Reaching Your Peak In Improv

Why is it that some improvisers avoid playing with an older improviser, or when they do get to play with them, they make them their grandparents? Given some of the most famous, gifted improvisers who sell out shows are over the age of 60, why do peculiar attitudes around age still exist in our art form?

This episode you hear from:

Kathy Rinaldi - ImprompTwo, Sarasota, Florida

Shaun Landry - The Ledge Theatre, LA

The u3a group, Market Harborough, UK

Transcript:
Why do some improvisers avoid playing with an older improviser?

Kathy: That person is not going to play your grandma for the next 2 hours.

Lloydie: This is the improv chronicle. I'm Lloydie. A few weeks back in my newsletter, I linked to an article in the Guardian newspaper which said while society tends to treat people in their twenty s and thirty s, as in their prime, peak performance in a huge number of disciplines doesn't happen until you're in your fifty s, sixty s, and often older. I very lightly applied that to improv and got a really interesting response from people. Why is it that some improvisers avoid playing with an older improviser? Or when they do get to play with them, they make them their grandparent? Given some of the most famous gifted improvisers who sell out shows are, over the age of 60, why do peculiar attitudes around age still exist in our art form? Kathy Renaldi is an improviser based in Sarasota, Florida, who performs in impromptu internationally.

Kathy: Isn'T it interesting how those of us over 50 immediately think it's a plus? You know, there's some really obvious things like life experience and references. There's a really great story I, sometimes tell when I'm doing presentations. And it's about when I used to work at a college and I was basically going out to high schools and talking about the college and how to choose a college and how to choose a program. And before I went to do that every year, I would talk to all the deans and ask them what they were looking for in a potential student. And we happened to have a very good theater program at the time and the dean said, this is off the record, but I wish we could push the acceptance age back to 25 instead forward to 25 instead of at 1819. Because he said they have no life experience, they haven't suffered heartache or hardship, most of them. There's nothing resonating when you ask them to tell your life story. And so I think that besides the experiences, I think it's the emotional experience that's the biggest difference I see. And it might be why most young people do the fast and funny improv because the deep stuff they haven't felt know, I'm wildly generalizing of know there's.

Shaun : A whole big movement of older improvisers who are going, no, this is not a, young man's game.

Lloydie: Sean Landry runs the Ledge Theater in La.

Shaun : When I did the Seniors improv comedy, online during the Pandemic improvisers over 50, I realized that most of the quote unquote gurus of our current time were all in their fifty s. The Bill COTS here in this country, the Bill COTS of the world and the John Hildrets of the world. We are the Silver Age. And for those who leave improvisation, who are over the age of 50, you're starting to realize when you actually go to a festival or you go to a, class, that the people who are teaching you are still in the game.

Lloydie: So how about the other people we get to play with in the improv community? Here's Kathy again, I think that's what.

Kathy: I loved about The Retreat so much, or any kind of festival where you are in workshops with a lot of different people is that you do get to perform with people from different countries often or different backgrounds and maybe you're all in the same country but they didn't start there. And so then you have these delightful little experiences, maybe two three minute scenes, but some of them will resonate and stay with you forever. I think the other big thing is connection. I find that the older I get the more I want to connect in a scene rather than just have a good laugh. I want to feel that the person I'm improvising with is really for those moments that we're on stage, is really knowing what I'm saying and how I'm feeling and will give that back to me. Is there laughter? Of course there is. But there could also be some other wonderful things and I wonder if that's also like gravitating towards a kind of improv that you are attracted to as you get older. We're not so much looking for the fast satisfaction, perhaps, as we are. Listen to me, hear me m. Even if you're just talking about something silly, i, ah, feel that strongly.

Participant from workshop: A few weeks ago I received an email asking if I'd be interested in teaching improv to a group of people who've never done it before. And they're a group that describe themselves as a youth club. But for people who are retired, I thought, well, I can't resist the opportunity to do this. So I'm on a train to Market Harbour, a town in the east of the United Kingdom, to teach this wonderful bunch of people a brand new skill set.

Lloydie: If you could bring your stories to a close that would be great. So how did you get on with those? What did they feel like now? It's a yes. And do you think, having a. Few years of life experience helps you.

Participant from workshop: to be a better improviser and to draw on things?

Participant from workshop: I would agree with that because I think in my 20s, even in my thirty s, I wouldn't have had as much confidence as I've got now and I wouldn't have had come up with some of the ideas that jumped into my warped head.

Lloydie: What did everyone else think?

Peter: I remember when I was a boy, it was always exceptionally difficult to add lib. But now that I'm older, with a degree of life experience, I would say that the two things that I have enjoyed early in life and now have been apart from adlibbing, largely sexually orientated. And now that I'm older, people refer to me frequently by my past experience and call me a wanker. Anyway, there we are. Can I just interject what part of.

Participant from workshop: Where in Wales are you from?

Lloydie: they would not stop playing even after the workshop. They were doing bits. And considering most of them didn't even know each other before the workshop, they bonded as a group, incredibly, and came up with rich, interesting characters. And two people produced a scene set in a prison which spellbound every person in the room. It was an incredible day back to Kathy in Florida.

What obstacles do older improvisers sometimes encounter? You could feel that there were situations

Lloydie: What obstacles do older improvisers sometimes encounter?

