The Twin Cities Improv Festival's most fabulous fabricators

This week, more than two dozen comedy troupes from all over the U.S. will take the tiny stage at Brave New Workshop to show off their chops at the Twin Cities Improv Festival. With both local and national groups performing, attendees will get to see how our homegrown talent stacks up against all them big-city out-of-towners. Here are the CliffsNotes on some of the festival’s more notable participants.

Rare Bird Show / Fingergun (Thursday, 7 p.m.)
Philadelphia isn’t known for its thriving improv scene, but if anyone were to change that, it would be Rare Bird Show. Sharp and astute, this three-member troupe takes the audience-suggestion method and turns in on-the-fly scenes with sustained entertainment value on par with well-rehearsed sketch comedy. Let’s put it this way: You’ll resist the urge to play “spot the suggested word” and just enjoy the damn show.

Fingergun has a local rep to live up to. Members Mike Fotis and Joe Bozic co-direct the Brave New Institute, the local training ground where many folks learn to get out of their heads and into their scenes. Practicing what it preaches, Fingergun is a risk-taking band of improvisers who routinely go to the edge, find out there’s a ledge beyond it, and keep going.

Parallelogramophonograph / ComedySportz Twin Cities (Friday, 8:30 p.m.)
In “Some Like It Improvised,” Parallelogramophonograph dresses up long-form improv in 1940s suits and madcap scenarios reminiscent of the era’s screwball comedies. This Austin, Texas group pulls it off so well, in fact, you’ll leave swearing you can still smell the cigarettes and scotch.

If you like your improv so clean you can eat off it, Minneapolis’ own ComedySportz team can definitely fill that role. Smart, goofy, and rambunctious, ComedySportz TC provides audiences with a show worthy of Bill Cosby’s stamp of approval, if he ever deigned to attend. Its popularity proves a long-held suspicion: Secretly, we all want improv we can watch with our moms.

The Reckoning / Brave New Workshop (Saturday, 7 p.m.)
Masters of the long-form improv style known as The Harold, The Reckoning seamlessly weave scenes and characters into an unholy absurdist stew where the jokes are the journey and it all (hopefully) comes out in the metaphorical wash. And while Chicago is lousy with improv troupes, these guys make their city proud by making it all look so easy while at the same time putting every one of their contemporaries on notice.

There’s really no excuse our hosts shouldn’t get in on the fun. Minnesotans have a history of being clever without making a lot of noise about it. The Brave New Workshop cast knows all too well how to disappear completely into a scene and make with the funny, the awkward, and the surreal. If you’ve ever stuck around after a mainstage show to see what the cast is capable of, you know what it means to beam with local pride.