A Tale Of Two Improv Places
What happens when two improv organisations in different parts of the world happen to have the same name - and then discover each other exist?
This is the story of The Improv Place, USA and The Improv Place, UK. Last week, after a series of conversations, one of the two organisations changed names. This episode tells the story of how these companies came about, and how they reached a resolution about their names.
This episode features:
Jermaine Trice from The Improv Place
Check out recordings of some of the shows The Improv Place has been staging by following these links:
Voices - Episode 7
https://youtu.be/WKX_9US110k
Pandemic Chef - Episode 3
https://youtu.be/-VOgCldPpow
Sing! - Episode 1
https://youtu.be/Q3JyOclEFoc
Variété - Episode 1
https://youtu.be/NUaIayFtQ24
The House Show - Episode 1
https://youtu.be/VUmayiFs9nI
Katy Schutte and Chris Mead from The Improv Place UK, which is now known as The International Improv Station
You can find them at their old site, ahead of their rebrand at https://theimprov.place/
which will soon become - http://internationalimprovstation.com/
The Improv Chronicle Podcast is produced and hosted by Nottingham improviser Lloydie James Lloyd
Get the world of improv in your inbox every two weeks - improvchronicle.substack.com
Get transcripts of episodes and blogs at improvchronicle.com
Get in touch at newsdesk@improvchronice.com
Theme music - Sam Plummer
Logo design - Hélène Dollie
Episode transcript:
This… is the Improv Chronicle Podcast. I'm Lloydie.
Lloydie James Lloyd: So, what happens when two improv organizations in different parts of the world happen to have the same name and then discover that each other exist?
Today's episode tells the story of The Improv Place and The Improv Place, one based in the USA, the other based in the UK, both doing improv activity online. Last week, one of the two organizations changed names after a series of mediated conversations between the two companies. Just afterwards, both parties sat down to talk about the process and some of the things that they're taking away from it. This is what happened.
Jermaine Trice: My name is Jermaine Trice. I'm the founder of the Improv Place in the U.S., which was founded in 2019. I've been doing improv off and on since the late 90s, starting with Second City in like the late 90s, early 2000s, and lots of workshops in Chicago. I'm from Chicago originally.
And so, I took a break while having to make money in the professional world and I started back up again in about 2016 performing improv again. So, I have a lot of years’ experience doing improv semiprofessionally, not professionally
Lloydie: And what was it that was the kind of creative spark for you to set up The Improv Place?
Jermaine: Well, I found that when I started improv again, back in 2016, that if I wanted to perform, I actually needed to take a class; I need to pay. And it's like, you know, I don't really need to learn, I just want a space to perform. And then when I was performing, I also found that it was difficult to be myself. I felt like I had to perform in someone else's image of an improviser. And that that didn't feel right to me. So, I went into space where people can be themselves. And I also wanted a space where you didn't have to pay to play and basically you just perform.
Lloydie: One of the shows Jermaine is particularly proud of is Voices. Recently, there was a rapper who appeared doing a fan rap, explaining what the platform meant to him.
Jermaine: We're going to actually share Chris’ fan rap with you.
C.M.C.: This is Chris, a.k.a. CMC, with a big thank you to Voices. Voices, this rap; it's for you.
Riding on the loose flick like a {indistinct 3:19} because it's Tuesday. Now, you stay ready for the huge day, because it might mean like I lean in my {indistinct 3:25 – 26} in show to this show…
Lloydie: You have three words that scream out from your website straight away when you kind of go to the homepage and that's elevate, empower and entertain.
Jermaine: Our goal, our mission is to elevate voices and give people opportunity. Empower is related to that. It's empowering performers to be okay with being themselves and not being ashamed of their culture or their nationality or their sexual orientation or whatever it happens to be, empowering people to just be themselves.
And entertain; it really goes back to what I was saying about the original mission was giving people a place to perform. And just focusing on entertaining without rules. You know, improv for something that is free form has a lot of rules. And I don't really believe in a lot of those rules. It's like, you know, be yourself. If I'm not saying yes-and or whatever, that's okay. Just entertain.
Chris Mead: Great question. Great question. That is covered in Section 11.
Katy Schutte: This week, we really {crosstalk 4:54). We really…
Lloydie: So, to the U.K. and the story of the other Improv Place.
Katy: It's important to us. It's a part of our…
Lloydie: Which was set up by improvisors, Katie Schutte and Chris Mead.
Chris: There's a couple of things that I think contributed to The Improv Place that arrived as of when it came into being in 2020. But the instigation was a little bit before then.
