February 28–March 7, 2002

theater

Think Fast

Checking in on Philly’s improv scene.

by Toby Zinman

Game faces: Members of LunchLady Doris and (below) ComedySportz.

The British TV show Whose Line Is It Anyway? has been getting me through my gym workouts for months; sweating and laughing, I find its improvisational comedy irresistible. I realize that I’m not alone: Improv has become a hot trend in live theater these days, so I decided to see what was what on the local scene.

Off to The Playground, a funky, cabaret-style venue where three improv groups perform on a rotating schedule. It’s makeshift, it’s dark, it’s chilly; the refreshment counter specializes in hot chocolate and red licorice. Everything about this place says "Let’s Put on a Show!" and I’m all set to see some seat-of-the-pants gonzo theater — the kind of show that makes you go, "HOOOOO!" Improv, in all its various forms, can be Xtreme Theater. But it can also fall flat as a pancake: You can’t have extreme theater without extreme talent.

First surprise: big audiences — nearly full houses, lots of "regulars" — and I’m still mystified as to how everybody knows about these shows, since there is next to no advertising. Clearly, word-of-mouth still works.

First show: ComedySportz. This is "short form" improv turned competitive. There are "teams" in 22 cities. (All this was started in 1984 by Dick Chudnow in Milwaukee, which is still, apparently, the team to beat). Two teams of five players sit on opposing benches, and there is a referee in a striped shirt, equipped with whistle and stopwatch. Much of the success of the evening depends on the speed and wit of the referee, who has to play MC to what should be a rowdy audience. The night I saw it, the ref was a turkey — missing the boat, the beat, the point, over and over again. There are scoreboards and pennants to wave (I’m waving), and fan participation. When a player makes an error, we all go clap, clap and holler, "You’re outta here." (I’m clapping, I’m hollering.)

Since ComedySportz shows are committed to "family entertainment," the players self-censor, omitting anything dark or sexual; there are often groups of teenagers in the audience, some of them birthday parties. One result of this was an unnecessary dumbing down of the content, a lack of allusions to any cultural referent (other than Smurfs, on the night I saw it). No politics, movies, people in the news, sports, books, art, etc. This means there is less to "get" and, therefore, less wit to admire and more plain silliness.

(Confession No. 1: After initially having an excellent time, I got bored.)

If improv values speed, it devalues polish; where improv respects freshness, it disrespects precision; while improv encourages ingenuity, it discourages subtlety. Much of what is written about improvisational drama is hooked to psychological therapy: There’s a New Age-y sound to many of the books touting improv exercises as ways of releasing creativity, cultivating trust, developing bonds. This is fundamental to some kinds of actors’ training as well, although the risk in releasing inner children is that you might wind up with a roomful of brats.

"Playback" improv is the most obviously connected to this therapeutic inclination. I went to a Playback Philadelphia show where each month the focus is on a different theme. This time, in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the subject was dreams. A group of seven players, who mostly look like middle-aged ex-hippie types, theatrically illustrate a story somebody in the audience volunteers to tell. All of this is very slow, very earnest, very kind and filled with people closing their eyes and nodding in meaningful understanding. To the frequent accompaniment of bongo drums. The International Playback Theatre Network has connections in 30 countries.

(Confession No. 2: I looked at my watch about a hundred times in the course of the 90-minute show.)

Undaunted, I press on to what turns out to be the best show of the bunch. LunchLady Doris performs "long-form improv": Based on Del Close’s work, this is, as the name says, a longer, more intricate form of improv, abandoning the high-speed skit for the "natural pattern-making mechanisms in the human brain to forge a group mind" among the players and the audience.

It is fascinating to watch the drama start with the merest suggestion from the audience ("toaster," in this case). The cast of five stands in a line, speaking separately, first about what they see when they see a toaster ("I see my own reflection" was the best) and then what they feel, etc. There are uncanny moments when they speak as a group, apparently able to intuit instantaneously on a mass level. Of course, the whole business depends on their being able to pick up on each other’s lines without any hesitation, and the play moves into some bizarre realms, as each player chooses a plot direction — suddenly a Russian accent turns up, suddenly a child. Characters reappear and stories develop, and then — don’t ask me how — they achieve a conclusion, most satisfying and impressive when, after half an hour of this improvisation, they complete the loop with the thing (i.e., "toaster") that they began with. No props, no costumes, no net.

Next Line Comedy Theater

Fun but less successful at long-form improv is another group, Next Line Comedy Theater. They do two sets, each one beginning with a suggestion from the audience — "bad company" and "beach house," the night I saw it. Pairs develop story lines and are interrupted by other pairs with other stories; they weave the plot lines back and forth, and when they flounder, which is often, somebody suggests a standard improv exercise — for instance, "I would like to see a montage of spit takes," which involves a performer pretending to drink and then spit when the drinker hears something outrageous. (The best one: "Hi, Napoleon. It’s me, Wellington.") Mainly, the stories revolved around cruelty — a particularly unpleasant string of mean-to-animals bits — which seemed to be a measure of the adolescent appeal.

(Confession No. 3: I’m not an adolescent. Gasp.)

There will be improv festivals all over in the coming months: FoolFest in Orlando, Fla.; laugh/RIOT in Columbia, S.C.; the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in Australia; and in Chicago (home of the revered Second City, the source of much of the comedy genius of the U.S. and Canada in the past 41 years) an Improv Festival in April and a Funny Women Fest in July.

It’s tempting to speculate about improv’s popularity as a barometer of the cultural climate. Every show is an Event: You’ll never see it just that way again; it’s cheap, since it requires very little in production costs; it’s often funny; and funny is fun. Then, too, there is the "reality" element that contemporary audiences seem to find more attractive than artifice. And, as Bobbi Block, Philly’s reigning Queen of Improv, tells me, "The symbiotic relationship with the audience is crucial to all improv — the work onstage reflects the community and cannot exist without it. Scripted theater is impacted by audience energy as well, but non-scripted theater relies on it."

Finally, maybe the appeal of improv is that improvisation is the way we live life — our spontaneous, intuitive responses to the world make us who we are.

All the improv work I saw made me feel both admiration for the courage and talent of the performers as well as exasperation at the frequent waste of that talent in shows that were often empty and sometimes embarrassing. It also made me appreciate just how good Whose Line Is It Anyway? is. Back to the gym.

ComedySportz performs every Saturday night, 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m., at The Playground, 2030 Sansom St., $10-$12, 877-98-LAUGH, www.comedysportzphilly.com; Playback Philadelphia , call 215-508-3468 for show schedule; LunchLady Doris performs the second Sunday of the month at The Playground, $10, www.geocities.com/lunchladydoris_improv; Polywumpus will perform Saturday nights in March at the Brick Playhouse, 623 South St., and Sunday nights at The Point, 880 W. Lancaster Ave., Bryn Mawr, for information call 610-804-2214 or visit www.poptopix.com/polywumpus; Next Line Comedy performs every Thursday night at 9:30 at Dos, upstairs from Pizzeria Uno, on Second near South Street, www.nextlineimprov.com. For more information on improv, visit www.yesand.com or www.improvolymp.com.