Bridging The Improv Divide - A Tale Of Two Cities' Improv Alliance

In a groundbreaking move, two improv theaters from different cities forge a unique collaboration, setting the stage for a new era of improvisational comedy. This episode takes you on a journey from Chicago to Brooklyn as Lloydie explores the partnership between the iO Theater and the Brooklyn Comedy Collective. Discover the behind-the-scenes story of how these institutions are creating a dynamic bridge, facilitating the exchange of performers, teachers, and students. Hear from Steve Plock, General Manager of iO Theater, and Philip Markle, Artistic Director of the BCC, as they discuss the genesis of this sister theater relationship and its potential to reshape the improv landscape. From fostering talent to nurturing international connections, this episode uncovers the enthusiasm and the strategic moves that hope to invigorate the community and celebrate the art of improv.

In this episode you hear from:

Steve Plock - General Manager, iO Theater

Philip Markle - Artistic Director and Founder, Brooklyn Comedy Collective

Hosted by Lloydie James Lloyd

Podcast Theme:

Composed by Chris Stevens at Studio Dragonfly

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Episode Transcript

Philip: This is the coolest fucking thing in the world. We want to promote this. We want to tell people about this.

Lloydie: This is the improv Chronicle. I'm Lloydie. Two theatres, two cities collaborating together to build a bridge. A couple of weeks ago, I got a press release to detail how I o theatre in Chicago, USA, was collaborating with the Brooklyn Comedy Collective in Brooklyn, New York, USA. It struck me as slightly unusual. A lot of theatres have franchises, but very few theatres have any kind of formal collaboration whatsoever. So I made a visit to, both cities in the last week in the hope of finding out what this collaboration is and how it's going to work.

Lloydie: Hey, Steven.

Steve: Nice to meet you.

Lloydie: Great to meet you too. How's it going?

Steve: Good. we came to my office.

Lloydie: Is that all right?

Steve: Yes.

Lloydie: Yeah. Cool. Okay.

Steve: My name is Steve Plock. I am the general manager of the IO theater. We started planning our summer festival. That'll be the first one since we've reopened. So we did the Bentwood Comedy Fest in 2018 and 2019. And then we're like, okay, we want to do another summer festival. Let's, start planning I o fest. So that'll be at the last weekend of July in 2024. And as I was planning it, we were thinking about groups. We did, like, open submissions, and then we're thinking about headliners. And I started thinking about these groups that I follow on Twitter or social media that perform in New York or LA, some of which are comprised of people that I used to know in Chicago that would perform here. And I was just like, oh, man, it'd be great to get that group here, but I don't know if they would submit, but I don't know if they're, like, the headline. Like, they existed in this other realm. So I was like, I should just reach out to the folks at BCC and just try to learn more. And as I went through their website, it was like so much of their faculty was like, here four years ago, performing, living in Chicago, performing all over the city, but that I knew through IO and that perform on teams there, that teach there. Philip, who's running BCC, like, Katie Cawson, our artistic director, knows from doing shows here. So it was like, already. It's like, oh, I already know all these people. And so, I reached out to Philip and was just, hey, like, I would love to just chat with you about our festival. Seems like we have so many friends in common, and he and I and Maya and then Gretchen Nang, who works here as well. We all just had a Zoom call. And it was like, oh, it's like, great to meet, know, how can we work together? And then, the idea just sort of evolved over a couple weeks of like, what if we did a sister theater thing? And we were like, that sounds really exciting. and it's really just. I think we just wanted to establish just a connection, like an open path of communication, of transference for performers, teachers, students. I'm like a touring musician as well, so I've booked so many tours with bands where you just kind of cold call a club or you find a promoter and it's like, hey, we're looking for a Thursday in Buffalo, New York, or whatever, and you kind of just cross your fingers and hope that it works out if you don't know anyone there. And so I was like, man, I know people try to go to New York and get a show, or vice versa. And it would be great if, as institutions, we could just have an open dialogue about when those people are like, hey, can you put me in touch with the BCC people? I want to take a class when I'm there. I want to put on a show or teach a workshop or whatever. And so already there's some things that happen, like, James Gretchke, which is Gretchen Eng and James Dugan are going there at the end of April to do a show then they're going to teach, like, two workshops, and I think those are already sold out. Just like Chicago style long form. So already it's like, at work. And then for each of our festivals, we've both sort of said like, hey, these are a couple of teams that submitted that we're sort of like giving a stamp of approval for, and they've sent us a couple. So, at the base level, it's really just like open communication and collaboration.