And I always think there were two big things that inspired us. One, was the nature of conversation on improvised Facebook groups. And it's really interesting because improv is such a – as an art form, it teaches us to collaborate and be joyful and support each other. And sometimes on these really big Facebook groups, that joy was absent and there was actually quite a lot of toxicity and name calling and it just didn't feel like the community I knew. And I don't think that's the people; that’s sort of the platform. I think Facebook is so big. And I wanted to collaborate. I wanted to talk to other people about this art for my love. But they didn't seem to be any place where the greater rules of the Internet didn't apply and where things didn't descend into name calling and hurt and people misunderstanding each other.
And the other thing was when I was talking to Katie about it, Katie was saying, “At the moment we travel all over the world and we teach.” And Katie just had the really good point of and maybe we have one interaction with that community. We teach one workshop or we are part of one workshop and we have these brilliant experiences. And then we just have to wave goodbye to them and go back to our own community. Couldn't there be a way that we could continue to teach and learn from each other?
And at that point, that was pretty radical because no one was really teaching online. It was a new idea, really, I think in a lot of ways. And this was in late 2019 that we talked about that and started to build it.
Lloydie: And then the pandemic hit. And Katie explains what happened next.
Katy: When Chris and I had a year or so of work left in our diaries that disappeared overnight (as the same again for so many people). And because we were already talking about the community, we were like, “Well, this project has just hit the top of our priority list”, because it's the only one that works in the context of this new world.
So, I think in a slightly anxious state, we were like, “Okay, let's like start pushing through on this thing now that we would have maybe taken a little bit longer to put into place.” And we built it around the people that joined after it launched.
Lloydie: So, how did the two organizations find out each other exist? Jermaine takes up the story.
Jermaine: So, I was well into doing online shows and maybe it was like late May or June of 2020. And I received an email or a message from one of the folks at The Improv Place UK saying, “Hey, yes, we're starting this thing and it's called The Improv Place.” And I was like, “Oh wait a minute, I'm the improv place.” And they're like, “Oh, would you like to collaborate or something like that?”
And I didn't really say this at the time, but it was the whole collaborating with someone else was kind of anti the vision of the improv place, because it's about owning things and empowering people as opposed to, “Oh, hey, we're going to be under someone else's umbrella.”
So, I was at that time actually kind of taken aback that the other Improv Place or the other soon to be Improv Place wasn't really understanding my perspective.
So, from then on, we can both win in our own directions, but causing confusion in the improv world where folks are like, “Oh, I'm not sure if you're like the same or different. I've seen some shows or I've taken some classes, the locals are different. What exactly? Like who are you?”
So, I was feeling like, and I'm sure it was similar for the Improv Place, U.K. that didn't have like a unique identity.
Katy: Someone got in touch and said, “Do you know there is another one?” We were like, “Oh, we thought we'd done our research.” We hadn't. So, Jermaine was on Facebook with his page. So, we didn't really know what to do because we felt like we committed and in our slightly anxious state, I suppose, of the world burning around us, we just went, hey, well, the sensible thing to do would just be to, like, get in touch and say, “Oh, my gosh, we have the same company name. Would you be up for kind of trading in or us buying it off you?”
And now in retrospect, after a year of education in so many things, we realized that that was a complete misstep. And talking to Jermaine fairly recently and having Velvet Wells there as well, it was just like so obvious. And to us now as well, actually, when we just think about it, it's such a colonialist move to be like, “Well, someone else apparently has got our company name. So, we'll just ask them if it's okay.”
And we actually didn't want to pass it over, but it felt very amicable. He was just like, “Okay, cool. Well, we'll both keep it and it doesn't look like it's going to be a problem. We're in different countries.” But then, of course, improvisation became completely global. I don't think either of us realized the reach of our work and how much perhaps would intersect or that people would be looking for one or other of us and find the “wrong one.”
Lloydie: As time went by, they seemed to be definite confusion between the two organizations. Here's Jermaine again.
Jermaine: So, I was in the conversation with the Black Improv Alliance for a project that we were working on together. And we were actually talking about that. And they were saying to me, “Yeah, we weren't really sure what was going on. If you were like the same working together, we weren't sure.” And lots of people were saying that. And this was like maybe two months ago.
And one of the members of Black Improv Alliance, Velvet Wells, actually s…
Lloydie: Ah.
Jermaine: Oh, you…
Lloydie: Velvet’s awesome. Velvet’s awesome.
Jermaine: So, he was like, “I'm going to be doing the thing with the Improv Place, U.K. later today. And, you know, I just heard your story and I'm a little concerned.”
Lloydie: Hmm.
