used to be grounded in theater, legitimate theater, is now grounded in comedy. Because it’s grounded in comedy now, there’s a different sensibility. Back then it seemed to be smarter. Whether it was funnier or not, I don’t know. I’m not saying there was a good quality or a bad quality to it. I say it was different.

JF: Do you have a preference between the two? Back then or most of the improv today?

DR: Mmmm, if I see another scene where someone says ‘By the way I fucked your wife’ just to get a laugh, I’m going to shoot myself. I mean, I’m in the trenches. I teach eighteen hours of class a week, and I see what’s going on here. To me, what I appreciate and love, I have a student now who graduated DePaul with a degree in theater, and she’s an improviser. She doesn’t have to tell me she has a degree in theater. I’m looking at her and she has the synthesis of a funny, smart woman, and a good actor. So, my point is that they’re not mutually exclusive. I tell people ‘Take a fucking acting class. Learn upstage from downstage. Go to see plays.’ I think a lot of improvisers don’t go to see plays. They’re not connected.

There’s a problem. The problem I see right now is that the word improviser is like eh, it’s cheap. It’s like the difference between Nordstrom’s and Walmart. People are looking at it that way, and I don’t believe that. If you are an improviser, you are an actor first and an improviser second. You play in a theater. You don’t play in an Improvizanium. You know what I’m saying? You don’t play in an Improvistory, or whatever the fucking word is. You play in a theater. Because you play in a theater, there is an understanding that goes back thousands of years, that you are a fucking actor. So act! Don’t give me phony bullshit, farce-y kind of crap! And I know when you’re not telling the truth.

Eric Hunicutt - Part 3 - 2/14/07

2007-02-19T20:50:00.000-05:00

JF: What brought you to Los Angeles?

EH: [laughs] Two things. One, a girl. My girlfriend of over four years now and I decided that it was probably time for her to be out here. Also, I had this feeling that if I didn’t do it then, I wasn’t going to do it. I needed a reason and that was a good enough reason.

I’ve tried to talk myself out of wanting to be an actor for a living on several occasions. I’ve joked to myself that ‘I’ll be fine if I just have a good day job and am able to perform on the side and do all that.’ At some point I realized I was trying to convince myself of that and that actually wasn’t the case. I think if I had stayed in Chicago another couple years I probably wouldn’t have left. It became that time where the break was as clean as it was going to be. I didn’t want to stay in Chicago and be frustrated by it. I wanted to leave loving it and missing it, and have it be hard to leave, rather than having it hard to ever come back. So, a lot of things went into it. It sucked leaving, but it was probably one of the better decisions I’ve made in retrospect.

JF: So, what was it like moving to Los Angeles?

EH: [laughs] So scary. Jesus, it was so scary. For the first two months, I was convinced I made a terrible mistake, because I was just so unsatisfied. I wasn’t really playing. I got to start with a new team Harold team when I got here. I hadn’t started over with a team in four years, that was weird and hard. I didn’t know anybody personally. There’s a difference between here and Chicago that I don’t know that I can articulate, but it just feels different. So, it’s tough, but it’s gotten slowly better. It’s just over a year. It’s definitely been good for me in terms of making me grow as a performer, making me play in different ways, and with different people. Certainly getting to teach has helped that.

JF: What made you start enjoying Los Angeles more than you did?

EH: I think I got tired of being miserable. My girl friend certainly got tired of me being miserable. Also, it made it a lot easier, because I knew that my first year in Chicago sucked. I figured that I had done it before. I’d done it once, and it turned out great. I think that’s what I was supposed to learn [from that year in Chicago]: ‘just shut up and be patient.’

Certainly having [IO West], a place to play and hang out, and having a lot of familiar faces, was absolutely crucial. I really only was unhappy being here, unhappy being a relative term, because certainly there are people with a lot more to be unhappy about than me, but my happiness was only short-term. Because I got to play a little bit. I got to meet people through the theater. It got better a lot faster.

JF: What have some of your main improv or artistic experiences since you’ve been in Los Angeles? And what have been the most satisfying?

EH: My new Harold team I like. I like them a lot. They’re really cool. They’re a totally different team than The Reckoning, which is cool. It’s been nice to learn to play different. It felt like that exercise where you play like somebody else on the team. It felt like that for the year we’ve been together. I’m getting into a different role, which is good for me. In general, it’s been nice to hopefully be a good example of all the stuff that I learned, be honest, play it real, play the scene, play characters that are grounded, and bring that, if you like, Chicago-style to the work here. I feel like the slow play is something that I enjoy and people enjoy watching, and enjoy playing. So, it’s nice to find a way to make that part of the community here, not that it wasn’t [before], but the more the merrier.

JF: Have you noticed any other differences between the Chicago improv community and the Los Angeles improv community, besides just the size and variety?

EH: Yeah, there’s definitely a different feel here. I’m trying to think of exactly how to describe it. I think it’s less generational here. In Chicago, you can kind of pinpoint where people came up and who they played with and all that stuff. It’s sort of like ‘oh, that generation of people,’ or ‘that generation of people.’ I think it’s a mix of people who are learning now or who have come from other places, New York, Toronto, wherever, it’s just a greater mix. It makes for different energy styles. And people get on stage faster here. So, that’s interesting. As part of our training program, people do student shows starting level 4, whereas in Chicago you have to wait until you’re done and in 5B. It just makes for a different thing.

Also, everybody’s got so much other stuff going on. Everybody’s either writing their pilot or screen play or auditioning their ass off, or not doing any of that but is still in the L.A. world of actors and all that crap. You still have your improv celebrities, your improv rock stars, but it’s hard to have those in a city where you have huge movie stars constantly around you. It just makes for a better environment, neither better, nor worst, it’s just different.

JF: What are some things that you like to see in improv?

EH: Hmm, I like people having a good time. I know that’s a cop out answer, but I love watching people who are enjoying what they’re doing, whether that means cracking each other up or reading each other and looking like they would rather be nowhere else.

In terms of content, I really like group work and seeing good games and openings. That’s probably The Reckoning influence. I like to see an opening get applause in a Harold show. I like it when the audience likes that kind of thing. I like watching women play, because it’s such a boys club sometimes.

I love watching strong female performers get up there and do their thing and not try and out ‘guy’ the guys and even so really play. There’s something about being a female improviser that I’ll never know. I’ll never know what that’s like. I like watching anyone who doesn’t think like me, anyone who doesn’t play like me. People have things that come out of their mouths where I’m like ‘I never would have thought of that.’ That’s fascinating to me. And I feel that happens a lot with women on stage. They bring a whole other set of experiences and perspectives to the stage. I tend to really like watching strong female improvisers.

JF: Have you watched all female groups before?

EH: Yeah, and I like them. I think I probably like them less than coed groups. But I also like coed teams way better I like 8 white guys in ties. I don’t need to see eight twenty-two year old white guys. I did that for years. I would rather watch people who are a bit wider in scope in experience and variety.

JF: What in your opinion what makes a good team?

EH: People who make the group [bigger than] itself, make the piece the most important player on stage. People who like to make each other laugh, or who like to make each other take risks. I can’t stand groups who have people, like that example before, who come off-stage and are upset because the scene they wanted to do somehow didn’t happen. There’s no room for that I think. There’s no room for acting like Sergeants and our work is so precious or valuable. We’re making shit up. It can be important to you, but don’t act like you’re saving lives.

JF: To you, what is ‘the game’ and how important is it to your own improv?

EH: How I choose to think of it is a pattern that heightens and clarifies the relationship of the characters. From a less academic way, it’s something that happens in a scene that helps me better understand what the scene is about and what the characters in the scene are about. It’s something that you can do again either in the same way or in an expanded way that will have the same result: clarify here’s what we’re up to, here’s who’s these people are, here’s how this person’s point of view functions.

It plays a huge role in my improv. I think it’s played more of a role recently than it did before, because I think I’ve become more relaxed about attacking it, rather than worrying about whether I had the right one, whether or not I was heightening it right.

JF: In your opinion, what makes a good improv coach or a teacher?

EH: Someone who’s not afraid to give you notes, first of all. Someone who has enough respect for the performers to say ‘this is what you’re doing to make your life hard on stage. This is how you could do it in a more clear and effective way.’ I think someone who can find different ways to make illustrate or discuss what’s going on. You have to be able to tailor it to the performer. You have to be able to say ‘ok, this person is not getting this idea the way that I got it. So, I need to find a way to describe it, or illustrate it through an exercise, or find an example that will make sense to them.’

I think that’s the job of a teacher or coach, to recognize something and find a way to impress it upon the people you’re coaching or teaching. It’s not just saying ‘here’s what it is!’ That’s not good enough. That’s observer, not a teacher.

JF: To you, what makes a good initiation? And how do you find you initiate typically?

EH: Something with something behind it, and that’s a very vague way to say that. Something has to be going on, whether it’s just a name and that name has something behind it, that’s great. It needs to do something for the who, what, where. It needs to have some element of that in it, even if it’s just an attitude, even if it’s just a look. If that look is loaded, it’s fine.

I also think it needs to leave room for the other person to bring their own thing. I think an initiation that lays everything out on somebody else is effective, but uninspired. We can do a scene where the space station is about to crash, all the air running out and ‘oh, no, all the monkeys are loose,’ but it doesn’t give me much to do other than play with those ideas. I would rather have a scene where those details develop and the relationship first. I like being able to build the top of the scene with somebody rather than just being told what’s going on, and directed as to how to react or what to think.

As far as me personally, it depends on the group. I think for a long time I went to objects really early. I went to the environment really quickly. I like to touch stuff, space work, all that stuff. I think that was a go-to for a long time, but I started realizing that I wasn’t as connected to the other players at the top of the scene as I wanted to be. I think now at some point in every initiation I try to look at the other person and make eye-contact. Whether I’m doing that while trying to establish something about my character, trying to establish something about my where, I think the thing that I have to have now is some sort of connection with my scene partner or scene partners.

JF: So, it sounds like you can go in there with very little of an idea.

EH: Yeah, I think I’ve come to trust myself and the people I play with enough to have it not all fleshed out, because I’ve had some great things happen when I come on with just an attitude, just a mood, just an idea of the where. Everything else gets built between me and the other people. I think that’s more fun for me.

JF: How do you get into characters?

EH: A lot of it is physically, I think. I’m a body person. That’s a Susan Messing thing right there. Changing where the energy is. A lot of times the voice to me comes from focusing on the body. Maybe they have a bum leg or something like that. That gives a filter. That gives a point of view for me, a lot of times. Or hearing something come out in terms of an opinion, realizing ‘ok, I’m the kind of person who thinks that. I’m the kind of person who does not think they can physically go outside the house. So what does that mean?’ Then from there let that take over. But at some point it’s physical. That can be vocal as well. That can be a voice or an accent or something like that.

JF: How do you prepare yourself before a show?

EH: I’m completely OCD about one thing which is my shoes. They have to be tied exactly the same as each other. The way I counter this is that I have a lot flip flop shoes that I wear to shows. If I’m wearing normal shoes, they have to be really, really similar or it drives me nuts. It’s definitely not the most important thing, but it’s all-consuming when it’s not right.

It depends. Some nights I like to watch the group before. Some times I don’t. Some times I like to stretch. Other than the shoes thing, there’s nothing that I absolutely have to do. I like to have some sort of time with the people I’m playing with.

JF: Where would you like improv go in the future artistically and commercially?

EH: Artistically, I would love it to get longer. I’d be interested in doing that. I’d like to see two act stuff, like Play in Chicago. I’d like to see it be treated like theater, where you go see a show and it’s about something. I like any show that could be held up against a written work and hold it’s own.

Commercially, I don’t know. The more people see stuff on television the more they’re probably going to want to see it live, or at least I’d like to think so. I don’t necessarily think that’s a detriment, but I’d hate to think that, I don’t want to throw stones, I’d hate to think that some of the televised improv is the only improv people would ever see. I don’t know commercially. The business end of it is pretty uninteresting to me. I’d like people to employ me, but other than that my interest in where it goes as a commodity is pretty nil.

I would like to see more theaters in smaller cities. I think that’s cool. It’s a great thing to have in a town that’s medium-sized to small. If by some chance it hadn’t been in my town, I never would have found it. I think the more live theater there is in towns that aren’t necessarily theater towns the better.

JF: Do you have anything you’d like to say to the improv community that we didn’t get out?

EH: Um, thanks. [laughs] No, seriously. Thanks to everybody that I’ve played with and thanks to everybody who continues to give me opportunities to do new stuff. Look me up when you’re in L.A. I guess. Come play at IO. Nothing sweeping I guess other than I’m very honored to be part of this world and this art, this community. I think it’s incredible. I’m a big fan.

Eric Hunicutt - Part 2 - 2/14/07

2007-02-19T20:49:00.000-05:00

JF: Do you think that’s helped you? Or hurt you? Or both?

EH: What’s that?

JF: People needing to like what you do.

EH: Gosh, both. I think having that be important to me makes me worry a lot, but it also makes me appreciate and want to give back to the people I play with. I think that’s why I connect so much to this kind of work, because it’s about the people you’re up there with, what you can do together. I love getting somebody’s eyes and they’re like ‘I want to hear what you have to say on stage right now,’ or ‘Let’s build this together.’ I love that. I love it when that happens, but at the same time if I feel like I’ve let people down or I’m not up to speed with the people I’m supposed to play with ...I think I assume people are being more judgmental than they are probably, so that’s where it hurts.

JF: So, when did you start performing? Was it at IO? The Playground?

EH: The first shows that I did were the Second City Conservatory shows. I went through classes there and at IO at the same time, the summer of 99 through the end of the year. Then my 5B show at IO was the following spring, because it was prom season. The show got put up at midnight on Friday upstairs at IO. At 1 o’clock, if you were the second group up, you could count on half the audience getting up and leaving. So, these floods of high school kids would come to the show after prom, then at 12:45 or 1 or whenever they had to be back for curfew, the entire audience would get up and leave. It was hilarious.

JF: How come kids would go to Improv Olympic after prom?

EH: I think it was free. Or, I don’t know. I don’t know if some of the burbs have their proms downtown or what. It’s probably like ‘Oh, we can go to this thing and it’s all ages, so we can get in, and it happens late night,’ so they would come to those shows, but they were some pretty bad shows. I think my first IO team was a lot later than that, because I didn’t get put on a team after class. I guess I started performing and have been performing regularly since the middle of 2000.

JF: What was your first Harold team like?

EH: I got put on a team that already existed, so I wasn’t on it from the very beginning. I knew some of the people from my classes. Again, again, a theme, it was very intimidating. Now, it was just like ‘Ok, well, now do it. Just do it.’ I was really grateful to have the opportunity, but I was really, really in my head about it, because of the fact that out of classes I hadn’t been asked to be on a team. You can put all this weight on it when that’s all you’re doing. It’s a lot like high school in that way, where little things mean a lot. It was like the girl I asked out said no, but now she’s like ‘Oh, come hang out with me and my friends.’ That’s a terrible metaphor, but I guess it kind of felt like that. And I was super-young at that point, twenty two or twenty three. It just seemed like such a big deal. In retrospect, it was a bump if anything. A bump that taught me something I needed to know, which was hang in there. Do your thing.

JF: So, how did you get put on the team then? Did you audition?

EH: I went to IO and said ‘I went through the program, and I wasn’t put on a team. I want to know what I need to do to stay active. I want to be involved. I like what this place is about. I really want to perform here, and I really want to be a part of it. Should I retake the classes, or go elsewhere? What’s the story here? How do I stay involved and give myself a shot?’ They were like ‘Oh, why don’t you go sit in with this team?’ So, it worked out well.

JF: Problem solved.