Lloydie: Cool.

Why do you think it doesn't happen more? Because I was surprised

Have you formalized it in any way, or is it.

Steve: I think the press release is like the formalized version. There's no contracts. it's very. Just like handshake and just like, If anything, I think of it more of like a resource share. Like, we're just working together to strengthen the improv community between two of the biggest markets in the United States.

Lloydie: Why do you think it doesn't happen more? Because I was quite surprised. and is it a resource thing? Is it a mindset thing? As improvisers, we're usually natural collaborators.

Steve: Yeah. I can think of three or four different friends of mine that have theaters. There's like one in Houston, somebody who works at one in, Oklahoma City. There's someone that's in, Omaha. But it's know, we'll be like, oh, yeah, I got to come down sometime. It's like, yeah, you should, and it's like, okay. And then it doesn't happen.

Lloydie: Yeah.

Steve: and I think it's just like the foundation is so tenuous. Maybe, obviously traveling a long distance and paying for lodging or all the things that go with a trip to do a five or $10 improv show, it's like, there's not a financial incentive for people to necessarily do that. So there's got to be another incentive. And that maybe is the ability to sell and sell out a workshop or the ability to get some sort of like, guaranteed exposure of just like, okay, if your team's going to travel to Omaha, know that we're going to put you with a really great team here. And it's going to be a sold out show. It's not going to be like ten people in a coffee shop sort of thing.

The Brooklyn Comedy Collective has partnered with Chicago's IO Theater to form sister theater

Speaker A: Welcome to LaGuardia. Local time is 03:52 p.m., hello, I'm Philip Markle. I am the artistic director and founder of the Brooklyn comedy collective here in New York. I've been doing this in broad thing since I trained in Chicago about like, 17 years ago. And I founded the BCC as a home for weird freaks in Brooklyn as a collective where nobody's cooler than anybody else and where we're here just to fuck around and play.

Speaker B: And so what was it that led you to going, hey, we should have a sister theater in Chicago? What was the thing?

Speaker A: Well, I went through, the theaters in Chicago. I trained at the annoyance and IO and I worked for Second City on a cruise ship, which is a whole smorgasbord of interesting details. We don't have time to go. you, know, out of all of them, a, there were a ton of IO people that are involved. It's like a lot of Chicago transplants that have landed at BCC. We have a lot of Chicago flavor in how we teach improv. my big inspirations, as a teacher myself were everything I learned at the annoyance and giving homage to playing from a deal, McNappier's whole philosophy, and then the I o spirit of, know, having an ensemble, community driven, team focused mindset. And so, like, the. As there's this phrase that sums up what we do that I came up with high in a bathtub in California. And, it's called fuck it and love it. Fuck it is sort of an homage to what I learned at the annoyance, which was like, hey, let's not take ourselves too fucking seriously. This is improv. The more seriously and cult like we take it, the less relaxed and playful we're going to be. But we don't want to just say fuck it. We don't want to just be like, fuck it. Fuck everyone. Fuck you. We want to also say love it, which was really an homage to IO. and the spirit of, like, once you stop worrying about being perfect, you can really love the hell out of what your team does. So there was so much Chicago influence, and then between the IO conversation, Steve, the managing director there, reached out to us, noticing how many people from IO were teaching at our theater and how many were performing. And we were thrilled because IO was, like, to me, one of the pinnacle brands that the originator of long form improv. And so this partnership started as a discussion between, oh, let's promote each other's festivals this summer and each other's intensives. And then it was sort of like, well, if we're doing that and we really love what the other theater, provides, why don't we just make it a sister theater? Fuck it. and we went for it, we announced it, and now we have this pipeline, which is so cool, between Chicago, and New York. So that could be, like, people from Chicago that move to New York. And one of the most frustrating things as an improviser, if you can relate, is that you train so hard in a city, you get your reps in, you get a reputation, and then you move to a new city, and it's like, oh, I guess I take, like, 201 all over again and get to know everyone. So we can now recommend people, that move to either city. We can have our teachers teach in the other city. a bunch of IO teachers are coming out here to teach in April, and I'm going to go out there in July to close out their festival. so just creating this pipeline of talent and community and ultimately the same values, which is that at the end of the day, we are in this for the art form and for the spirit of it. And both theaters really embody, that attitude and that community driven feel, even though we're in different cities.