Kathy: You could feel that there were situations where you could be feeling a bit invisible. I think that it comes up a lot in group situations where if there is an opportunity to choose someone to do a scene with, you might be the last selected because they're looking around at all the other ones first and then go, oh, the old lady. I'm not saying that that's personally happened, but it has. But you see it and you notice it and I don't know if there's a way to fix that. You've got a great big, huge circle of people maybe you're looking across at somebody to connect with for a game. And typically that's where you, can really feel invisible. And I think that might be the negative part about getting older, is that you tend to in a jam, not my favorite thing to do ever, but in a jam, you will often be the last picked unless you step out there and start it yourself. And we have noticed it a lot in that kind of thing. Or when you walk into a festival, let's say, and there's all kinds of people coming in and there can be, a perception. And maybe it's valid, maybe it's not, but there is a perception that there's less delight until they see you perform, not by the organizers, but by the others. Kind of like, oh, them. And then you get on stage and.

Lloydie: Then you go see that Sean Landry.

Lloydie: Knows this frustration exists.

Shaun : I will give our, older improvisers a nice little clue too, which is also don't come in preconceived. You know you're going to see it, you see where it's going to go, but sometimes it doesn't go the way you want to go. It gets frustrating. But you know what? You got to let go. A lot of us who are older, we are in positions of power in our real lives. Off stage. I run a theater. You are the King of Nottingham.

Lloydie: yeah. That is actually now officially what I've been crowned. So thank you for recognizing.

Shaun : Congratulations.

Shaun : Your coordination will be happening next week. And, Joe Biden's flying out.

Lloydie: I have some very fancy music lined television event.

Shaun : Yeah, Queen Bitch would be a great song. It Would For Me by David Bowie Yeah, I basically just played that a minute ago because that's my wake up song.

Shaun : These are the references we have. I mean, I threw out, I started singing Guess who's Coming to Dinner the other night, and half of the audience who are younger people are just like, that's a cool song, what is that? I'm like, it's from the movie Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? And I always say the same thing, google it. Oh, by the way, I know about the internet. You know why? Gen X created the, gen X as well.

Lloydie: And there's a big thing about Gen X. People talk about boomers and people talk about millennials and Gen Z, but they do not talk about Gen X. And it's very much a forgotten generation. I think some of us, well, deeply aggrieved by that.

Shaun : Well, it's a forgotten generation. You're on the low end of Gen X, my love. because I'm 58, I was born in 1965 and it starts at 1965. So for us who are in the top end of Generation X, we're like, well, fuck you, boomers. you just Xed us out of being a boomer. So it was all set up. All of us who are older in the Gen X, system, we were like, well, our whole life was, well, fuck you. We don't want to be part of you all anyway. We don't want to be a part of anything anyway. Let the world burn.

Lloydie: As a Gen Xer, I'm not quite sure I want the world to burn. Although it's doing a perfectly good job of that itself at the moment, both figuratively and literally. But what I do want to see is some change in attitudes here's. Kathy, again, is that something that we.

Kathy: Should be exploring more and talking about as we get older in these group settings, in classes, in workshops to say, hey young people, that person is not going to play your grandma for the next 2 hours and don't make them.

Kathy: Exactly right, yeah. Or, when you get into a scene, I want you I was in a scene did I tell you this before? I was in a scene in Sweden and I was with a young man who, you know, I won't mention him, lovely, lovely. but we did a little romantic scene because I made it a romantic scene and he's 20 something and I am not. And at the end of it, he said, why did you make yourself my girlfriend? And I said, why not? And he said, Because nobody like, I'm not used to doing that. And I thought, isn't that interesting? Is that a conversation that should be had more often? I know that I bring it up in my classes because I want to push that more. but anytime I have been in a place like that with particularly women who are older, you can hear this resounding. Yeah, we don't want to be your mom, we don't want to be your grandma. We want to be anything but that. because that's what we do all the time.

Lloydie: And if you are an older improviser endowed on stage with being a professional character you aren't so keen on. Firstly, I will always try to call that out in a workshop wherever I can. But if you're not in a situation where that can happen, sean has some tips.

Shaun : Every older person who is a grandma or a professor or doctor or whatever is being laid on you. There are a million different human beings in the world who act differently. It's not the profession that is making your character, it is the emotion of what you're bringing to it. You're a crazy doctor. You are a freaky grandma. Play with it. Play with all the gifts that are given to you. If someone tries some 22 year old lays that's their great great grandmother lay it on. Lay it on. Bring it to know.

Impromptu members worry about being on stage as they get older

Kathy: Joe and I have been talking so Joe, the other member of Impromptu, my husband, we've been talking a lot about being on stage as we get older because of the fact that we wonder, how long can we do this? Will we carry an audience with us? Or will there be a point when people go, I don't want to see you on stage, you're too old? And that worries me because I think, I never pictured having a finite amount of time to do this. And perhaps if we'd started in our 20s, which we did not, we were too busy acting and running a theater group. But now that we're doing improv, we're thinking, oh, my gosh, we only discovered this seven or eight years ago, and now we're already looking at time and wondering, will there come a point? I don't know. I'm hoping that all the people who are our age and within ten years there, forward and back will move along with us. Do you ever think about that?

Lloydie: And the answer is yes, I do. I've often wondered how long I'll improvise for us, if it was some kind of finite part of my life where I'm allowed to improvise. But the more I've done it, the more I've seen my improv style change, morph and adapt. And some of that's down to me learning new things through workshops and teaching and performing and stuff. But some of it is simply life experience. Seeping into what I do. I turned 50 last month, and I think I'd quite like to be doing this when I'm 80 or older. You can get the world of improv delivered to your inbox every week when you subscribe to the Improv Chronicle newsletter. Just go to improvchronicle.com for more. And if you like what this podcast does, consider following it on your podcast subscriber and leaving a rating and review. Those make a huge difference. and they help the podcast get discovered as well. We've got to beat that algorithm. You can also donate using the link in the show notes and donations help the podcast get made. It would be lovely to have you as part of the production. For previous episodes and for transcripts, check out the website improv chronicle.com.