EH: Problem solved. So, who knows? That was definitely the first time I learned maybe it’s good to put out what you want once in a while, which is a hard thing for me to do. I’m not good at asking people for opportunities. I’m definitely not good at marketing myself, which I’m finding out here. It’s one of those things I constantly have to get better at.

JF: What was the name of that team?

EH: It was either one of two. I think it was Bob, from Accounting. I think. That team ended up getting broken up. I was on three teams in six months after that. They just kept getting broken up, so you restart with a different one. It’s like one of those guys who gets traded a lot, one of those NBA players or I guess minor league players who’s on every team, that’s what it felt like. But it was good, because I was playing with a lot of different people.

JF: Why were they broken up that quickly?

EH: I have no idea. A lot of times when people get added to groups it’s because that group needs new energy, or needs another ingredient. If that doesn’t cause the team to gel in the right way, it’s like ‘Ok, well that was our attempt to throw that in there, to see what’s ailing it.’ I think with several of those they’d be around and it was an attempt to see if maybe it could work, and it didn’t work.

JF: So, what did you do before The Reckoning and how did you grow as an improviser during that time?

EH: Before The Reckoning I just finished playing with two different teams for about a year each, one called Minor Relatives and Local 914. Local 914 got broken up. The Reckoning was about six months old at that point. [The Reckoning was] the real turning point for me in becoming someone who was willing to take more risks and willing to be myself, willing to be the improviser that I actually am rather than fit into something or to be the improvisers that I admired. Prior to that, I think I was still trying to figure out what kind of player I wanted to be. Being with them really allowed me to [pursue that]. It’s like being in a good relationship. You get to be yourself finally.

JF: How did they encourage that in you?

EH: The level of willingness to try anything, the willingness to fail together or succeed together is incredible with that group of people. We’re all friends. That’s a team that’s never given each other notes back stage, or complained about somebody making a move that took focus from another person. You would never hear any of go ‘You ruined my bit,’ or ‘You edited my scene too early.’ It’d just never happen. It was always whatever was going on was exactly what was supposed to be going on. There was no judgment. There was definitely a high standard after a while, because we found ourselves doing things that we liked and were like ‘Let’s do more of that.’ But there was never judgment, and there was never ego.

JF: How did you guys try to encourage that? Did you try to develop it within the group or was it just there because of the personalities of the players?

EH: I think we tried to develop it. We tried to spend a lot of time with each other off stage and really know each other. We also tried to push each other to do things that were scary. I remember rehearsals where we’d pick another person in the group and try to perform like them. ‘Ok, tonight I’m going to perform like Holly.’ That kind of stuff was so cool, because it really made you appreciate what that person brought. It also made you realize that you can’t get caught as role players, or else it stagnates. We got to work with great people. Our coach Shad was always our biggest cheerleader, so supportive. For a while, we were doing two rehearsals a week, one with him and one with TJ, trying to work different things in different rehearsals and see where they met in the middle. He was really supportive of us working with different people and trying to do new things. Always saying ‘Yeah, go. Do that. Try that.’ I think once we all realized that we were all cool with succeeding together and failing together it was something we tried to capitalize on. We tried to make that a goal. We’ll all just go big and see what happens.

JF: Were you guys ten people at that point?

EH: Yeah, we were ten people.

JF: How important do you think the off stage aspect of being friends to being a good group?

EH: I don’t think it’s a requirement. I’ve played with groups where I didn’t know the people that well off stage. You have to be colleagues. You can’t be enemies. Or maybe you can, I don’t know. I’m sure people pull it off just fine. There are people who are ex’s who play together just fine. But for me, I need to be accepted as a performer on stage and off. I need the respect of the people I play with, or at least the acceptance. [laughs] That speaks to what we were talking about earlier, where I care about whether or not people want to play with me. I care whether or not people want to be around me.

I don’t think it’s a requisite though. I’ve been on groups where it’s very cordial. It’s not like we had picnics and barbeques and the shows were fine. I’ve had better shows and better ensembles with people that I am friends with off stage, because I think I’m more comfortable and willing to be pushed by them and to push them when the lights are up. But I don’t think it’s the secret or anything like that.

JF: Was The Reckoning handpicked? Or were you guys just a normal Harold team at the beginning?

EH: It depends on who you ask. I think that initially it was picked out of classes and then a couple people from other teams. Several people on The Reckoning, that’s their first team. Then a couple other people had been pulled from other teams. Charlie [McCracken] and myself were both added late. I was the last person to join. Once they figured out they had a pretty cool energy going, they added, I think, people that supplemented that well. It certainly wasn’t one of those things where we were doing great shows right off the bat. We had a lot of really crappy shows, and still do I think. I don’t know. I haven’t been there in a while. But really struggling for a good solid year, after I joined them. We had a lot of really bad shows. There was a lot of frustration, not knowing what wasn’t working.

JF: What do you think wasn’t working? And what changed?

EH: I think we were just figuring out how to negotiate the energy of the group. Ten people is a lot to work with. Ten people’s strengths and weaknesses and fears and ideas of what they want the team to be, that’s going to take time to work out. I think everybody wanted it to be something special, so figuring out how to get there as a group helped the growing pains.

JF: What form were you guys working on?

EH: Pretty much Harolds the whole time, but the thing that we really wanted to do was to make each Harold different. Over time it became less and less and less about adhering to that classic structure, and more about trying to use that as our North Star and work the material around what we were doing on any given night. Some nights it was dark. Some nights it was a show that would go to the midpoint, then we’d re-do the scene in the second half or something like that. Definitely, over time it became less important to have it be recognizable as that Harold structure and more important to just have it be engaging and different every night.

JF: You guys had a show where you re-did the scenes of the first half in the second half?

EH: We did a show, I don’t want it to be like ‘We did the perfect show,’ but we did a show at the Dirty South Improv Festival, I think it was two years ago, where the suggestion was ‘palindrome.’ The show began with the opening, worked its way to the middle, then started working its way back and ended with the opening again.

JF: Wow. How did you guys figure out to do that?

EH: I think it happened because we tried crap like that a million times and failed at it. We were pretty good after shows at going ‘Here’s what we did. Was anybody trying to do anything that didn’t work, trying introduce this element of it and it got ignored or dropped or not supported properly.’ We really liked doing that. So, I can go ‘Ok, Eddie was trying to make this happen, so next time he tries to make that happen I’ll be more open to that idea.’ I think that particular show was a result of falling short on bigger ideas in other shows, and having had those conversations of: ‘Well, ok,’ Del uses this example in an interview, ‘We had the suggestion of chess board. We could have done a light scene, then a dark, a light scene, then a light scene next to each other, instead of just a bunch of scenes about chess.’ Having those discussions lends itself to having shows where you can pull off something that is maybe a little more interesting. In that show, when you see that scene in the middle of the piece repeat the first scene, you go ‘Oh, ok, they’re trying to go back the other way.’ Obviously, it can fall apart at any moment, but for some reason that particular time it didn’t. It worked out. It was a fun one. It was a cool one. It was one of those ones where it was like ‘Oh, alright. We should try to do that more.’

JF: How important is opening? And it sounds like the suggestion is really important to you guys too.

EH: It is. The suggestion is important. The opening is everything for us. We pride ourselves on doing openings that are as much a part of the piece as any scene. We wanted to be a group that was good at openings. So many people hate them. So many people shy away from them. The opening is not something to be endured. It’s the first thing you show your audience. It’s the first thing you do for yourself on stage. It should probably not suck, and you should probably not hate it. That’s a pretty deep hole to get out of, if you hate the first three minutes of the performance.

JF: So is there a typical Reckoning opening?

EH: I think there became one, but I don’t know if that happened on purpose. At some point we realized we were doing a particular style, and we tried to get away from it. I don’t know what they’re doing now, but it involved a lot of scene painting, and setting up these different planes that were somehow related by a common theme, which sounds way more high-brow than it is.

Say the suggestion was remote control. It can be something to the effect of ‘ok, here’s a guy sitting on his couch. He’s watching television instead of talking to his family, who’s in the other room eating dinner. Here’s another guy somewhere else who gets stuck watching the security monitor all night. He doesn’t have any friends or family. He’s named all the people that he watches on the security monitor.’ So, there are these different themes or different ideas that are somehow bonded by the theme of technology replacing relationships or something like that. Our opening became that sort of style. We’d paint these three different people and endow them with things, which would then find their way into the Harold. It sort of introduced theme right away, which was something we became interested in working with. ‘Ok, this whole Harold is going to be about technology, or something like that.’ And a lot of times it was way less interesting than technology. A lot it was like saying fuck a lot or something like that. [laughs] It wasn’t always intellectual. It was often times really ridiculous.

JF: Yeah. ‘On his couch, there’s a man saying fuck. Elsewhere, there’s a man watching a monitor saying fuck.’

EH: Yeah, I think we tried it. If we have our choice, I think we try to shy away from that, try to play a little smarter than that, but at the same time we all have filthy mouths and love blue humor, so it’s bound to seep its way in.

JF: So how did you guys work on getting the theme to be so important to a piece? Were there any concrete steps that you guys took to get away from a standard Harold and make it more open-ended?

EH: Yeah, we had several people who were coaching us who were pushing us to do that. Certainly Shad and TJ were, and we worked with Peter Gwinn for a while on finding ways to make the show something bigger than just a collection of scenes. He would push us to find reasons to break the fourth wall, reasons to come on and be part of the environment. The environment would become really important, rather than just have it be scenes with walk-ons and tags.

I think that had a lot to do with coaching. The coaching got us to a point where we realized how much fun it was for us, so we wanted to do more of it, to the point the where in a lot of shows it got to become hard to have a two person scene in a show. Because there was always someone coming in and being the wind, or someone coming in and being an object, or the beat of a heart. There was a lot of off-stage support with sound effects or objects. Then the focus became ‘ok, how do we do that without overwhelming the relationship? How do we continue to keep the relationship at the forefront of the scene?’ But I think we owe a lot to the coaches we worked with at the beginning.

JF: How important do you think it is for a group to have a sense of self-direction, as opposed to simply being led by a coach? Or is it important?

EH: For people to lead themselves?

JF: For people to develop their own vision together.

EH: I think it’s super important. To me, that’s the point of a group. Your loyalty should be to your group. Your loyalty should be to each other and what you guys are trying to do. That’s if you’re interested in ensemble work. If you’re interested in showcasing yourself, that’s fine, but realize that’s what you’re in for. Be honest as a group: ‘we want to get a tv show’ or ‘we want to do shows we can be proud of.’

Eric Hunicutt - Part 1 -2/14/07

2007-02-19T16:21:00.000-05:00

Eric Hunicutt was raised in North Carolina where he performed and trained with ComedySportz. In 1999, he moved to Chicago to pursue his study of improvisation at Improv Olympic, where he performed with The Reckoning. In 2005, he moved to Los Angeles where he currently is the Training Center Director of IO West and performs on the Harold team Trophy Wife.

JF: Where were you born?

EH: Virginia, but I grew up in North Carolina, so I claim North Carolina.

JF: What were some early influences on your sense of humor?

EH: Well, that’s a good question. My dad for sure. [laughs] My dad used to cut my hair in character. He had this character called ‘Tony, the barber.’ He cut my hair until I was about twelve years old. He’d set up a stool in the bathroom and pretend it was a barber shop. He’d have me wait outside, come in and sit down. He’d ask me what I wanted done on my hair even though it didn’t matter. I think that was the first character I’d ever seen, Tony, the barber. My dad and my grandfather were hilarious.

JF: How have your early influences shaped what you’ve done as an adult with comedy?

EH: I think having my parents like what I do is huge for me. Not having people ask why that would be something I want to do, acting or comedy. The value of that never came into question. They were always as excited about what I was doing about I am. That’s continued, and I think that makes it a lot easier.

JF: When did you know you wanted to be a performer?

EH: I know when I knew for sure was when I started taking improv classes in High School. It was one of those things where I knew I didn’t want to do anything else. I tried to talk myself into doing a bunch of other things, but they always paled in comparison. I think I had an inkling when I was doing school plays and stuff, but I don’t think you can count that, because you’re sort of just doing that like you’re soccer or baseball. It’s just another activity. I started taking classes at ComedySportz in Raleigh, North Carolina and when I started doing that I really felt like I had found my thing.

JF: What brought you into improv? How did you hear about those classes?

EH: My best friend at the time, actually he’s still one of my best friends, Jim Woods, had started taking classes. We were in high school together. We were in drama class. He came back from Summer break and said ‘I started taking these classes. They’re really cool.’ Our acting teacher in high school was really into improv. She had studied in Chicago and knew stuff about the scene that was starting there in the early 90’s and brought a lot of it into our classes. So, we got introduced to it really early, which was nice. Yeah, Jim told me I should get involved and I did. That was 13 or 14 years ago, back in 92. We still play together out here, which is really cool.

JF: Wow, are you guys on a team together?

EH: No, not officially, but we’ve been doing some shows together. If either of our teams are short people, the other person will sit in or whatever, so we look for opportunities.

JF: Did you guys move to Chicago together too?

EH: Yeah, we moved to Chicago in 99, took classes and all that stuff, then he left to do Boom Chicago for two and a half years. We wound up in the same place out here, so it’s very cool.

JF: So, what were those early classes like at ComedySportz?

EH: A lot of it was learning the games and stuff. A lot of it was stumbling through learning how to build character or agreement exercises. They were great, because it was all new. We’d never heard any of that before. We’d never heard ‘Here are the elements of a scene that you can do in a moment.’ All of the other stuff I had before was from high school acting class, which is all about looking at text and looking for beats and all that crap. [laughs] I don’t say crap because I don’t agree with it. That was so much more intellectual and this was so much more intuitive I felt.

JF: What was the North Carolina improv scene like at the time?

EH: It’d be hard to say what all of North Carolina was like, because we were so into what we were doing. There was a group in Chapel Hill called The Transactors, which did like themed shows. They’d do an hour like ‘The Transactors present this murder mystery show,’ or a musical show. I don’t know if it was long-form necessarily, but it was more of a show and less of a game format. Then there was us, ComedySportz, which was all short-form games and the premise of competition. We were so into what we were doing we didn’t see much else. It was time away from getting to do it. It didn’t feel like much of a community. It was kind of just patches of people doing whatever kind of improv they did.

I was in a teen improv group that was attempting long-form stuff at the time, not knowing that was what we were doing. That was the first time I heard the word Harold. We did our training wheels version of it. There definitely wasn’t a scene like there is now. There’s several theaters and several groups doing a lot of different stuff with Zach.

JF: Why do you think the North Carolina improv scene has grown so much? And how did you see it grow when you were there?

EH: It grew a lot after I left. It’s grown by leaps and bound in the last six years. I just think you had so many people doing in that time when we were doing it, and it seemed new, something we were discovering rather than gloming onto something people had been doing for a long time. I think the reason it’s big now is because a lot of people felt that energy and sense of discovery, wanted to make it their own and went on and did other things with it, whether it was moving to Chicago then moving back, or staying there and branching out and trying to do more with it. I think there was a lot of people who got infected with that energy and once you feel that it’s hard to do anything else, or it’s hard to let go. There are a lot of people who, it’s not what they do for a living, but it is what they do every weekend, and that’s great.

JF: How did you develop as an improviser down there, when you were in college and high school?

EH: I definitely got confidence from that. I definitely felt like I had a right to do it. Getting introduced to it and being in an environment where we felt like we were helping to build that scene or build that theater gave a sense of ownership that brought confidence. I guess confidence is a word. We always felt like we were pretty decent at it. We always felt like it was ok for us to do it and to call it our own and to want to do more with it.

