The First Signs Of Live
Very gradually, one or two improv venues are tentatively opening up their doors again. As some countries feel they have flattened the curve on the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, steps are being taken to open venues while, at the same time, trying to keep people safe. So what sort of journey are improv groups and venues undergoing in order to perform again? This episode tells three different stories from around the world - one from the One from China, one from The Netherlands and one from the USA.
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This episode features:
Will Luera - check out shows at Florida Studio Theatre here: https://www.floridastudiotheatre.org/
Stacey Smith - see the Boom Chicago "Shot of Improv" show live online here: https://islivenow.com/boomchicago/watch?eventid=fxOHCbLWY&fbclid=IwAR0pqkvOLRqkZ9QCAQfVtO-GvUMaMqohBncDWx0GoY3CAzAkFZHaOMNSbsE
Take an online comedy writing show with Stacey here: https://boomchicago.nl/academy/intro-to-comedy-writing/?fbclid=IwAR02zQWZVGjtoOB51-wBMwWazM9LcwQ9KrjxerdPg502T3NIs9QtKsyC9fQ
Jay Wang - check out Beijing Improv here: https://www.facebook.com/beijingimprov/
The Improv Chronicle Podcast is produced and hosted by Nottingham improviser Lloydie James Lloyd
Theme music - Sam Plummer
Logo design - Hélène Dollie
Episode transcript:
This is The Improv Chronicle Podcast, I'm Lloydie. There was this kind of giant build-up and then suddenly like oh no here we go again. Very gradually one or two improv venues are opening their doors again. As some countries feel they've flattened the curve on the first wave of COVID 19, steps are being taken to open venues while still trying to keep people safe. So what sort of journey are improv groups undergoing in order to perform again? You're about to hear three stories, one from Florida USA, one from Amsterdam in the Netherlands but right now we start in Beijing China.
My name is Jay Wang, I'm from New York originally and I've been in Beijing for ten years now. I'm currently the leader of Beijing Improv, China's longest running improv troupe and since twenty sixteen I have also been doing applied improvisation in China so er, corporate training and educational workshops and things like that. How has your theatre coped during this pandemic? Er, not great to be honest. One of, I think one of the casualties of this whole episode has been the massive loss of players. We had a lot of our players leave in February because that coincided with Chinese New Year which is a public holiday here, here in China. Basically once China got its act together other countries were starting to fall into the grip of the corona virus so China has since banned incoming flights from, from other countries especially foreign nationals so a lot of our players are basically stuck abroad back home in in in their home countries not able to return back to, to Beijing. That's a shame because you know they have jobs here apartments here which basically whole lives here that you know can't be accessed at this time, and so we we've been compare it to er I guess the Thanos snap in the Avengers like instantly I guess more than half, two thirds of our troupe have just gone missing so it's been it's been quite heartbreaking.
And you were due to open back up I think you were gonna be one of the first theatres to open back up just a few weeks ago in June weren't you?
Yes exactly um, and and just as we were about to open back up a second wave of outbreaks hit Beijing and so the bar that we were working with shut down and and you know numerous public venues across the city shut down um, and so we're still coping with the second wave and hopefully erm, due to pretty strict measures I think we'll be able to come out of this pretty soon. I mean, you you were literally about four or five days out weren't you from actually opening when you were told that you couldn't. Yeah exactly, exactly it was just it was just a kind of giant build up and then suddenly like oh no here we go again.
It's hard to imagine that much build up ending with performances cancelled again. For now, let's leave Beijing and hop to Florida where Will Luera, Director of Improvisation at Florida Studio Theatre explains what led them to look at re opening.
We knew that something was happening June first, we knew that some sort of phasing was going to happen but we originally thought that it was just going to be a change to restaurants and bars and luckily our theater as as you might remember has a restaurant in it so all we were going to do was going to be like okay if the capacity of the restaurant is forty people then three of those forty people will be performers and will do live improv on the side while the er, while the restaurant is open and this was going to offer just something slightly different than what er, the other restaurants in the area we're doing. So you know, if something approximating or close to you know, what people call bar prov or something is we were going to do but once we got around to June first and I think actually a little bit closer June third, so two days away from us opening, er, the word came down that theaters or play houses as as it was er, the official announcement said, play house were gonna be allowed to open up at up to fifty percent so that gave us the green light to move forward. Now the good thing was that we were already sort of doing thought experiments in all of this, we were already kind of thinking what would this look like? What are we gonna do want once the phasing in is going to begin? And so what what he said fifty percent we did the quick math and realized well we're allowed fifty percent but we actually cannot fit fifty percent and remain socially distant, so with all the other precautions in mind we were we're open at thirty percent capacity which is about thirty people and I'm proud to say that we've sold out every show!
Back in Beijing things may not have opened but Jay's team have done so much prep in order to be ready to open their doors again. We've been working with a local venue and you know they, they told us of their max capacity and you know that's with, you know, all the seats kind of lined up closely together and we decided to cut that, you know, by a quarter basically so from eighty to to to maybe twenty um, or thirty max just so that we have enough distance between audience members erm, and basically have our players also tested for for for everything before getting up on stage because we won't be wearing masks while performing um, that was discussed but er, it's a bit of a damper on, on everything if you're performing with masks on so yeah so social distancing and um, and and and plenty of testing for actually just our four remaining players that's that's all we have left in Beijing. Wow, it is just four of you. Yeah four or four guys too so we've lost all over our gender parity.
Oh man.
Yeah but at least we're diverse group we're um yeah we're a diverse group from from from different countries so there's that we have America represented France China and Nigeria so um yeah.
So you have an international diversity but not but not the not the gender parity that you used to have.
Exactly exactly.
