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This…. Is the Improv Chronicle Podcast. I’m Lloydie

It’s Tuesday 21st April 2020

In the second part of this series on online improv, we re-visit some of the voices you heard last week - improv practitioners who have taken their work onto visual online platforms like Zoom in order to still teach and perform. As the global improv community continues to wrestle with its current inability to do in-person public performances, we hear about the discoveries, the moments of joy and the future of online improv. Will something that has become necessary may end up leading our art form somewhere new?

Back to Nick Oram from London UK improv group, Do Not Adjust Your Stage because they didn’t just adapt by simply taking an existing form of theirs on stage…

At the moment doing a show called the improvised chat show. The reason we decided to do a new format as we wanted to think of something that felt like it made sense online and that worked well within the limitations of being online basically. So that was er our thinking in terms of doing this show. How can we do a show that sort of makes sense in terms of people being spread over different spaces and not all in the same space. And so a chat show seemed to work well for that. What we didn't want to sort of pretend that we were actually in the same room and this wasn't like a conversation online. We felt that it would almost look a little bit false, so we wanted to try and find something that fitted within that limitation that we already had. Although I'm really admiring people that are challenging things a little bit more.

So what how much do you think you'll retain online shows when, god willing, we go back to performing in theatres doing what we normally do

I'd like to keep doing it I think it's I think it's really fun. I think is really enjoyable. I think for us the show's quite fun in terms of characterisation actually in particular in terms of making us take on specific characters and really delve into them in quite the way so it's enjoyable in in in that way and useful as a skill. I think we're developing a good show so I'd like to keep doing it. I don't think we'll do it quite as much so I imagine once we come perform on stage again then we'll want to do that a lot more but it be cool if this is something that could last.

For Varoon Anand in Delhi, India there's been an unexpected consequence of moving online

I think we found a wonderful tool that makes improv more accessible to people who are differently abled. It's now even more visible that you can as long as you have an internet connection and a way to log in there are games you can play from the comfort of your home and not feel in any way excluded. I think that's a big deal. The second thing is we are seeing far more international collaborations now. We have an an American facilitator coming in for one of our sessions soon and then we have a Russian facilitator joining us so the world of improv seems to be expanding and it just forces us to see what else is out there and what's been really wonderful for me as improv practitioner I'm kind of protective of my practice especially with the things I discover. I don't want people to just come in and then just play out the games and pretend that's a mental health exercise but it's been amazing how open people are online to sharing with their techniques are how you can facilitate online. What games you can play and I'm finding out so many others I mean if you don't mind there is a Lacy Allana from “yes and brain “.she does wonderful work and will be collaborating with Elena Fishbein who is also a great improv facilitator online and I hadn't even considered these options when I had been doing my physical workshops. I'm hoping this is something that will continue far after the quarantine is over and we go back to whatever we consider normal times.

And the unexpected outcomes of this move online have taken many forms for many different practitioners. Elana Fishbein from the Magnet Theater in New York USA

I guess some as far as unexpected outcomes you talked about Varoon I mean I didn't know Varoon two weeks ago and now I, I feel like he's one of my my best friends. I think I have like, laid a lot on the relationship with someone who I've only done a few online workshops with but my world has just grown so big. I never thought that I'd be collaborating with someone across the planet and that we'd be negotiating time zones - that's insane! And it's so exciting that he is doing the same work that I'm doing this with people in his community. I think sometimes you know when we, when we're in New York and we're working at our one theatre we get so petty and small we're stuck thinking like oooh like I wasn't cast in this show or I'm not on this house team and those are such petty things when the world is so much bigger and really you can do improv anywhere any time of day if you're resourceful and creative.

There's been an evolution in the work of Open Heart Theatre in Newcastle as a result of going online as well, as Owen Scrivens from the company explains.

I think so many of us, depending on how we've learned, we sort of chase that first funny thing in the scene. What’s the first thing the audience laughs at? Or what is the audience laughing at - let's do more of that. Especially for doing comedy stuff but even for doing theatrical stuff, what’s the first thing the audience gasp at? When does someone look uncomfortable? You can feel the emotion in the room. I think sometimes trusting that you don't have to chase that first thing anymore and just being like no let's just trust that what I'm doing will eventually get you to a good point and let's just trust if we do good improvisation whether the audience is laughing, crying, gasping it doesn't matter that immediately because there might be a payoff further down the road. They might be enjoying it but not laughing. I think that's something that comes with music especially is that sometimes it can be very tempting to put in a rhyme as a punch line in a song to get a laugh. Without an audience there you're more tempted to just try to sort of sing a good song which might not get a big laugh from an audience or a big round of applause but just because, so you're not chasing them as much and so I think sometimes you will be more patient

But it's not just the performers who've changed according to Nick from Do Not Adjust Your Stage

One of the useful things in terms of doing improv online is that audiences are incredibly forgiving at the moment for people experimenting and trying things out online. Everyone knows that we've been forced into this this crazy situation. If you try something out online I don’t think your gonna get people being like “that that's not very good” or “I didn’t like that” or whatever. I think we've got an audience which is really forgiving and really wanting to see the best in in things at the moment because of the situation that we're in. So I suppose I would encourage anyone that is thinking “I’d like to try some online improv” I’d encourage them to just try and and give it a go.

I've certainly had improvisers saying “I'm not sure I I feel really weird about it I I I don't want it to be shit because it's up on the internet for everybody to see forever” I I think a lot of people do you feel quite a little trepidation about doing any kind of online show.

Yes I guess yeah I think that I can understand the mindset and definitely always have those thoughts as well. I think if you're gonna try and do something online or you've been thinking about it before now is the time to do it just because we're in this context of people being very very forgiving so you can do something that actually is not good but might get good the more you do it the more you try and you develop. I think yes that makes sense that sort of slight fear factor but I reckon if ever there was a time to try and get past that and then try to do it now.