But I don’t think I had a real strong grasp of what was going elsewhere in terms of what else could be done with improv. The first time I saw a Harold I didn’t have any idea what was going on. I knew it was something I had never seen, but I didn’t know why or what the people were doing, which was great. It made me wanted to move to Chicago and find out.

JF: Would you say that there’s a particular North Carolina style that separates it from the rest of the country?

EH: No, I don’t think so. Certainly, not at this point, because the people who are there now are people who have come from other places. There are people who have come from New York and Chicago, so the philosophies of both those place are pretty active in what’s going on there. If there is one thing, there’s enthusiasm. There’s a great energy there that’s about just doing good stuff, trying to do good work, and try to different things. There’s not that pressure of ‘Oh, you’re in the Mecca of improv,’ or ‘Oh, you’re in L.A. You don’t know who’s going to be in the audience that night.’ You’re just working to work, or I should say playing to play. Work makes it sound entirely...

JF: Unfun?

EH: Yeah, or labor intensive or whatever. I think there are shows where it is work, where you’re trying to work out something. Everybody there is so nice and such a sponge when people come in from other places to either teach or perform. It’s Southern hospitality. It’s also a great young energy, because, again, they’re building something together rather than riding the coattails of something else.

JF: So, what was it like moving to Chicago?

EH: Awful for the first year and a half, for sure. For that first year, I did not enjoy it. I liked class, but I was working at Starbucks at Jackson St. down by the Art Institute. I was working the opening shift. I had to get up to go to work at 4:15, 4:30, so I didn’t see a lot of shows that year. I had to go to by 10 at the very latest. Yeah, I would go to class and that was pretty much the highlight of my week. At the same time I was frustrated because I wasn’t getting to perform anywhere, but in retrospect it was the best possible thing I could have done. I was coming from a place where I’m getting to perform constantly, and feeling like a big fish in a small pond, although that probably isn’t the best phrasing. I had been in North Carolina for a long time. I felt comfortable with that. Leaving that meant starting over, admitting I didn’t know anything, which I didn’t, and taking class again, being intimidated again. It was by far the best thing I could have done, but it was scary and it was uncomfortable.

JF: It was intimidating for you sometimes in those classes?

EH: Oh God, all the time. Chicago, in general, was intimidating to me. There are all those people there who you’re like ‘I can’t do what they do,’ or ‘I can’t do it the way they do it.’ I’ve only been gone for a little over year, even having left, I still look at it like ‘I’m still really intimidated by a lot of people.’ And that intimidation should be respect. It shouldn’t be intimidation. It should be admiration or respect, but intimidation is kind of self-defeating. It’s part of the reason why I think that making the move out here was probably good for me. It sort of allowed me to put that away to a certain extent, and sort of come out and go ‘Ok, now I’m my own person, making my own way,’ rather than ‘Oh, this person has seen me really suck,’ or ‘This person saw me have a really horrible class. I wonder if they still remember that? Because I certainly do.’

JF: Yeah, I know I’ve had that. I think a lot of other people have had that, but it’s reassuring to hear the Artistic Director of IO West say that.

EH: I’m not the Artistic Director of IO West.

JF: You’re not!?

EH: I’m the Training Center Director.

JF: Oh, alright.

EH: Just so the Artistic Director doesn’t get pissed. But yeah, you remember your failures way more than anybody else who saw them does. But I remember bad shows and bad classes. I remember being embarrassed, and I remember who was there. It doesn’t matter to anybody but it’s something that kind of sits there, like ‘Oh, this person really saw me be terrible.’

JF: So, were you ever frustrated in those early classes, because you had probably been doing it by six or seven years at that point?

EH: Yeah, it was frustrating, but at the same time the material was so new. I think frustrated maybe is the wrong word. I impatient is better. I was impatient to get to the point where I felt as good at this new stuff as the stuff I had been doing. I think that’s every young person who comes to take improv classes, who’s been doing it in anyway prior. It’s easy to be like ‘I know I can do this. Why am I not doing it right now?’ You don’t realize that there’s nobody we look at and go ‘Those people are phenomenal improvisers’ and those people are twenty two. It takes time. It takes time to figure out how to do it. You have to screw up again. I think at some point I realized that ‘Ok, these guys who I really enjoy watching are all several years down the road from me.’ That’s not a coincidence.

JF: Did your experience with short-form help you with long-form?

EH: Yeah, I think so. The biggest thing I think having done short-form helped me to do early on was editing. I think you get that muscle of when to edit a scene, or when the beats are. I think short-form really develops that, because you’re trying to end on a high point. You’re attuned to the way the energy functions in a scene in short-form. I also think it helps getting into the scene a little faster. You find that character, you find that hook a little faster, because you have to do it in a short amount of time. But certainly in editing.

JF: Were there any habits that you got in short-form that maybe didn’t help you in long-form?

EH: Yeah, being jokey, knowing the funny reference and going for that instead of being patient and letting the humor of the scene develop what’s going on between the two characters. If there was one downside, that would be it, but I would say that you get cured of that pretty quickly, because you realize you’re pulling the rug out under your scene partner as well. You could feel how bad the energy was after you did that. Your scene partner was like ‘Oh, great. Thank you for making a joke.’ God bless every teacher who was like ‘Great, but here’s a better choice: stay in the scene, instead of working at your audience.’

JF: So, how did you start having fun in Chicago?

EH: I got to play more. For me, it was also about people going ‘Ok, what you have to offer is valuable enough to put on stage.’ I care a great deal about what other people think in the sense of whether or not how I feel about my work and how other people care about my work line up. I need to know that I’m not getting up there and looking horrible or looking like the guy that has no idea what’s going on. More importantly, I need the people I’m playing with to do that for me. I need people to want to play with me. Once people started saying ‘Hey, come play a show,’ or ‘Hey, let’s put something together,’ that made all the difference in the world.

Matt Besser 11/16/06 Part 3

2006-11-16T08:54:00.000-05:00

JF: In your opinion, how important is it to be good friends with people on your team?

MB: I don't know. I'd have to say it's important, because that's how it worked for me. I also have to be able to believe you'd be able to be in a good group that rehearsed a lot and you didn't hang out. I know there are those groups. It's just once you're with people for a long time you either become friends or you probably don't like each other. There's not much neutral ground. Usually the people you don't like get kicked off the team. It's just more like natural selection.
The other problem is sometimes someone stays on a team just because they a friend and they're not that strong an improviser. That's very unfortunate. That causes a lot of drama for both theaters and teams, that is addressed or not addressed. It's one of the flaws of ensemble comedy.

JF: Do you think the term 'the game' or the concept of the game gets a bad wrap sometimes?

MB: Yes, I think what they really referring to are improv scenes that start with a very clear premise. Those critics will say that that's not organic. But as long as that improviser didn't come to the show that night with that premise in their head, and it's not in their bag of tricks, and they're getting it from an opening, then that's improv. I find when an opening with a group mind creates premises that's much more organic than scenes that start with 'Give me a word,' then someone steps out without a premise. It may be just a location based on that word and they start improvising, then they organically find a game. But it's like 'Yeah, but the beginning of your scene just came from one guy's head, not from the group.' Whereas with the group that used the opening, the opening of first scene came from the group, not one person's head.

I think there's pluses and minuses. There's all types of long-form these days. Even at our school there's two different kinds of long-form. There are people who like to start organically, and there are people who like to start with a premise, but we don't do narrative improv here, which we look down on as kind of boring, as silly stories. It's just a matter of opinion. Whatever floats your boat I guess. To me, how you arrive at the improv, as long as you're not cheating, it's whatever philosophy you think is ok. I think it's silly to look down on one method or the other. Some methods are called more 'pure.' I think that's ridiculous. Just because I start my scene with a premise doesn't make my scene any less pure.

JF: When you say 'starting with a premise,' do you mean having the 'who,' 'what,' and 'where,' or do you mean having an idea for the game?

MB: Yeah, an idea for the game. You have to start with the who, what and where, that's completely different. Some people say 'start with a half idea,' but a half idea isn't an idea at all. It's usually just a location or an emotion or something like that, or an object that was mentioned in the monologue. An idea, a funny idea is something that was taken from the opening, that was already funny in the opening. So, we already have this funny thing that we've all seen, that the group mind has all been aware of. Now we're going to start our scene with that funny thing. It's not coming from one person's head. It's something that the whole group mind observes, so two people are on the same page about the game right away, instead of meandering about trying to find it, trying to discover it.

People think 'Well, that means you're writing the whole scene at the beginning of the scene.' No, no, no, I'm going down the path towards the game really. I'm not just laying out the game on the table and saying let's do this. I'm saying 'Let's go down this path. I think this thing from the opening is funny. Let's go down this path and heighten this funny thing.' By the time we get to the end of the scene, this game has gotten more complex and has its subtlies and its philosophies behind it. It's much more interesting than whatever the original initiation line was. It's not like you've written the whole thing and done all the work by yourself when you come out with a premise line anymore than when you sit down at a sketch meeting and someone says what if we do a scene about this. They haven't written the whole scene. They're saying let's brainstorm. What's next? How's that heightened? Why does he do that? Let's explore that. So, it's really no different. It's writing a sketch on your feet. You start with a premise. When you rewrite things, no matter how you arrive it, you're going to cut away all that meandering that walked up to the premise when you write that scene up. You always start with a premise in a written scene. You don't go a page into the scene then start that premise, but that's how so-called organic improv does. It meanders about until you run into it. Try to cut all that fat away when you actually write that into a scene. So, if you can, why not start with a premise? I'm not saying that's the best way, but it's certainly not a lesser way, or a more impure way.

JF: Do you like to initiate physically? Do you like different types of initiations?

MB: Yeah, and like I said, your idea doesn't have to be a full premise-y, writerly line. It can be as much as the other night Jeanne Garafolo was saying something about not being able to open her window. It was impossible to open. So, I initiated a scene just trying to open the window and becoming outraged at the window. I don't think I said one line, but I think everyone understood on stage that 'Look, how funny it is that someone would get so mad at a window.' I just took a funny thing everyone recognized from her monologue and started there. So, everybody got where I was coming from and knew the path to walk down to find out what this scene is really going to be about, what's going to make it more complex and funny.

JF: What makes a good team to you?

MB: Well, after everyone gets off stage, there shouldn't be an audience member who says 'I really liked so and so. He was the best.' If people look at improv that way, they don't get what improv is. It's like only liking the Vince Carters in basketball. It's like 'Yeah, Vince Carter is great. He scores a ton of points, but look at Jason Kidd too. He doesn't average twenty points, but look how many assists he gets.' You have to appreciate everybody on the team for what they do. I think after a group has been together for a while everybody starts to fall into what they bring to the team. I think everyone starts to realize what they bring to the team, then everybody appreciates each other. Once everybody starts listening and to realize that, it probably become so easy to that group, whereas it almost becomes hard to do it with people who aren't in that group. That's how I feel some times.

JF: How do you encourage group mind in a group that you're coaching?

MB: I love doing pattern games. Anyone who's been with me as a coach knows that I love doing pattern games and showing the magic of that. That's something you would hear with Del and be like 'Yeah, whatever,' then once you bought into it you'd be like 'Oh my God, this really does work.' He would have us chat hours on end, just chant words. You're like 'What kind of Indian hippy bullshit are we doing here? I don't get this.' Then if you really give over to finding patterns, not getting so in your head about what's coming out of your mouth, just saying what's on the tip of your mind, saying that, and listening to the last person and incorporating what the last person said, you realize that the ideas form themselves and you don't have to be clever and come up with ideas in your own head. The ideas just come together themselves in front of you.
I think a lot of people look at openings like they're annoying performance art pieces that you have to get through to get to the scene in the Harold or whatever your form is. Some people just do away with openings completely. I think that's a shame, that gets rid of the moment of the group mind coming together. A lot of the veteran groups don't need that opening anymore, but I think it's a shame when newer groups don't use an opening. I think it's a detriment.

JF: What makes a good opening?

MB: What makes a good opening is one that you can easily pull ideas from. You don't get a suggestion, 'Give me a word!' You don't get a word to get a hundred more words. You get a word to create ideas. That's the mistake people make. They're just thinking 'Look at all these words to work with.' No, we don't need words. We need funny ideas. If that's all they're doing, free associating, finding patterns, but not realizing what they've found with the patterns, then they're wasting that whole opening.

It depends on what works for you. I always found the Innovacation difficult, but I just worked with a group today that did it really well and found a way to get ideas from it. So, that worked for them, that's great. But the interesting thing was that when Harolds first started people didn't have set openings. The Innovacation was about the only opening that wasn't an organic opening. Pretty much people would start with word patterns. Words would become phrases. Phrases would become spinnets of dialogs, sound, motion, a scene would start. So, it was always different what a person's opening was. It was completely organic. It was only in the mid to late 90's when everybody had their signature opening. That wasn't even done when I started. I think that's a shame when people do an opening just because it's neat and it doesn't provide them with information.

JF: I've heard that you're very good at remembering things within pattern games. Is that something you've worked on?

MB: I think that's a good muscle, that's why I like doing word pattern games. The easiest opening to get scenes off of, to me, is a monologue opening, that's why we use it in ASSSSSCAT. You may ask 'Why shouldn't everybody use a monologue opening all the time?' Because to really get the muscles going in your head for listening and believing in patterns, you should do the pattern games first, because they're so hard. Once you can find information and premises from a pattern game you can do it in everything. I really believe in that. I've always worked with my teams on one word pattern games. It really gets them to listen. It's obvious when it works, and it's obvious when it doesn't work, so it's something that they can tangibly look at and go 'Oh, I saw it working,' or 'Oh, it didn't work that time.'

When you start to think in those terms and start to listen to people like that on and off stage, you look at the world as a possibility of patterns coming together and forming comedy, that muscle gets better and better in your head. I have a terrible memory when it comes to things in general, but when it comes to things like that I've excersized that muscle enough I guess that's the one thing I'm good at remembering. [laughs]

JF: What makes a good improv teacher or director?

MB: I think there are different kinds. We have some that are very nuturing and coddling. You probably need that kind of teacher when you begin. Then we have teachers like me who can be a bastard and can be really honest and give you notes that really cut you to the core. I think you need that at a certain point. I think you need all kinds. You need to go through a lot of teachers usually to find out one that's going to speak to you. I think it's easier to say what a bad teacher is than what a good teacher is, because you really need a lot of different types of teachers I think.
You shouldn't only want teachers that are nice to you, and say you're doing well. That's why a lot of people liked Del. You just got to a point where you just wanted to be told 'What am I doing wrong? Tell me.' He would tell you.

JF: How important is being a good actor to being a good improviser?

MB: Well, I don't know that much about acting, but what we learned to do at one point is to play it real. You have to ground the scene, like what I was talking about earlier with scenes not taking place in crazy town. You have to ground the scene in some kind of reality, so we can appreciate the thing in the scene that is unusual, so you have to act real. How would you act in this situation? You can't have everybody be 'Yesand! Yesand! I say 'yes' to everything. I don't have a problem with anything.' The enthusiasm of yesand sometimes destroys realities. So, that's what acting is to me, it's just playing the scene real. Outside of that one premise we have while we're building everything else needs to be real. How you react to that premise needs to be real, otherwise I don't get why it's funny playing the scene real.

JF: Where would you like to see improv go in the future, artistically and commercially?

MB: Artistically, I don't care about improv all over the world as much as I care about it in my theater, so in my theater I would like us to all be more and more, as teachers, on the same page. That's kind of a difficult thing to do. That doesn't mean we all have to teach the same thing, but maybe we can all have the same language. That's an interesting thing about the improv comedy in general, we all use the same terms for a lot things but mean completely different things when we say it. That can be very confusing for students, because they hear a teacher at one school say one thing and a teacher at another say another thing. They seem contradictory, or they're using different words, or even within the same school it seems like you're getting completely different notes. That can be very confusing for students. They're like 'Well, you told me to do this, and he told me to do that.' I'd like to see less and less of that in our own school.