Jermaine: And so he actually arranged a meet up with the two companies. We had the meeting. And at the conclusion of the first meeting, we had several meetings, but at the conclusion of the first meeting, the Improv Place, U.K. thought that the best course of action would be to change your name.
Lloydie: What was your reaction to that?
Jermaine: Gut reaction was, “It's about time.” Really, that was my gut reaction, but I was actually very appreciative of them understanding my situation and not really just saying, “Hey, we know more people, whatever. We're just going to keep this.” So, I think that was very supportive of them.
Chris: We were hopelessly naive a year ago that these two companies could coexist even though they were in different countries. Because at the time, you know, this is right the beginning of the pandemic, we didn't know how it was going to explode online and how everyone was going to start learning from everyone else. So, the fact that we were in different countries seemed sort of okay. It was enough for us to think, “Okay, let's keep going.”
And then everything happened. And everyone, as I said, started learning from everyone else and we couldn't. We realized that what we were doing was essentially not allowing Jermaine's work to get to all the people it should be getting to.
And as soon as we heard that, as soon as we were able to speak to him, Velvet Wells brought this to us and was there throughout the conversation; the multiple conversations that we had. And yeah, we just got to a point where we realized – both of us realized there was never even really much of a discussion about it. We've got to change a name. That's really the only thing we can do at this point to make right this mistake that we made.
Katy: I think there are different ways that you could look at that. And there's the sort of capitalist choice which is like, we could have progressed. We could have not changed our name and been fine. I think it would have maybe, we can't tell, but it would maybe have affected Jermaine more maybe, or we'd have been able to just continue just fine. But that's not the point, really.
Chris and I look back at our company values and was like, as Chris says, there was no choice, because of our company values or inclusion and diversity. We can't make a choice where we're following, you know, sort of the money or the business model or the winning, competing strand. That just wouldn't have been ethically in keeping with what we're trying to do.
So, I think if we had fought in any way, like personally, it would have felt awful. We would have been stupid white dickheads. And I think we're doing something that sits right. It feels right. It's not like Jermaine needs our assistance at all. Like he's fine. He's doing really well. But I'm glad that anything we can do is positive for his company.
Lloydie: So, you've settled on a new name and what's that?
Chris: It's the International Improv Station.
Lloydie: And how did you come to that?
Chris: Interesting.
Katy: You know, we kind of spit-balled a bunch of ideas, basically, and then we got into a space; kind of head space. And that was just one of the ones that we jammed out in our meeting. And we both kind of thought it was a bit jokey and a bit silly and then kept coming back to it and then shared a few ideas in the community and other people attached to it. And we're like, "Oh yeah. Oh, it's definitely that then.”
Lloydie: So, what does Jermaine see for the future of what is now the only Improv Place?
Jermaine: I want people to have a place to for their voices to be heard. And there is a show that I produced last year that I'm planning to have a 2.0 version of which is called Voices, which does exactly that. So, if anyone has something to say or some talent that they would like to show to the world, again, perform at theimprovplace.org and we will share our stage with you.
Lloydie: Katie, from what will now refer to as the International Improv Station, thinks one of the key things that we take away from the whole process is communication.
Chris: And actually, what we didn't do when we first spoke to Jermaine was initiate more of a conversation. It was sort of a transactional like, “Would you want to change now? Okay, cool. See you later” rather than opening up. So, I think there's something in that. And we try and do that at the International Improv Station, where we are constantly trying to have a dialogue. So, we're sending out surveys and we're talking to people and we're trying to create a culture of radical honesty, essentially.
So, if you're annoyed about something, you don't just leave the site and then bitch about it to your friends. You bitch about it to us, and maybe we'll do something about it and then we'll be in a better community.
Lloydie: And Jermaine agrees. Resolving these things is all about dialogue.
Jermaine: The same message that I give in my business world; communication is key. So, I think if we had had this conversation earlier on, we would have been in a different place and we probably would have been collaborating throughout the pandemic. But since we did not communicate, things started building and, I mean, we eventually reached a really good resolution. But communicating earlier, we could have reached the same resolution a lot earlier.
The Improv Place has a number of shows to elevate, empower and entertain; from Pandemic Chef to Voices, which you heard talked about earlier. If you want to perform at The Improv Place, you can email perform@themprovplace.org and there's a link to their website and some of their shows in this episode show notes.
The International Improv Station is in the middle of a lot of new, exciting things. They are changing the way that membership works and they're rebranding. There's a link to them in the show notes with more to come soon.
And if you want the latest news from the world of improv, get the world of improv in your inbox when you subscribe to The Improv Chronicle newsletter. Click the link in the show notes or go to improvchronicle.com