What's Their Line?

Contra Costa Times
August 5, 2001

By Pat Craig

The idea, Tara McDonough recalls, was to go on stage and create long, improvised versions of '80s John Hughes films, like "Sixteen Candles" and "Pretty in Pink"-to dress in vintage clothes and riff on Reagan-era teen angst.

It was not something that had the commercial potential of, say, a "Phantom of the Opera."

"It was a lot of fun to do, but there was no way I would take the risk of renting a theater to perform it," she says.

Instead, late one night, McDonough and some of her friends at Bay Area Theatresports climbed on stage at the Bayfront Theatre in San Francisco's Fort Mason Center, and wailed as pretty and pink as they wanted to be for the small audience on that same Hughes wavelength.

It worked, more or less, both as a show and as the sort of theatrical risk-taking that brings many actors to improvisation. Improv is theater without a net-no script, no set or costumes to speak of, no particular beginning and no particular end to reach.

When it works, improv creates a sublime magic for both the performers, who often feel a mind link with the others on stage, and for the audience, which gets the intellectual rush of being present at the instant of creation. When it doesn't work, it is typically brought to an instant and painless death, and the performers go off on a new tangent.

It is just that spontaneity that is bringing performers and audiences to a growing number of improv organization flourishing around the Bay Area, from high school improv leagues to the teams that perform six shows a week at the Bayfront Theatre.

"A desire for authenticity is really a current trend. It's a term people use when looking for friends, entertainment and even their own personal development," says Rebecca Stockley, dean of the BATS School of Improv. "A lot of young people, especially, are looking for entertainment that is loose, frayed at the edges and has a playful quality of authenticity. People are kind of hungry for that after so much branding and mass production and everything so available en masse. Having something unique, especially in live entertainment, is wonderful."

That improv is getting exposure several times a week on national television in both the British and American versions of "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" has helped build an audience for live improv, which has become both a blessing and curse for improvisers.

"When 'Whose Line Is It' was first on the network, we has a sudden insurgence of college and high school students, and it seems like that is continuing," Stockley says. "One great advantage of the show is now when we say we do improv, people know what it is. It has put us into the awareness of the American public. Before, improv was kind of a fringe thing, like live jazz music, where people who love it go, but there are lots who are just not aware of it. The audiences now tend to be a little younger and a little hipper, and I have the impression they are coming from a bit further away."

Most colleges, and even high schools, have improv teams for students who have become enchanted with the form. There is even a high school improv league-the Devil Mountain Improv League-where teams from eight area high schools compete in a schedule that runs from January to May.

Students often come to improv because they have seen it on television, and it looks fairly simple, says drama teacher Kathy McCarty, who coaches the improv team at Pleasant Hill's College Park High School. They soon learn, however, that live improv, unlike that on television, is not edited to remove the moments that don't work, and isn't always successful.

Still, it is an excellent playground for those with quick minds, she says. "At first it may seem less threatening than being in a play because there's not all that memorization, but as they grow and develop techniques, they realize there is a challenge to it," McCarty says. "They become really quick on their feet, and it offers a real intellectual challenge to them. There is also that instant gratification you don't get in the same way from a scripted show. They feel like they haven't been rehearsing, but they have been."

Team members often meet several times a week to improvise and, although the rules of the game make it impossible to plan sketches in advance, the more improvisers work together, the better they are able to work in concert creating a piece.

Jared Dager, a commissioner for the league and member of the College Park High team, came to improv through his interest in drama.

"I was at a drama club meeting and got pulled on stage for an improv game," he says. "Then they put me on the team and picked on me because I was a freshman."

He was hooked on the process and began to learn the league playbook, a list of improvisational games, ranging from mock musicals to faux Shakespeare, that may be used during a competition. The sessions have become popular with students for both artistic and practical reasons.

"The price of movie tickets is almost up to $9, but improv is only $2, and with improv you make an on-the-spot contribution that could be the next scene," he says. "So it's a great way to have some cheap fun on Fridays."

Improv at all levels tends to be less expensive than most other theater. Bay Area Theatresports, for example, charges from $6 to $15 for its shows. All this month, the company is hosting its annual summer improv festival, which includes performances by a number of improv groups, and programs by Keith Johnstone, author and inventor of the Theatresports games concept.

Theatresports tends to be the most defined form of improv, and many of the other groups performing throughout the Bay Area began at Theatresports. For many, improv becomes a sort of addiction, an endorphin rush satisfied only by performing.

Dave Dyson, for example, a member of Theatresports Belfry group, which performs in San Francisco on Thursdays, also belongs to East Bay Improv, a group that performs the first Sunday of each month at Cafe Eclectica, 1309F Solano Ave., Albany.

Dyson, like any number of those involved in improvisation, finds the craft a tremendous outlet for creative urges and the need to perform.

McDonough, another Belfry member, sees the process as almost as important as the result. "In Belfry, because we're the smallest group, part of the payoff is in playing with each other-it's less about doing a great show, sometimes, than having the experience of having done it," she says.

The idea with improv, especially when performed under the Theatresports banner, is not necessarily to always go for the laughs. Called "barprov," somewhat derisively, standard cabaret improv pursues frequent punch lines, often at the expense of character and story development.

Belfry, and most of the other groups performing at Theatresports, try for a balance, although laughs are always a big part of the sketches. "Sometimes it's kind of tough to form a performing perspective that balances art and commercial appeal," McDonough says. "Any artist has to deal with that. It's not like we're doing high art here, but part of the marketing challenge of BATS is trying to balance that we're not a comedy club; we're trying to give more than that."

Essentially, the idea of good improv is to create a humor that comes out of characters and situations, rather than jokes. "The comedy comes more from laughing because the audience recognizes something that is true," she says. "The funny things come from being astute observers of life.