JF: Do you have anything that you would like to say to the improv community that we didn't get out?

MB: How about sometimes 'no, but' is 'yesand'?

JF: Sounds great. Thanks.

Matt Besser 11/16/06 Part 2

2006-11-16T08:49:00.000-05:00

JF: What was it like working with Del Close in those rehearsals?

MB: Like I said, we were greatly complimented and intimidated working with him. The first time we worked with him I was scared shitless and I'm sure the other guys were, because he was such a cranky teacher, and so honest about everything. If you fucked up, he was going to let you know. That gets you in you in your head. That makes it so you're not going to be a good improviser. The first rehearsal we had with him was abyssmal. We did terribly. It rained that night. That was the same night that Rick got in the car accident and died. It was one of the worst nights of my life. Yeah, it was very intimidating. Once again, he offered so much it was worth the punishment of truth and honest notes that he was giving us.

And we really did discover the Movie together. He didn't just give it to us. He didn't completely understand it until he started workshopping it with us. It was a process that we went through with him. That's pretty neat too, being with a guru and actually helping him. He's not just telling us to do the Invocation or something like that. He's workshopping with us, and discovering with us. It's really neat to work with a genius like that. We had a lot of funny times. He was befuddled by our immaturity sometimes. I think he liked us. I mean, I know he liked us.

JF: How has the Movie changed over time? And what are some things that make a good Movie?

MB: I don't think I've seen it performed by anybody but my group and the group I happen to be coaching at the time, so I'm not sure I would be able to tell you. But I know the biggest lesson we learned with the Movie, the big discovery was you don't parody the movie, that's not where the laughs are coming from. You don't go on stage and parody a movie genre. You pay tribute to it. You put it up on a pedastal, as Del would say. You try to do that movie's genre to the best of your ability. You recreate it on stage. By doing that, you find a more organic and honest way into the scene, rather than making fun of the movie like a parody does. The scenes seem to be predictable. When the movie's done that way, the Movie's bad obviously.

Also, there's a lot of tricks to the Movie, like recreating camera angles: above head shot in a helicopter. Everybody becomes the helicopter, and the audience is very entertained by that. But if all you're doing is the tricks, and just referencing the genre and not looking for the game [it will be superficial]. If you don't look for the game in the Movie, the Movie's just going to be a silly story. You still have to stay true to finding the game in every scene. The game doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the story or the movie genre. The genius of it is that all the movie archetypes we know, all the genres we know, are the structures we build our scenes on where we play the game. If you don't play the game, it sucks.

JF: Is that kind of where the importance of 'the game' was cemented for you?

MB: I was talking with Ian the other day. I'm not even sure when we started using the word 'the game' the way we use it now. I really can't even remember. It wasn't taught in IO the way we teach it. Every one of our classes is about teaching the game at the UCB. At IO it didn't feel like that. It wasn't as big as a focus as the UCB has made it. So, I can't really remember when I started thinking of scenes in terms of finding the game. It's almost like we discovered what we had to do before we had a way of talking about it. Everyone says the word the game and they often mean different things. So, different schools say the game and mean different things. It's kind of a weird word.

JF: What is the game to you?

MB: Well, you're going to have to take my class. [laughs] It's focusing on a funny thing, and heightening and exploring it, rather than focusing on narrative.

JF: Did you have a preference to the forms The Family did?

MB: Um.

JF: Like the Horror?

MB: Yeah, I don't know what Ed Herbstman was talking about in his interview when he said I didn't like The Horror. Ed, you need to fact check or I'm going to sue you. No, I think it was Neil Flynn who didn't like The Horror, but you'll have to ask him. I actually did like The Horror, because it made people walk out just about every time we did it, and that was funny to me. Adam liked it the most. I think I liked it the second most. I can't remember what Ian's feeling was on it. I think Neil and Miles did not like it, I think. Because it did anger people, and they're like 'why are we making people walk out?' But it's not comedy, and we're all there to do comedy. It's more like a fun experiment for one show, and it's something that Del wanted to do so we were definitely on board to try it out.

I liked the Movie the best, that's what we were best at. I liked the Spineless Harold. We kind of started getting known for doing these really fast tag-outs that went on forever out of Harold scenes. We started calling it the Spineless Harold I guess. The Deconstruction was fun. The Check-in is basically the Deconstruction is fun. I liked all of them. The Harold is the hardest form. I don't know that I'd do a Harold today without rehearsing. The Movie was the most fun. I'm sure all The Family agrees.

JF: How did the UCB form? And what was the motivation for forming it?

MB: Well, I was always more interested in doing sketch comedy, that's pretty much why I moved to Chicago. So, we started doing the UCB almost immediately. It really didn't have much to do with Improv Olympic. I had met Matt Walsh outside Improv Olympic at a stand-up venue called The Roxy. There was another place called theater of the bizarre that we both did. We would do bits together, then we met Adam [McKay] and Horatio [Sanz]. We had a show called Cerebral Stripmine, and I invited them to do that. Meanwhile, the Annoyance was starting to happen more, and involve more people. Walsh started doing that more. Ian came around and joined the UCB. Our first UCB show [where we were] called Upright Citizens Brigade was a show called Virtual Reality. The three main people were me, Ian, and Adam McKay, pretty much. There were a lot of other people who were involved, including Horatio Sanz. We did that show for at least a year and a half. Somehow it became critically acclaimed. We were really lucky, that gave us a lot of confidence. It got pick of the week in The Reader, which was a big deal especially at that point in our young careers. That just inspired us [to be like] 'Hey, we've got a good thing going here. Let's do more stuff like this.' That was a pretty crazy show. It just inspired every show to be more crazy and complex.

JF: How did the UCB develop over the years and when did it become your main focus?

MB: It was always my main focus.

JF: Even when you were on The Family?

MB: Yeah, that's a good point. Probably then it was about equal focus, but the UCB never stopped. There was always a show going on. Like I said, it was basically the same people, so it's hard to separate one rehearsal from the other.

You always have an ultimate goal. With the UCB, the ultimate goal was to have it be a tv show. With The Family, television wasn't in our mind at all. It was just about the stage work. I was acheiving the dream with The Family. With the UCB, we were always still working on it. I knew I would never make my living doing improv, and you're always in some way working towards making your living at doing what you love. Eventually, I realized I had to focus just on the UCB and didn't have time for improv. That was about the time that the other guys started joining Second City. I knew that it was time for us to go to a bigger city and really pitch ourselves. That's when I started flying back and forth to New York and started discovering that world.

JF: What was it like moving to New York? What was the climate like just in general and with art and improv?

MB: Well, moving to New York we were all extremely focused. We were putting all our chips on the table for UCB. We had one goal and that was to get a show on Comedy Central, that was the whole reason to come here. We came with two separate different sketch shows. We put them up at two different theaters. We ran both of those a week. That's pretty crazy in retrospect. [laughs] And ASSSSCAT came from wanting to have a night of just wanting to have, where you just improvised. There were other sketch groups when we got here, but not many, maybe one or two others. There was other improv, I guess. To be fair, I didn't really see it. Whatever improv there was, it wasn't like the improv we were doing. They might have called it long-form, but it wasn't like Chicago long-form. We were lucky enough to be the first ones to really do it. People noticed it. People wanted to learn how to do it, and that's where the school started. We were very lucky to have something people hadn't seen before. We obviously didn't invent it, but we were lucky enough to import it into New York.

JF: So, what was it like starting the school? And when did it come into your mind to start a theater?

MB: It was never planned to have a theater. It just came from us spending so much money at this other theater, renting their space, doing shows there every night week. Soon it became obvious we were being stupid with our money. We might as well have our own space. Pretty much everything we've done has come from the need to grow to next level, not from a long-term goal to get to that point. We're not so much theater owners. We're all performers first and theater owners second. We don't really think like theater owners. We never came to New York thinking like that. It came out of necessity. We wanted a place where we wouldn't get hassled by whoever seemed to own the place, which always seemed to happened, especially with sketch. We were always a pain in the ass with the venue, our guns, our blood, our bottles, our chairs, our costumes. Whatever it was we were a big pain in their ass. We were sick of that. That's a good reason to open up your own theater.

JF: What are your goals with the UCB theater now? Where would you like to see it go?

MB: Well, I'd like to get rid of that pillar in the middle of the stage. ...I like where it's at. If you look at the UCB not as a theater, but as a large label, we are starting to produce more projects with the four of us, but also with our people. That's the next level. The internet makes that more affordable and more realistic. That's the next step that we're at right now. Everybody wants to get to the point where they can make their own stuff, and make stuff with people they like. That's our goal too.

JF: Do you think that long-form improv will ever be on tv? And do you think that it translates well to tv?

MB: Dude, we've already been on tv.

JF: I mean like a permanent thing.

MB: [laughs] Yes, I definitely think long-form translates to tv. When people video tape their improv show and say 'Oh, it doesn't translate to video,' that means their show wasn't very good, to me. If you have a scene that you improvise and it's truly funny from beginning to end, on it's own merits, not just because it's being improvised, that scene should be able to be written up. That's our philosophy at our school. You should be improvising at the end of the show that you want to write up as a scene. It's not going to be perfect. You're going to have to rewrite it and make it better, but it should be good enough that it can be a real scene. Otherwise, it's not good enough to be seen on tv. People say 'Improv won't work because you have to be there.' That's only the improv where you're going 'Oh, it's neat to watch them fail.' That's improv that's still not good enough. That teams to get better so they don't fail a lot, and they start to improvise more scenes that they'd be proud to have written up as a sketch.

So, if you are improvising scenes that are good enough to be written up as a sketch, the only differences between that scene and a sketch are costumes, sets and props. I think there is a segment of our society that's willing to suspend disbelief and imagine the sets, the props, and costumes, and just enjoy the sketch, improvised or written.

Matt Besser 11/16/06 Part 1

2006-11-16T08:46:00.000-05:00

Matt Besser studied long-form improvisation at the Improv Olympic in Chicago, where he performed with the heralded team The Family. He is a founding member of the Upright Citizens Brigade, with whom he has established improv theaters and training centers in New York and Los Angeles. He has appeared on Comedy Central as a writer and performer on the Upright Citizens Brigade television show, as an improviser on Bravo's ASSSSSCAT special, and on many other programs. He currently lives in Los Angeles.

JF: Where were you born?

MB: I was born and raised in Little Rock, AK.

JF: What were some early influences on your sense of humor?

MB: Early ones? There was a disc jockey called Craig O'Neil in our town who did prank calls, just very simple prank calls, but I was blown away by the fact that adults could do prank calls, that was how someone made their living. I guess as I started to learn more about comedy, just all the ones that everyone else says: Lenny Bruce, Andy Kaulifman, Steven Martin.

JF: Lenny Bruce and Andy Kaulifman are kind of people who tried to break boundaries or instigate people a bit. Is that something that has cropped up in your own comedy?

MB: Maybe those two in particular, they're a little off the mainstream, instead of something ubiquietous like Steve Martin or Woody Allen. So, learning and discovering their work is more like finding out about punk rock. Not only is it a cool thing, but not a lot of people know about it, so it feels more special. It used to be really hard to find Andy Kaulifman stuff, so when you found it in a video store somehow it was a really neat thing to have. Lenny Bruce was next to impossible to find.

But your question was does it crop up in my own work. Yeah, definitely. When we started UCB, we liked that Andy Kaulifman thing of screwing with the audience. We enjoyed it when a good part of the audience wasn't in on the joke, and we hoped that the other part of the audience, who was in on the joke, would notice that the other part of the audience wasn't in on the joke and would enjoy that aspect of the performance as well. Now, we're old men and doing it. I just got off stage from doing that. Did you see the show in the [Del Close 2006] marathon?

JF: Yeah.

MB: We just screwed around on a mobile scooter cooler, and had chugging contests. It didn't look like improv at all. I'm sure a lot of people out there hated it, and were going 'This isn't improv. These people are just screwing around,' but I think we enjoy those people walking out and being perturbed by it, as much as we're looking to make people laugh by jokes or scenes. It might be immature, but I think that's a thing we all have in common. We all gain enjoyment from fucking with people beyond the comedy.

JF: How did you get involved with improv?

MB: [laughs] Well, I read Walsh's interview, so people are going to know this from Walsh's, but I went to Improv Olympic and saw Chris Farley and who else? Tim Meadows was in that group. They just put on an amazing show. There was a group called Blue Velveeta that did a perfect Harold. I couldn't believe stuff that people could make up stuff, that they were saying on the spot. I actually thought they were cheating. I wanted to know how they did what they did. It really seemed like magic happening. After seeing that show, I wanted to get involved and I did.

JF: What were the early classes like?

MB: At Improv Olympic?

JF: Yeah.

MB: I took from many different schools. In fact, I took from every different school in Chicago, Player's Workshop, Improv Olympic, The Annoyance, Second City, but I didn't learn very much in years of years of classes except for from a very few people, like Mick Napier from the Annoyance. The biggest thing I learned from him was getting out of your head. I think that's a big hurdle for a lot of improvisers, especially ones that come from another backround like stand-up, like I did, where you're used to getting on stage with all the jokes ready, and not used to working with other people. It's a whole different process with your brain. It definitely took me a while. I did have a few other good teachers. A lot of teachers were a waste of time.

Eventually, everyone would get to Del and that was eye opening. He gave us techniques for improvising that were tangible, not just philosophical. I got so much stuff that was philosophical. You would do scenes and someone would be like 'that was that good' or 'that wasn't good.' I didn't have anything to latch onto until I got to Improv Olympic, and Del in particular. Once we understood these methods, it was obvious that he had given us a great gift. There's nothing like that in stand-up, not that I've ever found, no methods of making it easier, like I found in improv.

JF: What were some of the methods that you focused in on for improv?

MB: It's the same thing said in every one of your interviews. They sound simple to say, but they can take years to learn: listening, heightening and exploring, playing at the top of your intelligence, playing the game. I can say all those things very quickly, but it takes a long time to understand how to do those things. You can't just describe it in a short answer, that's why you have classes. You need to really have to get up on your feet, walk people through things, show them examples, show them what works what doesn't work. A lot of thing are easy to say, 'heighten and explore,' that's easy to say, but what does that really mean? I think a lot of people say that and they don't really think about exactly what it means. They're really saying heightening. They don't really take in what the exploring means. It takes a while for improvisers, students of improv, to understand the difference between heightening and exploring. What it takes to explore isn't the same thing that it takes to heighten. You find the philosophy behind the crazy thing that you're heightening. You're not just being silly and heightening, which may even get laughs from an audience. If you're don't explore, you're either going to heighten yourself out of the scene or your going to become so silly that the audience isn't interested in the scene anymore. That's the kind of thing that takes a long time to get. You write it down in your notebook and go 'ok, I get it. 'Heighten and Explore,'' but everybody has to have their personal epiphany on stage when all of the sudden they get that. They do a scene where they do that, and go 'oh, that's what it feels like.'

I think the same thing is true of listening. It's easy to hear it and go 'ok, I'm listening.' That doesn't mean just hearing the words coming out of their mouth. It means hearing their intentions, where they're trying to go with their words, finding the usual thing. If you're not really listening, you're not going to hear them when they say that unusual thing that could become the game. It just looks like you're a bunch of crazy people on stage, and who cares what happens to you.

JF: What was your experience like performing at Improv Olympic at first? How did you start to grow at a performer?

