Joshua Raoul Brody

Started Playing With Company: 1986
First Improv Class: 1981 or so with John Elk in the back room of the Old Spaghetti Factory in North Beach. It was a miserable experience, just a bunch of stand-up comics trying to beat each other to the punchline, so when I first learned about this new group that was dedicated to "improv games performed as a competitive sporting event" I thought it was the worst idea I'd ever heard
First BATS Class: I took 101 three times, with Rebecca, William, and I think maybe Barbara. No idea when, but all three were within a year or two of each other.
BATS Coach: Since 1988 (I first co-taught song improvisation with Brian Lohmann when Pulp Playhouse stopped off at Ashland on its way up to the Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle.)
Web Site: www.jraoul.org
Contact: company@improv.org

Joshua Raoul Brody has been accompanying the members of BATS Improv since long before its origin—he first worked with Barbara Scott when she was with the legendary Santa Cruz troupe Screaming Mimis in the late ‘70s, and soon thereafter joined Reed Kirk Rahlmann (and BATS alumnus Brian Lohmann, as well as Greg Proops and Micheal McShane) in Faultline. BATS founding member William Hall and his fellow Fratelli Bologna guested at a Dumb Songs Festival thrown by Mr. Brody’s band, The STUPEDS, in the early 80s. One of Brody’s first contacts with his wife, Juliana Grenzeback, was when she was BATS's first producing director/stage manager/chief cook and bottle sweep, and he shared accompanying duties with Joe Paulino and Michael Whiteley.

Mr. Brody came to improv from the pop music field, although he was always attracted to bands with a comic/theatrical flavor — the Mothers of Invention, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. Moving from New York in 1974, following a brief stay at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, he discovered the Bay Area to be a hotbed of comical musedy acts, and quickly found work as musical director for The Pointless Sisters and the Rick & Ruby Show (who later found a smidgen of fame on the Pee-Wee Herman HBO special). With Rick & Ruby, he went on tour with Robin Williams, both opening the show and accompanying Williams on a couple of songs. This led to an appearance on ‘Mork & Mindy’ and other TV exposure, a period Brody refers to as ‘when we were almost famous’. Through Williams, Brody met and began accompanying LA improv groups such as War Babies and the Comedy Store Players, but it wasn’t until he met Lohmann and Faultline that he began to pursue the craft of improv accompaniment regularly.

Mr. Brody is currently BATS Musical Director, accompanying many if not most of their Main Stage shows. Joshua also is a teacher of song improvisation, often with Barbara Scott, and the two of them are members of the a capella improv choir Tonal Chaos. He is principal accompanist for True Fiction Magazine (of which he was a founding member) and Three For All.

Outside of his improv work, Mr. Brody is a composer for film, video, corporate events and multimedia; is part of the quartet Tango No. 9; accompanies wacky multi-instrumentalist Ralph Carney and bewigged chanteuse Kitty Ultrasound; and was cover boy for Orchestra Nostalgico’s CD ‘Club Foot Orchestra plays Nino Rota’.  He and Merle ‘Ian Shoales’ Kessler received rave reviews for BROKE, their most recent "one-man show so big it takes three guys, a gal, and a six-pack of beer to do it", and are currently plotting to revive their mock folk act, And They’re Cops!, about which he says, ‘We wanted to be the Steely Dan of the 2000’s, but it looks like they’ve got a lock on that title themselves, so we’re hoping ‘Steely Dan of the 90’s’ isn’t taken."

When asked to describe himself in one word, Mr. Brody replies, ‘Unable to follow instructions."

Q&A With J. Raoul Brody

First BATS Show: It was a match at New Performance Gallery (now ODC).

Favorite Formats: The musicals, of course, including Spontaneous Broadway, Disco Romance, and The Elvis Show we're doing this summer. I also like directed improv like Gorilla, although I'm not crazy about all the bells and whistles. But I think That Transcendent Moment that we're all shooting for has equal odds of popping up on any given night, in any format.

Best Moment on the BATS Stage: Tim Ereneta and I once improvised a perfect song (I transcribed it and hung it on the bulletin board). Ialso had a real good time accompanying a forward-and-backward opera executed by the Orlando team at a tournament once. And there've been some really good psychic connections with True Fiction, Three For All, and songsters Barbara Scott and Kat Koppett from time to time -- that moment, as I've said before, when you all independently make the decision to leap off the cliff at the same time, and realize after doing so that a meteor just happened to swoop by to catch you.

Improv Advice: Failure is not as painful as it's hyped to be, and should be courted rather than avoided.

Artistic Influences: Frank Zappa, Bob Dorough

Favorite Movies: Pink Flamingos, Woman Under The Influence, Skidoo, Ant Farm's Media Burn

Favorite Music: Something I've never heard before

Favorite Theatre: The Bald Soprano (Ionesco), Gonad the Barbarian (Duck's Breath Mystery Theater), some of Joe Goode's stuff

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