Off-The-Cuff Wit is the Stuff of Fine Improv

Contra Costa Times
February 1, 1998

By Pat Craig

The three actors, pretending to be counter clerks at the Statford on Corned Beef, an audience-suggested name for a Shakespearean deli, spread across the tiny stage and strike their best Elizabethan poses.

"But soft," says one, "what lox on yonder bagel rests?"

"Tis the fish," the other continues, "and Juliet has the knife."

"Is this a dagger I see before me?" asks the lone woman. "Get thee to a freezer chest and puck fair brisket from the chill."

And on it goes, spinning wildly for five or 10 minutes, teetering between Shakespeare and insanity, astounding the audience as much as making, it laugh. The actors in this bizarre scene were making it all up as they went along, drawing inspiration from each other, and demonstrating why people - audiences and actors - get hooked on improvisational theater.

Improv reached its zenith in the Bay Area during the '60s and early '70s, when The Committee was a hot improvisation act in San Francisco's Broadway. And now improv, which never really went away, is again flexing its muscles, both as a tool for actors and performance artists, who use improvisation as a means of developing their craft, and as a working-without-a-net sort of theater, where actors are given a topic and improvise a story out of it.

When You're Hot, You're Hot

"There is a purity of inspiration in improv that most creative artists seek," says Rebecca Stockley, a longtime improvisational performer, currently with the San Francisco chapter of Theatresports, a competitive improv company working at San Francisco's Fort Mason. "There are nights when you just hit it, and everything is golden, not necessarily because you are the clever, but because you're almost channeling pure creativity."

Ask anyone who has performed improv, or played any of the hundreds of theater games designed to heighten improvisational abilities, and you'll hear quasi-spiritual tales of being overcome by the spirit of creativity. That's one reason improvisation classes are now attracting non-performers who are simply interested in improving their personal skills.

"Actually, you ge a real broad variety of people," says longtime improviser Sue Walden, who operates ImprovWorks, a training program in San Francisco, in addition to performing with Flash Family, which, after two decades, is probably the oldest continuously running improv group in the Bay Area.

"At our classes, we get probably equal number of performers and people interested in personal development. We have companies sending their employees to us to help them get more comfortable speaking. You have some people coming because they want to be able to talk to people more easily and stop feeling so shy, and you have actors looking to improve their skills."

Improv skills are really basic life skills, which make them useful to anyone, says Walden. But used in performance, they can create a unique sort of entertainment that engages the performers as much as it does the audience. "In entertainment you have process and product. If you're going for laughs, then the focus is on product," she says. "But if you focus on the process - listening, being open to what is offered, being mentally flexible to go with what is happening - that's when you get the real ensemble focus."

Going Against the Grain

And working on the process is one of the big reasons actors do improv. One of the unspoken rules is that you never repeat even your most successful material when performing. Obviously, this is a tough concept when you are entertainment an audience. The instinct of every performer is to go with the 'A' material.

Often successful groups, like The Committee in its heyday and Chicago's Second City, begin to rely less and less on spur-of-the-moment inspiration, and more on set pieces, which evolve out of improvisation but are hone into gems.

"It really is a different experience for both the performers and the audience," says Stockley. "Repeating feels like cheating. I mean, if I were going to do something over and over again, I would be in standup comedy or scripted performance. But doing something again and again feels like yanking a chain, and that's not what it's about for me."

Theatresports is an unusual blending of theater and sport, where two teams are each tossed similar ideas to improvise upon, and are then give points, Olympic style, by judges who watch the performances. The teams compete in a league Friday and Saturday night, and rack up wins and losses throughout the season, with the most successful groups competing in playoffs.

Other improvisational groups create different styles of theater.

True Fiction Magazine, a performance group that has morphed through several different incarnations over the past decade, creates longer pieces, some humorous, but others are horror or suspense stories that aren't intended to be funny at all, says Rafe Chase, one other group's longtime members.

"Basically, what we do is take an initial suggestion from the audience, then go directly into the story," he says. "Then we look for a way to dip our of that story into another, either from ourselves or from the audience. We'll go five minutes or so with the first story, then take another suggestion or maybe follow one of the characters into another scene." The audience gets a story that more of less follows a plot line, and the actors get the thrill of working without a net.

"I'm also a writer, and one aspect that I really enjoy is that this allows me to write and act in the moment; the story and everything else happens right then, and everything else happens right then, and everything is on the line," says Chase. "For me, those are some of the moments I feel most alive."

Even when the improv isn't performed directly for an audience, there is that same thrill for creating on the spot. "It's what I have a passion for," says Marcia Kimmell, a performer and teacher, who conducts classes at the Next Stage. "My interest is in empowering actors either to be great actors and have that spark of spontaneity that real life has, or for them to be able to create their own material. Most actors are coming in on someone else's artwork and interpreting it. As an actor, I thought, 30 years ago, I would never be an original artist, but be an interpreter of other people's art. But then I found by using improvisation and psychodrama, I could create very intense, theater about what's going on in my life that, it turns out, was also going on in other people's lives."

Putting 'Leftovers' to Good Use

Solo performers use improvisation to develop their scripts, and ensemble shows can be developed in improv, and either remain improvisational or gel into more or less set pieces.

Emotional connection with the performance is what most improvisers say is the appeal of their craft, both to audiences and the performers. Audiences like the idea of seeing theater created before their eyes, and performers like the high of working so close to the edge.

"With improv, you're there without a set script, and the audience says, 'OK, I'll go with you on the most ludicrous trip, and if you tell me a good story, I'll stick with it and commit to it," says Paul Killam, who performs with Theatersports and True Fiction Magazine. "And, of course, there is the thrill-seeker element, who come to see those times during a night when someone falls from the tightrope. And the other thing is, you don't get the sense of someone doing the show for the 180th time in a row."