MB: Improv Olympic, when Matt Walsh and I joined, was very competitive, that's when Blue Velveeta was the best Harold team. A some point I think they even had referees. It was like ComedySportz, but it was like the Olympics. It was set up like it was a sport. That competition was very real off stage. You did not support the group that was on stage at the time. You wanted to do better than them, because if you did better than them you got more stage time and eventually you'd become the house team. It was very cut throat. Teams were broken up very quickly. I was on a team that performed once and Charna broke us up.

But I enjoyed that. I didn't mind that at all. I'm a competitive person. I find that fun. I think it made everyone work hard, because it wasn't 'Everyone gets to be on stage the same amount of time.' It wasn't being communist like that. It was like sports. It was the team that performs the best will get the most time. It was fair. It made us all rehearse and really work like a team, not be casual about it at all. It was like sports in that people would get not traded, or moved from one team to another. That would be a huge deal. The team that got left would be pissed off at that person. That's just how shit happens. That's how my group formed, The Family.

I was on a group called Corky's Callback with Jon Faverau and Pete Hulne. Adam McKay and some other people were on Victim's Family at the time. We were already friends, Adam, Ian and myself. We wanted to be on the same team, so that happened. Corky's Callback all got mad at me for a while. Long story short, we had a guy on the team, Rick Roman, who passed away, and that was the day we changed our name to The Family. That was pretty much the number that it stood. Neil Flynn came in a little bit later. A few people dropped out, bringing us to six. That's how our team formed. It was like a sports team. You got recruited. Different groups tried to get different people, and were actively recruited.

JF: How long had you been doing improv by the time you went on The Family? Because it seems like people formed these groups that are now legendary in a short amount of time.

MB: It didn't seem like a short amount of time to me. I'm not very good with numbers like that, but The Family took a couple years to form. I was on a couple of improv groups before that. Definitely, it wasn't less than a year. I want to say it was at least two years, if not three. I don't know. I'm sure someone has some better numbers than that.

JF: What was your experience like on The Family? How was it different than other teams and how did it challenge you?

MB: We all hung out all the time, so it seemed very natural that we would be good improvisers together. Whereas on other teams, you're not necessarily best friends with everybody when you start, so getting together for rehearsal is the only time you see each other during the week. But by the time we were in The Family we were all friends from either the Upright Citizens Brigade or just being around each other at the IO. It wasn't like we were a bunch of new people meeting each other and starting to rehearse.

Another advantage that we had was Del really hadn't directed any groups, at least in our generation of improvisers, and he just got the bug again. We were the best group at the time, so he just directed us. That super-motivated us, because we knew how big a deal that was. We were greatly complimented and intimidated by that prospect. That made us super-serious too. We would rehearse a lot. All the time.

JF: More than once a week?

MB: Oh yeah. Definitely more than once a week. In some way or another just about every day of the week. [The interview was interrupted for a moment]

You had asked me about my experience on The Family. So, it was definitely was like a family. When Rick Roman died, that was a huge deal. He was the first person I ever knew who died. It was a huge emotional trauma for all of us, which I'm sure none of us had never experienced. That brought us together as a family. We performed at his memorial. We did a memorial performance at Second City for Rick, us and a lot of other groups and improvisers from around town. We did the form that we had been working on with Del, which was the Movie. That ended up basically being our coming out party. We did it really well that night. We had just figured it out as a form. I don't think at that point we were respected as being as good as the other groups in town, like Ed or Jazz Freddy. I think at that point people were like 'Oh, these young guys are good improvisers. They do have a good group.'

So, that brought us together, and some of us were doing the UCB at the same time too. We just were together all the time. When you're that focused [you're going to get better]. In Chicago it's so much easier to survive and not work and focus on your art. I was as focused on improv at that point as I ever have been and ever will be. I'll never be able to focus on improv like that again. That was a special period for us.

Thomas Middleditch 11/16/06 Part 3

2006-11-16T08:42:00.001-05:00

JF: Could you describe what you guys do in the Improvised Shakespeare Company?

TM: Yeah, the home shows that we do at IO are an hour, or a forty five minute play. It's a lot like Baby Wants Candy in a sense. All we get is the title then we make a play of it. With Shakespeare it's fun, because you kind of have the form written out for you. You've got things that you're allowed to do: asides, monologues. You've got a lot of power struggles. It lends itself really easily to emotional heightening. People can hide and still be on stage. These are all things you're allowed to play with. You know it's either going to be a tragedy, a comedy or a history. Normally, the tragedies are the funniest ones, because by the ends everyone dies.

JF: Did it require a lot of reading up on Shakespeare for you?

TM: Everyone brushed up a little bit. I did a little bit. We as a group watched a couple movies and listened to some Shakespeare audio tapes. Blaine got us all the complete works of William Shakespeare. We did a bit of research, but not crazy amounts. All of us for the most part are familiar with it to some degree.

JF: So you guys do try to speak like he wrote?

TM: Yeah, I mean we're not necessarily doing Iambic pentameter the whole time, but we're definitely doing our thee's and thou's. We try and come up with good metaphors. We'll do rhyming couplets and stuff like that. It's pretty cool. When it's all flowing, it amazes even us some of the stuff that comes out. I guess when you get in that zone it just sort of fits.

JF: In your opinion what makes a good coach or a teacher?

TM: Enthusiasm. If they don't care, then why bother? Why am I paying you? Experience. If they can articulate what they want. It's the same as a good coach in any sport. You have to love the game and you have to know what the game is to teach it. They don't have to be super-positive all the time. They can call you out on your bullshit.

JF: What in your opinion makes a good initiation? And have you noticed there are any patterns to how you initiate?

TM: I don't know. That's a difficult question. I guess some people have the impression that it's supposed to be loaded with information. Even if it's only a few words, a lot of it is about the emotion [behind it]. Even though a lot of people rag on it, 'Oh, God if I see another scene that starts with 'Hey.' 'Hey.',' but a lot of great scenes come out of that. Maybe you'll find a game that comes out of people going 'Hey.', 'Hey.', 'Hey.'. So, a good initiation is really dependent upon what comes after it, how you support the first initiation. The first initiation could be nothing as long as it's supported to be just that or something else that's based off of that.

In terms of my initiations, I don't know. I probably have a few base ones that I draw on, which is bad. I don't perceive myself to be a strong initiator. They're not going to bring me off the bench to initate a scene. I've probably got a few base ones that I go to, but I couldn't identify them.

JF: How do you go about creating characters?

TM: Hmm, as I look back, these are characters that I've been doing for years and years. Probably the way that they were all developed, well, not all of them, but the majority of them, were developed by riffing and having fun with friends. Just doing voices. Usually, a lot of them come out by, if I'm doing a crazy British guy, the other person is trying to do the same character, which is heightening that. Or you just get into scenes with people. You're playing around with your friends who are funny and this character comes out.

It's not always that. Sometimes it's myself. I talk to myself a lot, [laughs] and do one man improv scenes in the shower and all that kind of stuff, just trying to entertain myself, because it's either that or go back to the computer and become an addict. It's just definitely experimenting and trying on new things.

I commit physically, but it's not as if if I hunch my back this amazing character is going to come out. That works for some people. You're encouraged to try new physical statures in level 2, which is characters at IO, but usually when it comes to that its like [pirate voice] 'arg, matie!'

JF: [laughs] It sounds like you almost have a box of characters that you can try on.

TM: Yeah, definitely. Everybody's got their characters that they've tried out that they know work. It might be a dangerous habit to rely on those characters for every show that you do. That's probably weird coming from me. It's important even if you have a certain character it's important to do variations of them to suit the mood. You always have to do what's needed.

JF: What does the term the 'game of the scene' mean to you? And how important is it to your own improv?

TM: It's sort of taking what someone did and you're heightening it and bouncing it back to them. It sort of creates this fun playing. That's traditionally what a game is. You're playing. Even if it's a scene where it's all dramatic, and you manage to find the quote unquote game, you're playing with drama of it. It's like a gibberish scene where one person's saying 'bip' and you're like 'bop,' and you're actually literally playing a type of improv game. You're essentially just having fun. It's basically how a game operates. Something gets served to you and you respond through it.

JF: How much of a role does it play in your own improv?

TM: Quite a big role. It depends on what type of improv we're doing. Like with Bullet Lounge, scene after scene aren't necessarily related, they can be completely disjointed and ambiguous. You can have a bit more freedom, but when you have the responsibility of telling a story it's hard to go into a land of crazy. Well, that's not true. I don't know. These are harder questions. [laughs] You know you've found a game when you're having fun with it. In a sense the whole show could be a game, as long as you're having fun.

JF: How important is emotion to good improv? And how important is it to your improv? How do you find being emotional helps you?

TM: I'm pretty confident that emotions are paramount. For me, when I have a contrived, superficial emotion, usually my scenework is not that good, but when I'm really there, when I'm connected [my scenework is better]. Even when it's absurd, even if I'm Mr. Sillypants with a [inaudible], if I'm genuinely proud to be Mr. Sillypants, it's going to be better, because the reactions are going to be more truthful. Even in absurd land, it's about the reactions. In my opinion, any good acting coach is going to tell you that acting is reacting. That's essentially what it is. And if you're not invested emotionally, how can you react? I mean you can, but it's going to be cerebral. It's going to be in your head. I think it's pretty paramount. It's not the only thing, but it's one of the most, if not the most important things.

JF: How important do you think being a good actor is to being a good actor?

TM: It depends. There are some good improvisers and some good comedians who aren't that good actors. It depends on what you're trying to do. If you're trying to go up there and be funny, you can be funny without being a good actor. Definitely. But I would say the connection from improv to acting works the other way around. Improv has made me a hundred times better actor than I was. Definitely. Even with a scripted work, even if you've done that scene, that line a hundred times before, you have the ability to be in that scene for the very first time, and react accordingly. That's great. You are a good actor.

JF: Where would you like to see improv go in the future artistically and commercially?

TM: It'd be nice if producers would be willing to take a chance and have a completely improvised show. I think it's kind of happened before. I think Curb Your Enthusiasm is largely improvised. Who's Line is It Anyway is supposed to be, but I've been told that it's pretty much all scripted. Yeah, it'd be nice if it got to a point where it'd be financially viable for some producers, and they'd be willing to pay improvisers. It seems like improvising is the one method of live theater which seemingly has no hope of making any decent moeny for the actors [laughs], which is sad because so much of it is so much better than anything else. Some of my favorite shows are all written, but some of the shows that I see at IO are mindbending. It's a shame that that can't go further than that and those people can't get rewarded. If Howie Mandel can get a shitload of money, surely the majority of all these other improvisers I see can get more. Because in the end, it's all about the Benjamins. Ba-ding Dong!

JF: Absolutely. I hear that it's all about the Benjamins all the time. So, artistically where would you like to see it go anywhere in general?

TM: I think the nature of the beast is that it always will [change]. Everyone's going to try new stuff. I'm not worried that it won't. I don't have any strong wants currently, like 'oh, this has got to happen, and it hasn't yet.' I'm content to sort of live within it. I like doing what I like to do. Maybe I'm not the visionary type, not with improv.

JF: Do have anything that you would like to say to the improv community that we didn't get out in this interview?

TM: [laughs] Fuck you! [laughs] Kidding. Um, let me think. Have fun, I guess. Yeah, have fun. If it's not fun, don't do it. If you really can't stand doing it, don't do it. But if you have fun, then it's going to be very rewarding.

Thomas Middleditch 11/16/06 Part 2

2006-11-16T08:38:00.000-05:00

JF: What was your experience like when you moved to Chicago and started taking classes at Second City?

TM: Well, to be honest, I was a little disappointed with Second City. You had to audition to get into it, even after a period I still had to audition still, although I loved my class. I thought they were a really great bunch. Comparing Second City to IO, at IO, even though you didn't have people who were super, super serious about improv, not that you had that at Second City all the time, you had teachers who were young and enthused about teaching. They wanted to help you grasp these concepts. It was a lot more of an engaging learning experience. I felt sometimes at Second City the people I was being taught by didn't really care. They were like 'yeah, yeah, yeah, warm up, for an hour.' We'd spend an hour playing games like Big Booty and stuff. I think how they taught was a little more cardboard cut out of what improv is. Whereas at Improv Olympic, they actually encourage you to try new things. It's like 'whatever. If that comes out, that's your scene.' That's just my opinion. I'm sure there lots of people who really loved the program. I got a lot of good things out of the program. I loved the class 5 show. I loved meeting a couple of the teachers I met. Overall it was a good experience, but in terms of the training is just two different styles.

JF: So when did you start at Improv Olympic and what was your experience like?

TM: If I came here in January, I probably started in February or March, a couple months after I started Second City. I came in being like 'ok, I know what Second City's like. What's this like? Everybody says it's so great.' My best friend at the time was taking it at the time and was really giving it high praises. So, I said 'ok, cool. Let's give it a shot.'

The person who I started with was Rachel Mason. She was very good. I really liked her positive energy. It was a sharp contrast to what I had been getting elsewhere. I really took to it. I was trying to be open-minded because there were people in the class who had never done improv in their lives. Actually, they were probably the most interesting people to watch, because they were genuinely making all these discoveries, not only about the scene, but also about their ability to do improv, which was pretty cool to watch.

JF: When did you start performing on a regular basis in Chicago?

TM: I suppose on a regular basis when I got picked up Baby Wants Candy.

JF: [laughs] Ok. That was your first team?

TM: Yeah, that was a good thing, and probably pretty fortunate. I always look back on it like 'oh man, I'm really lucky that happened.' [laughs] As opposed to, 'yeah, that's me. Of course.' I was fortunate maybe in the sense that Rachel got to see, maybe, a bit of my abilities in level one. But I don't know. I was told that that wasn't a deciding factor. But as far as auditions go, I walked away with that being one of the more comfortable auditions I've had, which is very rare for me. Normally, I walk away going 'Oh God that sucked.' But yeah, that was my first thing. That happened after a few months, in the summer really. That was a good time. I really like that group. They're great.

JF: They held just an open call for people?

TM: Yeah, actually, I think that might have been the first time they ever did that. I guess it was about timing and nailing that. I guess they saw something. I had actually only seen one show of theirs before, and to be honest I didn't like it. [laughs] It was my friend who convinced me. They're a very good group though. I did it and after the audition I was like 'that was a lot of fun. I hope it happens' and it did.

JF: Were you nervous starting out on Baby Wants Candy? Had you done musical improv before?

TM: I'd never done musical improv before, except for the occassional song you'd be forced to sing in a short-form game, or back in the day me and my friends played guitar and would like to record songs that we made up on the spot. I was pretty nervous, just because I think my first show was with a bunch of people who were super-established. I think my first show was with Rachel [Mason], Stuart [Ransom], Joe Canale, all these guys who are so good. So, my first couple of shows I was like [laughs] 'ok, don't screw this up. Make them think they made a good decision bringing me on.' I was a bit hesistant at first, but it didn't take much to make me relax, because everybody is so supportive. That's probably the most supportive group I've ever played with, because that's their whole premise. If you go out to center stage and sing a high note, everyone is going to be behind you supporting that. That's how the show works.

JF: They're going to be supporting you musically? Singing the same note?

TM: Musically, or whatever. Choreography or even just the energy. I guess a pretty cool symbol of that is a month or two ago Baby Wants Candy went to Washington DC, and we had one of our really great, trademark Baby Wants Candy shows. I was playing Joseph Stalin. There was some sort of twelve foot high platform that went along the back, and I managed to get on top of it. I was delivering my speach: 'everyone believe in Russia or whatever.' Mary McCain, whose a veteran, said 'if you really love us, you'll do a trust fall off the ledge.' [laughs] So, I was like 'oh no, what!? Are you serious?' The audience was like 'yeah, yeah, yeah,' chanting. I'm on their being like 'ok, I guess I have to.' So, they all got beneath me. They were just standing there with their arms out. I'm like 'lock you arms. Lock your arms.' [laughs] Eventually we got the right configuration of arm locking. I sort of leapt off there. They caught me, hoisted me in the air, and we sang our final note. That was the end of the show. Everyone gave us a huge response. That's a memory of improv that probably won't ever go away. That was really cool.

