Johnstone envied the passion of a sports audience and looked to create a participatory theatre experience that generated that same response.
In the Theatresports format, two teams of improvisers compete against one another for points. The show might consist of improvisational games, songs, or scenes inspired by information obtained from the audience. The goal of Theatresports was to attract people who wouldn't normally go to the theatre and provide a structure in which to train performers.
Over the next few years, performers from around the world discovered the Theatresports format and formed their own companies in which to perform it. One such company was Seattle Theatresports, founded in 1983 as the first U.S. company to perform the format.
In November 1986, a group of San Francisco theatre artisits invited Rebecca Stockley, a teacher from Seattle Theatresports, to lead a workshop and teach the new format. The 20 local actors who enrolled in the workshop had varying experience in local theatre productions, but shared little or no experience with improvisation.
That workshop culminated in a sold-out performance on November 10, 1986, at the Zephyr Theater (now the New Conservatory Theatre). Several actors in the audience that night would later join BATS founding members to form BATS’ first company of improvisers.
Soon afterwards, a core group of improv enthusiasts from that workshop began to hold weekly lunch meetings at the offices of Young Audiences of the Bay Area. Their goal was to build an organization that would allow them to continue exploring this exciting new format.
The founders were guided by two principles. First, the company was built around a strong coaching philosophy to ensure the continuation of study and the development of new players. Second, the company was established as a player-based organization—a collective without directors, dramaturgy, set designers, playwrights, or a central administrative persona.
In early 1987, Bay Area Theatresports formed its first performing company and began offering classes. The company performed on Monday nights at many different theater spaces in San Francisco: the New Performance Gallery, the New Conservatory Theatre, The Asian American Theater, 450 Geary, and the Bayfront Theater at Fort Mason Center, among others.
It wasn’t as if improvisation was brand new to the Bay Area. In fact, “long-form” improvisational theatre made its debut in San Francisco in the late 1960s, when The Committee, a North Beach-based improv troupe, developed ideas and techniques related to longer improvised stories.
When the first BATS company was formed in 1987, actors from various backgrounds and performing groups came together to share not only an interest in the Theatresports format, but also a common love of good, fully-developed stories with characters they could sink their teeth into. Distinct from short-scene comedy improv, long-form can take various forms and styles, but usually tells longer, more complete stories and was a natural for the company. Soon BATS was doing its own long-form shows in addition to the Theatresports matches.
In 1988, BATS began renting space at the Army Street Studios, which was its home for several years. It served as the location for most workshops and some studio and workshop performances.
BATS began to attract the attention of local actors and others who were interested in exploring improvisation. BATS began offering regular workshops to the general public and in 1991, the BATS Workshop Players (a student ensemble that was the precursor to today’s Sunday Player group) began performing on Tuesday nights at the Phoenix Theater.
As one of the earliest U.S. companies, BATS was a leader in the growing worldwide network of Theatresports companies. (BATS alumni founded Los Angeles Theatresports in 1988.) BATS hosted International Theatresports Tournaments at the Magic Theater in 1990, 1991, and 1992, drawing improvisers from around the globe.
As BATS continued to grow, it became clear that more formal administrative leadership was required. The board of directors took a clearer leadership role and created the artistic director, dean, and executive director positions, moving away from the player’s collective model. However, leadership was still player-based; company players filled the new leadership positions and the main ensemble continued to set the artistic program and select new company members.
In 1994, BATS offered its first summer school session in conjunction with Stanford University, featuring a residency with Keith Johnstone himself, which became an annual tradition with Johnstone visiting each August. Today, the BATS summer session draws students from all over the Bay Area, throughout the United States, and from as far away as Australia, Europe, and Japan.
In the early 1990s, the company began to explore options for a permanent home venue. Other improv performance models were discussed, such as the Second City or comedy-club model of a bar setting with drink minimums providing much of the revenue. But the BATS company felt strongly that improvisation was a legitimate theatrical form and deserved to be performed in a theatre venue.
BATS had performed off-and-on at Fort Mason Center’s Bayfront Theater for several years, and when the Center started to look for a new permanent resident company in the late 1990s, BATS jumped at the opportunity. BATS moved into the Bayfront Theater, its current home, in March 1997.
As a result of the larger, more permanent theater space, BATS experienced tremendous growth in the late 1990s. BATS added more classes and workshops, increased performing opportunities
(including the creation of the Belfry performance group, which performed from 1996 to 2002)
and expanded its schedule to three shows a week, Friday through Sunday nights.
In 1998, BATS began its Laughing Stock program, which offers free improvisation classes to people living with HIV, AIDS, Hepatitis C, cancer, and other chronic, life-threatening illnesses. (Partners and caregivers are also welcome.) Today, BATS offers more than 50 free workshops each year.
A series of fund raising campaigns and capital improvement projects in 2001, 2002, and 2005, completely renovated the Bayfront Theater, creating new lobby and concession areas, replacing all 200 seats and building a brand-new, wheelchair accessible stage. In doing so, BATS created one of the nation’s finest theatre settings devoted exclusively to improvisational theatre.
Today, BATS Improv is the Bay Area’s premier improvisational performing company and improv training program, attracting more than 11,000 audience members and 1,300 workshop enrollments every year. BATS is known for the quality, depth, scope and variety of its improvisational theatre programming which includes the trademarked Johnstone shows Theatresports, Gorilla Theatre, Micetro, and The Life Game as well as a variety of long-form and genre formats created in house by the BATS Company.
BATS also runs a successful corporate training program and teaches improv in schools as a popular participant in the Bay Area’s Young Audiences program.
BATS is a eight-time winner of the SF Bay Guardian’s annual Best of the Bay poll, collecting “Best Improv Company” honors five times, “Best Comedy Troupe” in 2004, and “Best Theater Company” and “Best First Date Spot” in 2006. BATS was named San Francisco’s “Best Improv Group” by SF Weekly in 2005.
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