Twin Cities Improv Fest: The fine art of winging it
Ryan Haro
Tarantino, one of the troupes performing at the Improv Festival
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Improv comedy is like throwing knives: You need a razor-sharp weapon (be it a blade or a brain), an unerring sense of timing, and excellent aim. In either case, if you screw that up, well, the results won't be very funny. Making jokes hit the bull's-eye on the fly is all in a night's work for the two dozen comedy troupes appearing at the Twin Cities Improv Festival, which takes over the stage at Brave New Workshop on Thursday, June 25, to Sunday, June 28. Local performers pair up with out-of-town crews during each set, and they get about 25 minutes to work their comic mojo. Decider spoke with festival co-founder Butch Roy, who also performs with the groups Five Man Job and HUGE Theater, about the fine art of making it up as you go along. (Also see Decider's interview with festival co-organizer and performer Jill Bernard, and a video roundup of some of the festival performers.)
Decider: Are there more improv comedy groups in the Twin Cities than is common elsewhere? It seems that way.
Butch Roy: I'm not sure if it has more per capita, but I think you have more improv groups per improviser. In places like Chicago and L.A., where people are looking for exposure, they tend to find a group and everyone gets behind that name and become known for that style. In the Twin Cities, you'll have people like myself, Jill Bernard, Mike Fotis, Lauren Anderson, who are in three, four, five different groups. Some have only minor changes in the lineup, but typically if a group forms, it's because they're doing something structurally different or have a different sort of energy. We have a pretty normal-sized pool of improvisers for the size of our city. They're all just very prolific.
I'm in a couple of different duos. The Twin Cities is great in that people are very free to mix-and-match. There aren't these walls between the theaters. I can get together with somebody from ComedySportz or Stevie Ray's. People who really like each other's work can just form a duo and get onstage and try it out. There's actually a good number of duos and trios in the Cities, I think, that exist just for that reason—people see energy that appeals to them and decide to see what happens when they get onstage together.
D: Just to be devil's advocate: What makes improv worthwhile? Why not just work from a script?
BR: I think theater appeals to people because it seems very accessible. It's done by people. It's not done by movie stars or CGI. That could be you. Improv is even another step further. We hear from audience members all the time that "I could never do that. I'd never be so brave." It feels a lot more free and daring than working from a script. The audience is a lot more engaged because there is a certain level of "Oh my God, I can't believe that they're doing this" that you don't get from scripted theater. I mean, I don't think anyone sits in the audience at a scripted play and says, "My God, I can’t believe they memorized all these lines," so I think that’s our advantage doing improvised theater. It captures people’s attention and imagination, as far as what it must take to get up and do that.
D: What does it take to get up and do that?
BR: A lot of unlearning of adult sensibilities. Improv really works to quiet down that rational adult survival instinct that teaches you to think about what you’re going to do and weigh the consequences—if it makes sense—and if you’ll look stupid, and things like that, which is kind of a fear-based way to assess your every move. Improv teaches you to go the other direction and just be free and know that whatever you’re going to do is okay. It’s an ability to get comfortable that I think is the most key. To know that it’s okay to be ridiculous. That’s the biggest thing.
D: What do you do during a show when something seems like it’s going shaky? How do you bring something back from the brink of disaster?
BR: Oddly enough, I think it’s being willing to let go and ride that out that will really serve you. The groups that cope with that well are the ones that don’t go back into [their] survival instincts. You’d think the thing to do is to figure out how to save it and make it funny again, but that’s often the last thing you want to do. Really good improv thrives on freedom from those instincts. So when it starts to go wrong, of course your brain wants to kick into high gear and say, "Oh my God, what should I do?" And really, the best answer is you should do a lot less worrying and let it be what it is, because trying to grab onto it and apply those instincts to it will just make it less fun and more fearful.