JF: How have you adapted to doing musical improv? And have there been any things that help you make up songs on the spot?

TM: It's definitely gotten easier as it's come along. I'm probably not the best at coming up with really clever rhymes. There are some people who really good at that. I'm not one of them. We've done a lot of workshops with that, and I am normally by far and away the most frustrated. I don't know how to do it. Like the one where you choose the word you want to rhyme with first. All that weird confusion set-up thing. My technique is just going with how it goes, even it doesn't rhyme. If you're committing to the emotion and your words of the feeling that you want to convey, [I think it will work]. I connect moreso emotionally rather than cerebrally. It's definitely gotten easier. Playing with the band members, the same band members helps, getting to know who's actually providing the notes is definitely key to making that whole business easier.

JF: Did you go through the process that seems to be at IO, where people get put on incubator teams then work their way up to a Harold team?

TM: I didn't do so much of that. When I got here, I managed to get on an incubator team at the Playground. It didn't last too long, because at that point I was really hard up for cash. I just couldn't participate with coach and rental fees. I would say getting on Baby Wants Candy really helped me out. Charna managed to see me in that. From there, she put me on a team that was already established. They were called the Extra Billies. In the recent schedule change, everybody got reassigned. That's when I got put on Bullet Lounge with a bunch of really, really funny dudes and one funny girl. [laughs]

JF: What kind of form do you guys do? And when you're a house team at the top of the schedule or whatever do you have more freedom to do different forms if you would like?

TM: I guess so. It's not a written rule or whatever, but that seems to be the consensus. Some house teams prefer to do the Harold even. Teams like Deep Schwa do whatever they want and it works really well for them. That's kind of what Bullet Lounge is about. The only thing that we are doing is that we bring things back at the end, and we've agreed that we'd like to have an opening. So, we're kind of working on our own opening, what we like to do. Some of us like to play by hard fast rules. Some of us are like 'let's just do whatever.' The cool thing about that team is that it's all seasoned improvisers, so whatever happens you can trust the guys. [laughs] Not that you can't trust the other guys.

JF: What are some things that you like to get out of the opening?

TM: I would say that the biggest thing is get everyone amped and on the same page. A lot of people say that the opening is not a warm-up game. Your warm-up should happen before that, but to me when you're on-stage in front of everyone with the lights a lot different than they were in the parking lot playing zip zap zop things can change between. To get everyone on the same page, yesanding and working on the same level is probably the primary function. Also, to generate information that you can draw from, especially for the first couple scenes. If you go in there, you don't have anything and you go in there and like 'hey Bill.' And you're just starting with some scene that you're pulling out of your ass. That's not as good as going in there with an idea.

JF: What are some good openings that get everyone on the same page?

TM: It depends on how you work. I think an opening should cater itself to the group dynamic, to who the players are. If you've got a bunch of people who are really heady, who stand back and serve up really weird clever things to say, it probably doesn't make a lot of sense for them to be in a 'whoosh' ambiguous type of opening, unless they're like 'yeah, let's get over our headiness and into a new realm.' Everybody should be excited and positive to do whatever their opening is. There's nothing worse than being up there and somebody is like 'I really don't like doing this.' [laughs] A. they should probably get over it, but b. it's pretty awkward.

I'm getting to the point where I kind of like any opening. At first I was not really into the crazy ambiguous openings, where everybody's like 'Dynamo! Dynamo! Dynamo!' [laughs] flying around. Now I'm into it. So, I feel people should push themselves. Those heady people should do those crazy openings, but if they don't like it they don't like it. But now, me personally, I'm into that stuff, especially after seeing groups like The Reckoning who make it look so easy, because they just agree to everything and heighten everything. So, the best opening is one that you enjoy doing.

JF: What are some qualities of a good team?

TM: Support. Being nice to each other on stage, but moreso off stage. I probably learned that lesson. I've probably been a jerk to people. I learned that's not a good thing, the same way that other people are jerks to everyone else. But you learn that if you're going to be like that the team's going to suffer. So be positive, like each other, and trust each other. And have fun really. If you're nervous and don't want to get on stage, either don't do it or get over it, because it rubs off on everyone else. It's a group sport, a group activity.

JF: How did you get involved with the Improvised Shakespeare Company?

TM: A while ago I was in a project at Second City. Michael Gellman was writing a book on improvisation. He got some people to work out his ideas with him. [Blaine Swen] was part of the people who went on that journey. He had done it in L.A. He asked me to do it. I said yeah. We did a run at Second City, then that ended. We thought to do it at IO. Charna had seen it in L.A., and thought it was really funny. So, she was like 'yeah, I'll give you guys a run.' We did an audition and got cast members, so there you go.

JF: So that's a passion for both of you guys? Shakespeare?

TM: I wouldn't call it a passion. When he first asked me I was like 'Oh my God. I really don't think I can do that.' I tried that before in short-form games and had a really hard time coming up with the rhymes and even the style of it. But he said 'Yeah, I really want you to try it out.' So, I said 'What the hell? I'll do it.' I'd had experience with Shakespeare before, but by no means am I a conisseur.

Thomas Middleditch 11/16/06 Part 1

2006-11-16T08:31:00.000-05:00

Thomas Middleditch began performing stand-up, sketch and improv in Canada. He currently lives in Chicago, where he performs with Baby Wants Candy and the Improvised Shakespeare Company.

JF: Where were you born?

TM: I was born in a small town called Nelson in British Columbia, Canada.

JF: What were some early influences on your sense of humor?

TM: Definitely Kids in the Hall, that was probably the biggest influence comedically, and Monty Python, then movies that weren't really comedies. I grew up on movies like The Dark Crystal and Labrythn. Those really influenced me comedically, even Joe Versus the Volcano, movies like that, not SCTV. I hate that show. [laughs]

JF: What's annoying about it to you?

TM: Maybe if I were at the age to appreciate comedy I would like it, but at the time I was introduced up until now I've found it to be really hammy and over the top and lame. A lot of people have said to me like 'that's the point. They're making that ironic,' but to me it doesn't seem that interesting. [laughs] Like that Martin Short [imitates Martin Short doing Kathryn Hepburn] crazy comedy. There's nothing smart or anything about it. It's just really lame late 70's characters.

JF: Like 2-dimensional characters?

TM: Yeah, and they have these Canadian guys Bob and Doug MacKenzie, and it's like 'yeah, I get it.' It's not as if I don't get it. It's just really dated that's all. It may have made sense for the time period, but just because of that that doesn't mean I have to appreciate it. I don't think it's funny.

JF: How have things like Labrynth and Dark Crystal influenced you comedically? What impact to you see in your comedy?

TM: That kind of stuff is kind of dark and it has a lot of fantasy stuff, which I always think is really funny. I always think dragons are funny and riding away on a dragon is funny. [laughs] Stuff that's dark and a little twisted and off-kilter, rather than straight forward. I find Jim Henson and movies like that to be really creative. Like in Monty Python in The Meaning of Life when all those business people ride away in [inaudible] as if it's a pirate ship. It's really creative, absurd, and fantastical. That's the kind of stuff that I usually find funny.

JF: When did you know that you wanted to be a performer?

TM: I wasn't one of those kids who knew straight away, when they were three years old or something. I guess I knew for sure was when I was in 8th grade, grade 8. I was in a drama class and I guess my teacher saw something in me and cast me in a play, just for some a regional play competition. It was a comedy. Light. I really had a lot of fun with it.

I remember the first couple moments. We had this shtick where I'd stick my head my head around the curtain, then see the audience and get scared. The first time I did that in front of a big house everyone laughed a lot. I was like 'wow, that's a really interesting sensation. You do this and get a huge reaction.' I was like 'I can play with all of these people collectively,' and that's pretty addictive.

JF: How did you get involved with improv?

TM: After that, I got involved with Junior High and High School improv teams, but that's all short-form. That lasted until the end of High School, then I stopped doing it. It wasn't until years after I graduated and moved to Toronto that I got back into it. It was still short-form, but it was with people who were really clever, and interested in the same stuff that I was. We would do scenes about riding around on dragons. You move to move to Spain, and what Spain is people moving chairs around going 'welcome to Spaiiin!' [laughs] It's not actually Spain. It's just some weird version of Spain. That's what kind of rekindled my interest in improv. You can do anything you want. As long as you say 'this is the truth,' then it is what it is.

JF: What brought you to Toronto?

TM: I was actually doing theater school in Victoria. I was a little fed up with the program. I wanted more. I went to Toronto to go to a conservatory. I auditioned with someone who later would be my comedy partner, I suppose you could say, but after I auditioned I didn't accept their invitation at that school and just did comedy. We became a sketch group at the beginning, then we got into improv.

JF: How old were you at that point?

TM: I was about twenty-one, twenty, twenty-one.

JF: So, at that point you basically decided to pursue comedy full-time?

TM: Yeah, as much as I could, although the comedy scene in Toronto is very underground. There's Second City, then there's everyone else, and everyone else is performing at random bars and stuff like that. You have to get your own gigs, and do your own thing. It's cool.

JF: Did you study improv in Toronto or were you just doing it?

TM: I never studied until I got [to Chicago]. That's typical, except for the Second City guys that drop in on the improv night. I'm speaking of one major improv night that's pretty popular among the kids who don't have training. It's a bunch of people who don't have formal training in improv, but are just funny and they just go up and do stuff, I guess. It's really different from even Comedy Sportz, which is short form. You can really tell it's more of a collection of people spontaneously being funny, as opposed to doing a form, or even what here in Chicago people perceive improv to be.

JF: How would you characterize improv in Canada? How is it different from what we're used to America? Or is it different?

TM: It doesn't have to be different. I'm basing this on my experience here in Chicago. Chicago is kind of unique unto itself. Everyone's doing a lot of long-form. In Toronto, when I was there, what I was exposed to was short-form. There was some long-form. Also, there's not a lot of places to get really good training. I mean, there's Second City, but it's not the tightest organization.

JF: Huh. As a complete outsider, someone who's never ever been to Canada, what I've heard is that there's more of the Keith Johnstone story element going on over there. They try to make things into a story more often than we do. Did you notice that or is that just a misconception on my part?

TM: I'm trying to think if I can think of any groups who are doing that. In Toronto at least, there's one duo I know called Iron Cobra, a guy and a girl, they're the people I know who are most likely to do improv telling story. You know what? You might be right. There is. The main improv night that I went to, for example, is short-form. You get points and you win. It's competitive. Part of the criteria was if you told a story, if there was a beginning and end. Always the judges would be like 'I like narrative.' So, if your scene was sort of about nothing, you wouldn't get good points. You'd have to tell a story. So, I suppose you're quite right in that sense. Even in a short scene you'd have to have a beginning, middle and end. Someone would go on an adventure, something happens and it gets all wrapped up at the end.

JF: How did your acting training mesh with improvisation when you got back into improv? Did it help or was it a hiderance?

TM: No, no, it was definitely an asset. I don't know it's because of [my acting training] or not, but I like to see improv where you commit a little more, especially to characters that are either big or require a little bit more emotional integrity. A lot of people can do the sort of superficial, crazy characters, but when the people who are a little more grounded and 3-dimensional, some acting training definitely helps. You can access the character and flesh it out quicker, I guess.

JF: What brought you to Chicago and what year did you move?

TM: I moved just over a year ago, so like January 2005. Originally, I came to go to Second City. I was thinking about going through it in Toronto, but the feedback I had received didn't sound too hot. Also, I figured if I'm going to go through Second City, I might as well go through where it started. I came down I auditioned. When I got in, I was like well, I guess I've got to move to Chicago. That was my original motivation. That and to go through the program and see what would come out of it; see if I could get invovled. If I did, ride that I guess. As soon as I got here, I heard everybody talking about Improv Olympic, so I took classes there as well.

JF: So you hadn't heard about Improv Olympic before you moved to Chicago?

TM: As I was moving, people mentioned it and say 'you would really like it,' and I was 'ok, I'll see.'

JF: That's interesting. You hear about improv, and people are like it's big in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and Toronto. So, you'd think they'd have a really good training center, but is that not the reputation that they have?

TM: I don't know. It depends on circles. To me, I simplify it, that there are three sections of comedians [in Toronto], aside from stand-ups. You've got people who are Second City. There's another theater called The Bad Dog, which, [laughs] I don't know. I don't want to say anything thing too bad, because it will probably be posted on your blog and people will be like 'Tom's an asshole!' But, ...I don't know.

JF: Right. [laughs]

TM: Then, I don't want to make it too grandiose, but then there's this underground scene. They're a little bit elitist. They're a little bit snobby. They're like 'screw Second City. Screw Bad Dog. You don't need any training. You're funny and you're born with it,' or whatever. So, there's places to train like Bad Dog and Second City.

One of the things I notice that's different about here and there is that here everything's set up for you. You enroll in the programs. You learn what you can. You can audition for all sorts of teams. If you work hard, you're going to be able to perform, probably on a regular basis. There in Toronto you've got to do so much stuff. You're setting up your own shows. You're kind of on your own, even if you go through one of the training programs.

I think that's what spurs the underground movement: 'Well, we're all on our own anyway.' You have a lot more direct contact with places like the Comedy Network, which is Canada's version of Comedy Central. Me and my friend from the Iliads we were talking about getting shows with them, but of course our stuff was way too weird for them, but whatever.

Miles Stroth 11/16/06 Part 3

2006-11-16T08:20:00.000-05:00

JF: What about Dan made him an attractive scene partner to you?

MS: He was good. I guess this a better answer to what you're asking: he was a good balance to me. He's more of a character player, while I'm more of a classic straightman in my tendencies, so it was a natural balance like that. He's also bald and I've got a lot of hair.

JF: That's true. That's another ying and yang aspect of you guys. Was it ever uncomfortable for you to essentially be teaching someone you were performing with?

MS: No. Why would it be? To me, I was just hoping it would be great training for Dan. It was also interesting to me to say 'well, here's a guy who's already real good. How much better can I make him quickly?' He had just finished the training program, and probably 6 months later into doing our show Noah [Gregoropoulos] invited him to do the Armando show in Chicago, which was mostly reserved for people who had been there forever. He had just gotten that good. It was mostly his natural talent I would say, but in watching him play for a long time I was like 'his talent is his own, but his formal instincts right now are mine.' He was making the moves that I would make. Even just watching him in shows I could see what he was trying to do, and I'm like 'yeah, that's exactly what you should be trying to do.' [laughs] Good for him for getting it all. A lot of people given the opportunity to learn things don't learn.

JF: Can you describe what the show Zumpf was like? The different edits and the different pacing within the show?

MS: The thinking initially was 'let's be faster-paced,' because that was my experience and habit and the other shows hadn't really done that, and we wanted to differentiate ourselves from those shows. It was kind of a Deconstruction in that we did no opening. We just started with a scene, but it wasn't in anyway a classic Deconstruction. It was 'we'll start with this, then we'll move away from it and we'll eventually get multiple scenes and eventually weave them together.' The interesting thing about trying to move fast-paced with two people is even when you think you're whizzing by you're not moving that fast. It might feel like you're moving fast because you're working real hard, but you're really not moving that fast. There's only two of you.

