The attractions of improv

A new American online literary magazine called The Point has a piece about the improv scene in New York.  The type of show that it describes ('The Harold') is an established 'Chicago-style' format that is well-known in North America but rarely done well in other places.

For the last month I've been taking 'Harold' classes with David Shore, a highly credentialed Canadian teacher-performer.  There are enough genuine variations in what the format demands from what I know already to warrant some formal teaching on the matter.  I've enjoyed myself.  Whether there's a place for the Harold in the crowded London comedy-theatre market is the bigger question.

There are between 12 and 15 of us at any given class and quite a range in experience, ambition and accomplishment.  With twenty-plus years of performing under my belt I'm one of the two 'oldest' in both improv and planetary terms.  The make-up of the group is almost identical to that of the first Theatresports class I took with Lyn Pierse.  Looking around the room is like looking at a mirror image of my younger self.  Even more so than other forms of comedy, improv are overwhelmingly white, middle class and degree educated, although there is now less of a bias against female performers, especially when compared to stand-up.

It's the motivations that haven't changed.  They're the same in New York and London in 2010 as they were for me in Sydney in 1990: -

They came to the city after college to discover themselves, to become individuals. At some point in those first few months they needed work and they got their first gig as a caterer or their first glimpse of real-life corporate culture.  Do you remember that moment?  The surprise at seeing actual cubicles?  The dronelike aspect of people just a few years older than you?  The humiliation of eating at your own desk?  It’s a culture of boredom.  Everyone seems to be wearing a false face.  Spontaneity is almost actively discouraged.  You realize, perhaps for the first time, how easy it is to be meaningless— even to be successful and meaningless.  It is a world most of us want to backpedal away from, but don’t know how.  And then somehow the unicycle of improv comes wobbling by.  Is it any wonder we leap on it?

I can still show you the exact seat I sat in Belvoir St Theatre the first time I went to a Sunday night Theatresports show.  I can tell you exactly who was in the cast and even the content of some of the scenes.  On Monday morning I got up and went off to my marketing job at Unilever but nothing was ever the same again.