Steve: Yeah, I mean, we're lucky here, because so many people travel to Chicago to improvise. Like our summer intensive program, it was like five weeks in July, and we, you know, the. The international community is better represented in that program than, like, domestic students. I think last year we had around 60 or 65 people travel here for five weeks. Pre pandemic, it was like 150. and we're hoping to get back there, but it's such a joy to get to meet people from South Korea, Thailand, the Netherlands, the UK, South America, all over who. Then you just have this little network with that. When our performers or the teachers for that program travel to Europe, they're like, oh, I'm doing the show in Oslo because we met so and so there, and they're letting us stay at their house. And, all of the foundation is there. We just need to nurture it a little bit, I think.

Lloydie: Yeah. And, I mean, so much of that does happen, and a lot of it has come out of the different intensives that different theaters run. I've had. I owe people come stay with me. and, myself and Liam run a festival, and, Liam did the.

Speaker B: Intensive here in 2019.

Lloydie: So, yeah, all of those little networks, I think we're natural networkers in some respects. Sympathizers, anyway. I think it kind of promotes that a little bit. but, yeah. And that's why it surprises me that theaters haven't kind of joined the dots a little bit more in the past.

Steve: Yeah, I think, it's funny because other people have asked, they're like, well, what does this mean? What is this partnership? And it's like, we're figuring it out. There's a couple of things. We're sharing some performers and sending some instructors and things like that, but it's one of those things, I think, much like improv, it's something, we just agreed to, and we will see where it goes. and it's not binding. There's no contract that says for the next five years or anything like that. So it's very open and collaborative, and I think we'll be discovering how it can work even better for both of us as time goes on.

Lloydie: I know it's a new thing, but.

The improv Chronicle has launched a podcast to help promote improv

Speaker B: Is there anything that you have already.

Lloydie: Discovered that you didn't expect?

Steve: Mean, I guess, I've been surprised by, the sort of readiness and willingness for folks to New York, folks in New York to want to come here to perform, because as someone who's lived in Chicago for basically the last decade, it's like, you always view New York and LA as, like, the destination. So many people leave here to continue on and grow their careers in those sort of. It was just a nice feeling where people are like, we would love to come back and perform at IO, or just do a weekend in Chicago and make IO a, part of that trip. It was like, oh, cool. There is still value to coming back here and, performing and learning and sharing things. So, that was probably the one thing that's just been kind of heartwarming about it so far.

Speaker A: I mean, the enthusiasm, when we announced this, our community went wild, especially so many of our people that came from I o, they're like, this is the coolest fucking thing in the world. We want to promote this. We want to tell people about this. because so many people have such fond memories of IO, I think it really excited our community and created a lot of buzz, and people were really excited, and I think people are still like, what does this actually manifest? How does this actually come out? And that's also in the early stages, but we have these initial things lined up through July this summer, and then we're going to take it from there and see what other partnerships we can create. I'm really open to what that journey looks like and working with IO to create this beautiful bridge. Even with AI and all that, this is the one thing I think can't be replaced. It's like live comedy, live interaction, and specifically, live improv is like the most, alive version of that. A stand up slot you can see online on Netflix. Sketch translates. But improv is only something that I've ever seen really work well live. And so it gives me hope that this is something that is more important than ever, whether it's, like I said, people aiming to be on SNL one day and really getting their chops in and getting sharp, using improv as a tool to create. We're also really big about that of, like, improv is a snake that eats its own tail. It's the most wonderful thing in the world, and we're not going to take it too seriously. And also, it doesn't create anything. It is just a moment. So please use improv to enrich your life and write from improv and create from improv. and yes, like you said, make it part of your daily being a better person job.

Speaker B: The improv Chronicle is produced and hosted by me, Lloydie James Lloydie. You can get full transcripts of each episode@improvchronicle.com. And you can also donate if you want to. If you're able to donate to help keep the podcast going, there's a link in the show notes for that. If you can't afford to do that, there's one thing you can do that is going to make a huge difference, and that is by subscribing to this podcast or following it on your podcast app. and if you give this a five star rating or a review of some description, that also massively helps the podcast get discovered. If you want any more details about this podcast, what it does, just get the website improv chronicle.com.