The different edits, some of which we got from Trio, was the idea of when you played a multiple person scene you didn't have to run around necessarily to get to your other characters. The audience was absolutely willing to let you walk from one character over to that character, do whatever you need, then move back to respond if you needed. Then we started thinking about how quickly can we switch in and out of scene. It got to the point where there were times when it was just one of those wonderful improv moments where we'd be in a scene, both recognize that we wanted to go to this other scene with these other two characters. Without saying a word we would immediately start playing the other scene, and it would already be going. There was no pause. There was a line in the first scene and the next line was this other scene going on, then we would go back to the first scene without ever missing a beat. That was a way to get the piece moving faster, but at that level you really have to know each other. You really have to be thinking very similarly.

Most of the edits were, it's kind of a common sense thing. You'd ask 'ok, how do I need to move to make it clear that we're starting a new scene?' I remember realizing that to completely change a scene you didn't have to do too much more than change your voice or the way you were sitting, and the other person had to immediately recognize something has changed, so we're now in a different scene. That picks up the pace, not having to bother with stepping across the stage to do an edit, or running across the stage. You can just shift and be in another scene.
Other than that, I remember we liked multiple person scenes, if we could find a location for them. We didn't like to repeat locations too much, because that was cheating. I think the most we ever got into a scene was something like 16 characters, that was on a plane. That was a lot of fun, trying to keep track of 16 different people that you've put onto this plane.

JF: How long was that scene?

MS: That scene was probably 10 to 15 minutes.

JF: What brought you out to Los Angeles?

MS: I chased a girl out here.

JF: How did you adjust to Los Angeles? How did you find the overall artistic climate and how did you find the improv scene?

MS: The overall artistic climate barely exists for me, as far as improvisationally. I think out here, even moreso than anywhere else, the idea is to put up a show that gets you a break, so the pursuit of the artform is almost nil. We didn't have our own space out here really when I got out here. We had kind of a rented space. We didn't have the nice theater that we have now.

JF: What year did you go out there?

MS: Four years ago, I think, in 2002, I guess. There were students who were interested in the art and wanted to learn. There were also students who were very threatened by it, where 'we don't give a shit about about the art about it. We just want to be funny. I want to be in commercials and on tv.' I was like 'alright, you shouldn't be in my class then,' because you might learn some useful things, but I don't want you to be in my class.

That kind of attitude effects the class. It effects the work. It was like 'well, the idea here isn't to be slapsticky funny.' I think a lot of students were going through the training program to just get the opportunity to be on stage. Yes, that's a wonderful opportunity, but take advantage of the damn training. Get some training. So many of the students who got on the stage out here, they basically just finished the program. They're barely good enough to get on a team. They get on a team. They put up some shitty work for a while, then they move on or hang out forever. Never getting any better.

JF: Do you feel it's changed over time?

MS: It's getting better. Los Angeles is somewhere between ten and twenty years behind Chicago as far as an [improv] community. It's funny. There are more good improvisers right now in Los Angeles than anything else in the world, yet we still have a hard time getting houses at all. But that's because this community isn't used to it. They're used to short-form. They're used to The Groundlings. Other crap like that. But we're training them slowly, just like we did back in Chicago.

JF: How would you like to see the community in Los Angeles change? And what do you think might be some specific steps to enact that change?

MS: By community, I'm referring to the people who support improv as well as the improvisers. I'd like to see the community, who's at large and could be supporting our shows, to pull their collective heads out of their asses to come and watch the shows and see what a wonderful thing it is we do. As far as the students, I'd like them to stop thinking so much about trying to put up a show that gets them get a break, that gets them a tv show. That's fine if that happens, but you study the art form to study the artform. This is an artform. This is important. You'll actually be better off if you stop thinking about your career for a couple years, and actually really try to do something interesting, and let your career fall in place around that.

JF: You're viewed as a very mathematical person when it comes to improv.

MS: Who says that!?

JF: Uhhh.

MS: I'm kidding. I say that all the time.

JF: Oh, what does that mean? In what sense are you mathematical about improv?

MS: I say that because I approach it formally first.

JF: What does that mean?

MS: It means when I get on stage I have a basic equation in my head of what I'm going to do. It's not like the scene's pre-written, but if I have an idea I will say it right away and let my scene partner what I need them to do. If I don't have an idea, I will not say a word and will wait until they tell me what I'm supposed to do.

JF: Even if you walk on first?

MS: Even if I walk on first. There's a possibility I might be in it just because the edit needed to be made. You know immediately when you're doing a scene if somebody has an idea or they don't. Basically, you check in with them real quick. If they look at you with that same sort of blank look, that means no one has an idea, then you just start simply. Don't worry about invention. A mistake people make is people panic. They invent too early. They get caught in the cross-fire of two people inventing, and there's no sense on stage.

Also, when I teach, I tell people they made right and/or wrong moves. You could say 'well, any move is potentially valid.' I'm like 'yeah, you could say that, but, for me, I say that one's wrong, for these reasons.' There's no move that I make on stage that I can't point to the reason that I made it. It's usually a formal reason. Usualy, I made it because the other person did this, that was my indicator to do this. Eighty percent of my work on stage is listening.

JF: What are some of those reasons that you would give someone for saying this is a right move or this is a wrong move? What are some of the underlying justifications or principles behind it?

MS: There are a bunch of different ones, but for example, if someone comes on stage and they say something absurd, my first instinct is to be the straight man in this scene. That means alright, my job is to call attention to this absurdity. Call it out as being absurd, yet still be able to bend with it as the scene moves. I now know how I'm going to play the rest of the scene. That's based off the other person's opening line of dialog.

If the other person comes in, begins a scene, and they're very sort of more bland and they say something more realistic, I'm going to start exaggerating myself. I'm going to play opposite them, play off them. What's going to be comic in this moment? Sometime I'll start slowly and get to that, but the idea is that there are comic elements that make up a scene. You have to satisfy them in an improvisational scene. You can learn to recognize them in the first few lines of a scene. A lot of people just do it naturally. A lot of things that I came to do naturally I had to go back and figure out why I was doing them. I was like 'here's why I'm doing it. I notice this. I notice that this person is doing this, that's why I did this.'

JF: It sounds like you're trying to create the one unusual thing. By you playing the straight man, you're heightening the unusualness of the other person's initiation.

MS: The focus of the scene. Yes, usually that thing becomes the game of the scene, the behavior that surrounds that focal point becomes the game of the scene. Once you have the game of the scene, you can move onto other formal elements that feed back into the game. You can go 'alright, I've established the game of the scene. I've established the focal point. Let me throw out a line that deepens our relationship.' We can use that information to pull back into and play the game.

JF: What do you think about mirroring people? Is that something that you do or advocate?

MS: I've used that technique in teaching, but rarely in play. You're talking about sort of a classic yes anding, where someone plays an absurd character and the other person says 'yeah, I'm that way too. Now we're both crazy'?

JF: Yeah, or a certain type of character or a certain type of mood.

MS: I generally say you do not want to be in the same emotional place as the other character on stage. The idea in comedy is that in every comic moment there is tension, so where do you want to establish the tension? The best way is to establish it between the two characters. What happens when the tension is not between the two characters? Now it has to be between them and something else. It might be between them and what they're saying, but now all the pressure is on them to invent something funny to play off of, which is much harder to do. Being harder doesn't make it better. It just makes it harder to do.

Generally speaking, mirroring is not the way I would go. However, I may mirror, if I choose to play a character-based scene. If someone is out on stage, playing a grumpy old man on a bench, I might be a similar grumpy on a bench. Now we're characters. Now we're both exaggerated. Now we're both absurd on some level. Now the scene is going to be all about what the crazy old men on a bench are going to say next. Now it's harder. It's based on my invention, but I've made my invention a little bit easier because I've chosen the character to focus on. The main thing that makes invention so difficult is when you're just being yourself on stage, then you have to invent things. There's no focus for it. The pressure is all on you there. You're not sure exactly where to put your focus. If you give yourself a focus by playing a character, you can say 'alright, what's the focus of my character. I'll put all my intention into that?'

Generally, when someone is happy on stage, most of the time I'm not going to be happy with them. I think of a scene beginning 'I love you.' 'I love you too.' ...Alright, there's nothing going on. What's next? Now we have to invent something else, find what the tension of the scene is. Whereas my preference is: 'I love you.' 'Yeah, I know,' or 'yeah, whatever.' Now all the sudden the audience is like, and you're like, 'what a minute? What's going on here? There's something wrong between us.' It catches your ear and you start exploring that. For me, that's being formal, not clever. That's just recognizing things to listen for, then reacting appropriately to them. Invention is, again, the last thing I use.

JF: So, if someone says 'I love you' and you respond with 'yeah, I know,' you're in a sense making yourself, or your viewpoint, the unusual thing, in a normal context.

MS: Yeah, if it's wrong for me to not love them, I'm absurd. If let's say they're a serial killer, it's right for me not to love them and they're absurd. The thing is we already have tension, so we're already tending toward a comic moment.

JF: Do you ever find that other teachers disagree with you about the importance of tension? Some people say 'oh, you don't want tension in an improv scene.'

MS: Some people get hung up on not wanting conflict in an improv scene. Tension they don't object to as much as conflict. Heaven forbid there should be conflict in a scene, which I think is sort of old school and fearful. There's always some kind of conflict.

Some teachers might disagree with me and the way I say it, but if I were to sit down with them and we were to express everything we were talking about, for the most part, 90% of it, we'd agree.

JF: So how do you make conflict funny? And keep it from stalling a scene?

MS: If you get into an argument, that's fine. People argue. That's real. I'd make distinctions. Try not to bicker. Try not to argue over something that's not important. If you do get into an argument, that's fine as long as the scene keeps moving forward. Don't just stay as the same point of the argument, saying the same thing. As long as the scene keeps moving forward. As long as we keep adding new information to the scene, to the characters, it's fine for the argument to be there, but if all the scene is is just the argument then you're not moving forward. You're not exploring. It has to be moving forward. I say argument is ok. It's dangerous, because it's the habit of the people to stay in the argument until it's resolved. Once you recognize this, you have to go 'ok, my habit as a person is to finish this argument, but as an improviser I have to know that arguing is just an element in my scene right now. I have to keep my scene moving forward.'

JF: What do you think are some key elements in good improv?

MS: There's so many. Good improv I think starts a little slower. I think people listen better in good improv. The editing is better in good improv. I'm trying to think of the elements. Everything's being done well. [laughs] I think it's easier to point at the bad elements, why the improv suffers. If you do everything well, then you listen to the person who initiates a scene was listened to. The scene attained a focus that was then surrounded and moved forward. The game grew out of that focus. Information was given that was fed into that game that can be used later in the piece when the scene or scenes are called back. If all that's happening, you've got good improv going on. If the scene was edited when it should be editted, if that consistently happens, you're going to have a good piece.

JF: Do you ever find that being so analytical about improv ever effects the acting aspect of it?

MS: No, that makes we think of a couple things. I don't like the improv jargon phrase of 'being in your head.' People toss that around. 'You don't want to be in your head, man. You want to be in the moment.' The fact is you're always in your head. You're never not thinking. Implying to people that they can be in this state where they're not thinking and doing brilliant things is, I think, trecherous, because it's misleading. I think the idea is you have to be able to think very quickly while your doing things. On the other hand, I also try to teach that you think as much as you possibly can while you're off stage. When you're on stage, you play your instincts. You train your instincts off stage, then you play them on stage. In any given moment, all you can do is take care of the specific moment, and try not to make a mistake in that moment. If you train yourself well enough off stage, it becomes instinctual on stage.

JF: When you say think as much as you can off stage, I thought you meant while you were on the backline, but you meant actually...

MS: I meant both. When you're on the backline, on the side of the stage, and I also mean when you're not performing at all, train your mind. Train your tool. Develop that muscle as much as you can before you get on stage. Also, when you're on the side of the stage, you can be thinking about what do I want my scene to be about? What am I hearing now that might be able to use later? Try to come up with a full idea for a scene, rather than a half idea, like 'I want to do something with Pirates.' You can start it, but you don't know what the other person is going to do. You have time to think in a long-form show. If you're on stage one third of the time in a long-form show, you're on stage probably too much, right? If you're in an eight person group, which means two thirds of the time, you're not on stage. If you're making use of that time, to me, you're wasting that time.

JF: How do you balance trying to think of initiations with also watching a scene to try and support it?

MS: It's a judgement call in the moment. There's no perfect way to do all these things. There are a bunch of tools that can be used, but only to some degree of effectiveness. The fact is, when you're listening to a scene and you want to start thinking about an idea for maybe the next scene, you lose a little of your focus in the scene. You stop hearing things quite as well that are going on on stage. I'll usually watch a scene in the beginning. I'll try to as quickly as I can see what this scene is about. I see what they're doing basically. I don't see anything that I can do to heighten what's going on right now, so I'm not going to be walking into the scene. I've got a little more time where I can think about what I want to do in the next scene. My mind splits basically. I'll check in with the scene, go back to thinking, check in with the scene, go back to thinking. Although some of the time I think you're able to think while you're listening. You can actually hear what's going on and putting together disparate thoughts at the same time.

JF: In your opinion, what makes a good initiation?

MS: A good initiation clearly tells the other player what is expected of them.

JF: So, you would have an expectation of the other player beforehand?

MS: In some cases yes. This some people call premise-based improv. If I get an idea off stage, I get the whole idea. I want to do a scene where a therapist is mistreating their patients, and I want the patients to object to it. That's the other half of the idea. Whereas most would be like 'ok, I want to be a bad therapist' and go out and play it. The other person agrees with them, and they're cured. No, there's no bad therapist there. There's just a weird therapist. There's no tension between the two characters, because they were cured. That scene to me doesn't really work. It's much harder for me to make that scene entertaining, and it certainly isn't interesting. So, if I want the other person to object, I need to a.) start the scene as the bad therapist, telling them they're objecting to the way I'm treating them, or b.) being the patient objecting to what the therapist is doing. So, in my opening line I've created their behavior. So, off the opening line now we both know how to play this scene.

That's one type of great initiation, I think. Scenes can work for different reasons. I can start a scene with a very strong character, and the other person can make a great move and play a perfect character that plays with me and off of me. I guess part of me thinks that happens, but I'm also very skeptical because more often than not too many improvisers bring that trunkload of monkeys with them. Where I say something no matter what it is, they say 'great, I've got a truckload of monkeys, because monkeys are funny, and I got a truckload of them. Get it?' It's like 'alright, you just wanted to say something crazy, and I didn't give you any limitations in my opening line. I didn't tell you that you were angry. I didn't give you something to focus on. I just said 'ah, my office is finally clean. Isn't that great Jenkins?' 'Yeah, that's great. Now let's bring in this truckload of monkeys.' It's like alright. Now what the scene's about. No matter what idea I may have had in my brain. The scene is now about a truckload of monkeys.

There are a bunch of formal rules that can be learned. For example, if someone walks on stage talking, to me, that tells me they have an idea, but they might not have it all worked out yet. So, I'm going to wait until I know what I believe the right response to be. If they say an opening line and I don't know whether I should be happy or angry, or with them or against them, I'm just going to sort of yes them, recognize the truth of what they're saying, but not really add anything, because I don't really know what they want me to do yet. I'll give them probably three lines like that. I'll give them three different attempts to try to tell me what they want me to do. If it becomes clear that either they don't know what they want me to do or maybe they didn't really have a whole worked out idea, then I have to make a judgement call, and take a direction, but I'm still going to give them the opportunity to tell me what their idea is.

JF: In your opinion what does the term 'the game of the scene' mean? And how important is it to good improv?

MS: I think the game of the scene refers to the thing that has become odd, or that caught your ear, that is the focus of the scene, and the way the characters act around that. There's no way to describe the game of the scene in one description, because there are different kind of games. The game might be between the characters. It might be between the characters and their environment. It's ...ah, the thing you're forced to react to in disparate ways. It's hard to nail it down.