Sophie Owen from Leeds University improv group in the U. K. has been thinking more about the attitude we bring to improv and how moving online has shifted that

It feels like there's been more of a trend towards mindfulness kind of warm ups because I'm used to getting into an improv room and maybe we'll do like a little kind of calming down warm up and then we'll kind of get into the kind of high energy stuff like like the Whiz Bang, the on I Am A Mountain and whatever games kind of stuff. Then I noticed. I don’t know if it’s because of the particular practitioners I've been attending workshops of, but I feel like there's been more of a trend towards like mindfulness stuff because because we are doing improv in the space where we are not with other people we need to give people a better sense of their own body. And other people's bodies. I think that doing stuff like mindfulness techniques at the start of the workshop, which I feel I don't really remember that being a thing whent I've done workshops in the past. I'm interested to see it emerging I'm hoping that maybe that will question the way that we do warm ups what we're out of this situation

And how people feel about the online experience has been something that Varoon has been observing as well

It's really seeing how much fun people are having. The main thing we hear is I really needed that. What people come to us and says “I really need it”. We were coming from a place of not abandoning our most vulnerable patrons but it it's now become an area that we want to expand upon and make it part of our regular practice because it really is fun and there's so much less of a difficulty in coming in. The most surprising thing has been how these games have been able to be translated.

But with all this love or our new world there's still real emotional attachment to everything that came before and that we hope will see again before too long as well. Elana Fishbein…

Like I love, I love my family at the Magnet Theatre and you know that those last few days leading up to when we were closing I, at one point I was walking down the street and I I was like this might be the last time I really take this kind of walking in Brooklyn in a while and I'm just so thankful for my colleagues and you know I am so grateful for all of those hours spent just sitting in the training center office before class just shooting the shit. I love them so much and I couldn't ask for a better team people to have spent my career with up into this point. I mean it is, top to bottom, everyone at the Magnet is wonderful.

While making these recent episodes I’ve been forced to think a lot about where we are at with improv. I admire so much everyone who has spoken to me about the online work they are doing. Whilst I’ve elected not to teach, I’ve still been doing occasional online shows, in vision on Zoom. I’ve had fun, they’ve been very silly in the best possible way, but I’d be lying if I said they were the same buzz or if I thought they were the same quality as what I used to do. For me, most of this feels like a weird limbo. And then something happened in a wonderful moment… and I’ll come to that wonderful moment in a second… but just a few days ago I heard something that made sense to me on another podcast. You may know The Backline with Rob Norman and Adam Cawley - Rob’s been on this podcast before… when they returned for a new season of the backline they discussed this very issue of doing shows on Zoom and they’ve kindly given me permission to include a clip of that discussion here. It’s relevant partly because it summed up so much of how I feel about it and partly because it’ll lead nicely into telling you about the wonderful moment that occurred in my life just the other day…

But the future of improv this is very interesting, I did see some again, I’m para-phrasing but some the idea floating around you know improvisers are used to performing in basements and back rooms of bars, we've performed on shows where rats have run across the stage, finding like adapting to shitty, not ideal venues is what improvisers do and so the internet is no different. I think whatever happens here will probably be temporary. I think there might be some residual online hang outs for, you know, especially bringing together international groups but as far as I can see so far and what I've tried to get involved with myself, it just doesn't seem idea.l I haven’t, have you seen any shows that you or been a part of any shows that you felt like this is a new angle on this that might, that might take off even if this pandemic thing wasn't happening

Well I think a big part of the improv is about connection you know in my other life I do podcasting for public radio and I do storytelling which are like live storytelling events and all three of these things share something in common. They are all incredibly low fi. They are not the surround sound 3D Marvel movie that we are used to. Like we are used to having a computer screen open and a phone and iPad and we're watching something else, like just overwhelming our senses. And I think these, even something like podcast strangely enough creates community, storytelling creates community, improv creates community. I think that's the thing that we're so desperate for. When we move this onto Zoom I think, right now, it is a relief. I think it is a substitute for that feeling, because it can feel very lonely but I think what we desperately crave is the in-person connection and so I don't know if this is going to translate into a permanent thing that will replace live performance.

For me, that says so much. Story telling, improv and podcasts have a huge amount of overlap. Maybe I would say that as I’ve worked in audio for most of my life… but, for me at least, theatre of the mind is more easily achieved on an improv stage and on a podcast than it is on the platform of Zoom. That’s not to say Zoom doesn’t have a place - you’ve just heard almost two whole episodes of this podcast that shows Zoom has already made itself a space for improv… but it’s not the only space.

A few years ago, I used to be a regular cast member of Destination, the improvised journey. A 15 minute, improvised podcast giving an insight into one person’s car journey to a specific destination. A couple of weeks ago Katy Schutte and Tony Harris who made Destination decided to bring it back and asked if I’d be part of the cast for some episodes. My immediate reaction was this is the perfect time for something like this. I was delighted. And then when it came to recording… well.. that… that was joy. I can safely say it’s by far the most fun I’ve had while in isolation. For me, online improv doesn’t have to mean Zoom and that opens up another strand of possibility…

Next time……. On the improv chronicle podcast..

What sort of theatre can we create in podcasts given they aren’t usually live. While improviser who use Zoom have the live element, what can improvised podcasts add to the online improv offering?

The improv chronicle podcast is produced and presented by me, Lloydie James Lloyd. Please subscribe and rate us on your favourite podcast app by going to ratethispodcast.com/improvchronicle If you have an idea for a possible episode go to - www.improvchronicle.com