JF: How important do you think it is to be friends off stage to being a good team?

MS: I think it's essential. You can be a good team if you have a bunch of talented people who work together, but I don't think that the work starts to get to the special places until you really get to know each other.

JF: Where would you like to see improv go in the future artistically and commercially?

MS: I would like the tenets of improv to become kind of a world religion, that is followed and everybody is in on it. Commercially, I hope to leave it the hell alone.

JF: You don't want people to start getting paid more or whatever?

MS: I don't want it to become bastardized by television. I would love to see it be on television, if it weren't corrupted by television. I'd more rather it'd be a world community of improvisers, where you could do a bit with anybody on the street and they'd get it.

JF: Do you think the medium of television corrupts it, or do you think executives corrupt it?

MS: The medium of television is going to be difficult, because improv is classically live. I think that's part of the experience. The beast that is television is made up of the people who run it. I think that compromises anything in its path.

JF: Do you have anything that you would like to say to the improv community that we didn't get out in the interview?

MS: No, I have no general statement to announce to the improv community [laughs]. If anything, it'd be that last thing: become a world of improvisers.

Miles Stroth 11/16/06 Part 2

2006-11-16T08:13:00.000-05:00

JF: So you guys were on stage for an hour and a half straight?

MS: Yeah, which back then was Heruclean. Now-a-days it doesn't seem like that much. Now-a-days we're able to do a lot more. I've done a two person show for an hour and a half that moves pretty quick and it doesn't seem like a lot of time. It's not all that hard, but with those shows it was hard, because we moved fast. Everything we did we were trying to push it. We were trying to make something new happen. You were thinking as hard as you could think while you were listening and doing whatever. Every one of us came off stage sweating, after every show.

JF: How did you respond to the speed of the shows, because you mentioned before that you felt a little out of place at first when everyone was going so fast?

MS: This is years later. I had become better. I got better over the few years. At this point, I had been doing it for like six years. It was two years to feeling confident. Another two years to being pretty good, then another two years to being very good. The speed was fine. I was used to it.

JF: So, what this the beginning of the Movie and the Deconstruction or had it been around before then?

MS: No, we started that, although I'm sure somebody will say they did some kind of Movie way back when, but as far as formalizing it [we did that]. I don't know of any other person who says 'yes, here's the show where we did it.'

We did it in rehearsal. We sat with Del about what are the forms we want to come up with. I think he had the idea before of a guy trying to do a movie, but he didn't know how to do it. We all had to figure out how to do it. It started out being more artistic or poetic, then we figured out that a lot of it had more to do with speed, particularly in formal ways. You couldn't take a long time to describe scenes or transitions or you'd lose the illusion that is was actually a movie you were watching. In movies the changes happen quickly. You don't get to hear the poetic description of a scene changing. It was definitely the beginning of the Deconstruction definitely, because we invented it.

JF: How important was genre to you guys when you were starting with the Movie?

MS: How what?

JF: How important was working within a genre to you guys when you were starting the Movie?

MS: We didn't work within a particular genre. The simplest idea was convincing the audience that they're watching a Movie. Of course, they're not. You're thinking in 2-dimensions for the most part. What can you do on the screen? It also freed you up to do some description where there are some images you can describe. You couldn't actually fool the audience as performers, but you can plant the image in their brains, then perform after having done that.

But we switched genres. I think the first one that we did that went well was a baseball movie. What made that so successful is that we had a fairly simple story that we managed to finish. So, it was a complete piece. Also, we did a lot of Sci-Fi, because that was what we liked to watch.

JF: Did you have a favorite of the three forms that you guys did?

MS: I would have to say that my favorite was probably the Deconstruction. The Movie was the most successful as far as the audience. It was fun, but it wasn't as interesting to me as the Deconstruction.

JF: Why was the Deconstruction more appealing to you?

MS: Immediately, because it had no opening. I hate openings. I hate doing openings. And it began with a big long intelligent scene. The simplest way to look at it was how many different you can be inspired by one scene. We'd just start taking apart the scene. What different levels can we find inspiration from this scene? Or analyze this scene? Or comment on this scene? It became a lot like the games we played off stage, the bits we played in the bar. You knew how to play the game. If the scene started, you knew where it came from. More interesting connections were made in the Deconstruction than any other pieces. That's why I liked it more.

JF: So, is that what you were guys were doing trying to take one element of the Deconstruction and connecting it to another element? Or would you just try and take an idea and see what it means to you personally?

MS: Here's the way I went about it. I know we did the Deconstruction. I remember the shows. I knew what it felt like. I knew what a lot of the concept was. When I tried to begin conveying it to other people what it was we were doing, first I would say 'here's the question we answered,' or 'here's the question that we'd be inspired by in a scene,' but that doesn't really teach a lot. Then I started piecing a part what seems to be the techniques we were using.

Part of it was, we'd make thematic connections to the opening scene. Then you'd make connections that were about the specific behavior of the opening scene. Then you'd make connections that were about the dynamic of the relationship of the opening scene. Then specific things that were said, tangents. All those different types of scenes, you start weaving them together and wind up making connections between them that you wouldn't normally have made, before you bring the opening scene back to close the piece in the face of all these new connections.

JF: So, you guys would do the opening scene again at the end of the show?

MS: Yes, classically, that was the form, first scene, last scene.

JF: Is there ever a point in a Deconstruction when you have to or want to stop drawing from the original scene as the source of your inspiration, and maybe use the scenes that have come after as the source of your inspiration?

MS: There were no set rules in the way that we went about doing it. I think we all probably teach it differently. You can always go back to the opening scene and draw information, but there should be nothing that limits your performance. If something occurs after that, that is worth pursuing [then pursue it.] If you noticed it, then somebody else probably noticed it. If it's worth exploring, you should go after that as well.

You go by certain tenets. You don't necessarily want to burn up an idea, go after it so aggressively that you can't call it back later. One of the great things about long-form is when you make those new connections later on. You have a scene that occurs early. Instead of grinding all of the humor out of it right away, [you save some of it]. You start it. You get the exploration going, then you get some other explorations going, then you start making connections that you wouldn't have made otherwise.

JF: What was it like working with Del Close with The Family?

MS: [laughs] It was interesting, because Del was a point where we basically had to drag him out of his house to get him to come over and sit there and lead us in rehearsal. On some days he was much more enthused and he was much more into it and he had more ideas and was more into it, but I remember some times when he would come in, lay on a table in the back of the room and leave after half an hour. It was strange.

The thing I've always thought about Del was that he was one of the only people I've ever known who could be consistently, occassionally be truly inspiring. He didn't have to say much some times to get us going. So, it was a strange privilige to work with Del.

JF: So, if he were to leave after half an hour, would you guys feel like you needed to give yourselves some additional sense of direction?

MS: Oh yeah, if he left, for us it was 'we're not doing it right.' It was definitely Del's inspiration, but it was our work that put it all together. But he inspired us to do that work, that's how the show was connected to him.

JF: What do you think the lasting impact of The Family has been?

MS: I like to fantasize that most improv in the country, where improv is known well at all, has been influenced by The Family. I think we really introduced speed as a style of play. I see the Upright Citizens Bridage as adapting in the aftermath of The Family, containing two of its members. The reason why Charna was able to open her theater, get her own space, was because people came to see our shows and her training center started growing exponentially. So, I think it was a pretty reaching effect we had. I like to think it was anyway. I've got nothing else going on.

JF: Did you guys come up with any other forms in The Family as well? Did you guys do The Horror as well?

MS: Yeah, we did a show after 3 Mad Rituals. One of the things I liked about The Family, that I don't like about improv currently, which I think is systemic of the problems of improv currently, we ran 3 Mad Rituals for eight months until it was no longer really interesting to us, then we said 'ok, we've done this. Now let's do something else.' So we sat down again and we came up with the Check-in Expansion and The Horror. We still did The Movie. It was a successful thing that we wanted to still have in the show, because people wanted to see it. The other two two that we came up with, we ran those two for four months, and that was it. We were done.

JF: So, what were the Check-in Expansion and The Horror?

MS: The Check-in Expansion was like a Deconscrution except that it begin with a single person going through their week, going through the stories of their week, as one person in a two person scene. Does that make sense to you?

JF: I'm not exactly sure what it means.

MS: Lets say if I took a cab ride as part of my stories of the week, I would come out on stage, sit down in a chair and say 'take me up to Soldiers' Field.' I would play out the scene as I remembered it, yet only one character would be there. It would just be my character reacting to all the other characters that surrounded me that week. We would Desconstruct that, or basically how many different ways can we find to be inspired by that.

JF: So one of your members would go on stage and do a one person scene basically from something from that happened in their week?

MS: They would do multiple one person scenes. They would basically go through their week, but they wouldn't do it monologue fashion. They'd go through their week showing the things that happened to them.

JF: And what was The Horror?

MS: The Horror was we took a clip out of the paper of something tragic that happened in the city, so it was very easy to find. One I remember was some old lady died in her apartment kneeling in ice, which is where they found her. Then we'd read that, then we'd do a piece that was specifically geared to not being funny. We weren't going to try and be funny. We were just going to try and explore the darkness that surrounded that event through whatever characters we could imagine might be connected to that event, i.e. the son that didn't check on his mother, the police woman that discovered the body. Spanning out all the events that might have been connected to this event, all of the people that might have been connected to the event. It was a creepy little piece. We usually lost a few people in the audience during it or after it. It was interesting. I didn't particularly like it as a piece, but it was interesting.

JF: So were the scenes ever funny accidentally?

MS: It wasn't one of those things 'but the truth in comedy, you get some laughs.' It wasn't that. It was dark. It was Del Close. It was dark. It wasn't playing for the realistic laugh. It wasn't even playing. The goal was to creep the audience out.

JF: So why did you guys do that?

MS: It was something new. It was something worth trying. It was interesting. To me, I thought it was a little bit pretentious. It smacked of 'because all you haven't remembered to feel bad this week, let us who are more conscienable remind you of what is going on in the world.' So, I didn't particularly care for it. Our team was kind of split on it. I think me and Flynn didn't really like it. Everyone else kind of dug it.

JF: So what did you do when you guys broke up? Or were you guys broken up?

MS: No, that was the time when Second City started hiring all the best players in town. Most of us got scooped up by Second City into their Touring Companies. It was also right at the time when Charna was going to open her building. The rest of the guys went to Second City and I stayed with Charna and helped her open her building.

JF: What was that experience like, opening up IO?

MS: It was work. I basically lived there for a couple months. We basically had to pick up the place, put up a lot of walls and electricity. We had to get everything organized with the liquor distributors, the beer distributors, get the box office up and running, get the computer stuff all up and running. It was running a theater is what it was like. It was a pain in the butt.

JF: Were there any hurt feelings between the other members of The Family and the people at IO, because they had been so important there, then left?

MS: No, the point back then was try to get farther, try to get a break and do something. Improv was always something that everybody came back to. It still is I think for the most part. You go to Second City, do a show, try to get onto their Mainstage, get a job with Saturday Night Live, go on, have a career, have a life. Improv is not something that will pay you, as of yet, so you have to find a way to make money to be successful.

JF: So what were you doing with improv after The Family and during the creation of the Improv Olympic theater space?

MS: Well, I was teaching at the IO. I was also doing shows every week. I was coming up with new shows to put up there. I did all improv shows. I never changed my focus over to sketch. This is what I've always been doing. I only stopped teaching a year and a half ago.

JF: Oh, you stopped?

MS: Yup, I was teaching a new class basically every 8 weeks for 12 years. I think I just had enough. I also don't necessarily agree with the way everything is handled inside the Improv Olympic program, even though I know a lot of it is out of necessity because the program is so large. I don't like having to share a syllabus with someone. I don't teach that way. I don't know what my lesson is until I'm in front of a class and I'm watching what they're doing. A lesson might spring to mind, or they might have a weakness that needs addressing right away. So I can't stick to a still a syllabus. I'll still teach a workshop if I travel, but I guess I felt stagnant staying in the same program for long. It was also effecting my performance, because I didn't sign on to be a great teacher. When I stopped teaching, my performance got better.

Unfortunately, because I had been teaching for so long and because of my own habits, I was reflecting the students problems on stage. I was thinking about the things I should be showing my students instead of exploring.

JF: How did Zumpf come about?

MS: Zumpf came around because I needed to do something. For a long time after The Family, I worked in a lot of different shows, but there was nothing that really, I thought, challenged what I had already done, so I was becoming stagnant. There were some very good people who put up this show called Quartet was the first I remember. It was Dassie. I'm combining all their names because of all of their subsequent shows, 'Dasariski'. It was Rich Talarico, and Cackowski and Stephanie Weir. I think so. I can't remember if McBreyer was in there too.

They were putting up shows. First Quartet, then Trio. They were both good, but Trio in particular pissed me off. And when I say that, it's the highest compliment I can give to an improv show. What it means to me is that I'm angry that I didn't come up with it. I'm annoyed that someone is doing work that is so good and I'm not a part of it. So, that show kind of set a fire under me. It was such good work, and it was different than what had been going on. It was smart and slower. It was a smaller cast. It was accomplishing quite a few things; all of them wonderful.

I first began with the natural progression: four, three, I guess two is next. I said 'ok, Trio is in full swing. I'd better come up with a two person show then.' I need to basically throw my hat back in the ring. I wanted to do it with a student, not one of the more established players, because then they wouldn't have such ingrained habits. They'd be more flexible. My thinking was, right back to The Family, how do I create ensemble of two? The idea with The Family was we knew each other so well. It was the group 1 mind thing. It took years to develop with six people. I was like how fast can I develop it with one person? Well, I only have to know one other person, but that one other person has to know me well, otherwise this won't work.

I first picked Karen Graci. I thought the natural tension between a man and a woman on stage would be easier to play off of than two men. She declined, because she busy with Second City TourCo, and that annoyed me [laughs]. So, I said 'alright, fuck it. I'm just going to pick the strongest student I know,' that was Dan Bakkedahl. In the end, I'm very grateful for Karen's decline. I started with Dan, and what I did with Dan, who was already very good and interesting, was I basically made him know everything I knew. I made him play two person Deconstructions with me. I made him play two person Movies with me. I made him do everything I knew, but only as a two person form. I went over gambit I had in the book as far as 'here's form, and here's game and here's what I mean when I'm doing this.' All the while recognizing what he was doing well and what he does well.

I did that for about four months with him, then we started trying to put up the show and it wasn't very good initially. Part of the reason for that was Dan was still hesitant. He was still thinking that he had to play second fiddle to me. In a two person show, you can't play second fiddle to everybody. You are necessary. No one can carry anybody. It took him a couple months for him to accept that we were now equals. We had to just play it that way. And it started getting better. We both liked that Wednesday house over at Improv Olympic, the late night house. Before that people were doing shows after 10 o'clock. We did probably six months of shows for maybe twelve people a night. At first it wasn't very good, then as it got better we slowly started to build that house. The advantage of Improv Olympic was being able to hold on to a spot for nothing for a long, because there's nothing else going on in that spot so there's no objection to us doing it.

JF: How long did that show go on for?

MS: I think probably about two years, a little over two years.

JF: Always in the same time slot?

MS: Always in the same time slot. The show had its things that did well, but we also did things [where we tried to experiment] like we had an idea to do a bum scene but improvised. Just running around with a camera. The idea was what if two bums found a camera and tried to make a movie, which is crazy but we were always like 'let's just try it.' At that point Dan and I had moved in together. I'm always like 'your life in improv reflects your life.' Me and Dan became good friends. We lived together for about a year, and that's what we were pursuing.