Back in Florida, Will explains how they prepared to open and do live shows.
Usually our theater has five shows running right now, but right now we're the only thing running in the theater which means that the entire thought engine of the theater and the creative engine could all tackle this problem together. and instead of sharing folks across five shows everybody was saying like how do we make this as safe as possible and and I'm gonna be honest Lloydie, I would not do this if I didn't feel that we were taking as many precautions as we were that made it safe for the audience and for the cast. I very much take the the the coronavirus seriously and, but I also do take the the mental health of our residents seriously and so trying to strike that balance between both was really important for me. So as soon as a patron walks in they are on their when they walk in yeah, one of the first things which we've all got used to now is that the the six foot distancing right, for the social distancing, markers that we laid out where our audience members form the queue to get in. When they get there we've also gone to ticketless shows so there's no longer you don't to go pick up tickets. Before you even get in you are required to wear a mask to get into the theater, er, also we take your temperature before you get into the actual physical space and the tables themselves we actually don't sell individual seats and part of that is to maximize seating capacity er, if if we sold single seats at a six foot distance that's a lot less profitable for us than selling two or four seats at a time so um, we sell two or four seats at tables and every all the tables are at, are at least six foot, six feet away from each other., We've also reduced, we made an effort to try to reduce how much the audience interacts with the with the cast so some of it is obvious obviously there's not a, because we we do a lot of short form there's no more audience coming up on stage with us and that's a pretty pretty obvious one er, but we also used to have the audience fill out slips and do other things. All of that's been cut and instead we've gone the text and that's how we gather a number of our suggestions for the show we still do a little bit of interaction throughout the show but we do get a lot of it digitally now to cut, to reduce the interaction. I had to actually reduce the cast from six to three to make sure that we can maintain social distancing while on stage. A part of our costumes if you will, I mean that we have to have a mask er, that we wear all stage and when walking, when walking to places. Also the producer, the managing director of the theater saw that ,I not as an actor but just as me as a person, I walk around with a little bottle of hand sanitizer that it is very colorful it's a pink flamingo sanitizer that I have on my belt loop and she thought that was really cute and she's like what we have all the actors map that mandatory instead of having these er, hand sanitation stations and bottles off stage let's make it part of the costume so all actors have their personal hand sanitizer attached to their belt loop, it's very colorful and beach themed so we have that, we have our masks, we're social distanced from each other. There's actually a very subtle grid on stage that we use as markers to help us determine how far we are from one another, when we are in a scene together or we're crossing from stage left to stage right it's almost like a chess board you know to kind of just tells you this is where I am in relation to you and if I'm gonna cross stage left this is where you should go straight to cross stage rights that we maintain social distancing.
Those incredibly detailed precautions that they've taken are amazing and, let's face it, six months ago something that we would never have imagined would have be necessary. Let's hop to Europe now and get another perspective from Amsterdam.
Hey everyone I'm Stacy Smith. I'm a current actress at Boom Chicago and running our incredibly the new training center. I run the Chicago Musical Improv Festival. I am a former performer at iO and Second City and I'm so excited to be here! I knew you'd have to sing. Boom Chicago, of course, based despite the title in Amsterdam famously.
How have you coped as a theater at Boom during the whole COVID 19 situation.
Yeah, that's a great question. I think, you know, our cast is quite small so our entire theater is only five cast members and we live between two houses um, that have kind of been together since the the beginning so in terms of, and we were just in process for a new show that was supposed to go up in May or June and now it's in September. Um, so I think we're we were a little late to the game about like online classes because it was just like one of those things that that none of us were truly trained in or prepared for, er so you know, after like a month of seeing all these online classes we've created some of our own and then we went back to classes officially, I think it's three and a half weeks ago now er, socially distanced in person classes and that has been really interesting to navigate and we've also had some shows where we've live streamed to an online audience with a small studio audience in our theater as well as having our first student showcases. Actually they went back to like two or three weeks of classes, finished the term from the February term and we have student showcases and our giant main zaal, I think zaal means theatre in Dutch I don't know it, who knows. And we, that was kind of like our testing grounds for like what shows are gonna look and feel like and then that was just kind of like our taster version and then we open officially this Saturday night gung ho and then our schedule is Friday Saturdays and Sundays through September and September we will reassess and then probably go back to a Wednesday through Sunday schedule.
So it sounds like you never fully closed in that you were able to go in and do shows albeit without an audience physically present in the theater.
I would say like we locked down in the very beginning of March and then Matt and I, my fiance and I actually did a livestream we did a partnership with this big huge live stream company called We Are Live and Boom partnered with them and we did three duo shows in the theater for, I mean, they set up a station no where near us, we did this online show which was bizarre to do this super high energy short form show for our boss and his wife um, but you know we needed to do and er, you know it was very interactive so we did a little bit we just did that three three night run in April and then we weren't back in until about June so yeah we were dark for quite a bit there. We were rehearsing online um, or at one of our houses so we were not going to the theatre for awhile and then I guess we went back to er rehearsals in person maybe like five weeks ago.
So Boom Chicago in Amsterdam is gonna be opening this weekend. Beijing Improv can't open just yet but in Sarasota, Florida Studio Theatre is now doing shows. So what is a live show like at this most peculiar of times?
I reflect back on some of the shows that we've done after hurricanes or after other tragedies where the only, the first of the audience hits the house there is this relief this need tell to laugh, to see other people, to smile. I and, I would say that the first, the first three weekends that we've done shows the energy has come from that place. People. this joy of just escaping you know the constant barrage of news and negative updates that we're surrounded by at this point. Er just to be able to escape from a little bit before, you know, we all know we have to get back to it and we all know how important it is but to turn your mind off of that for a couple of hours, it's been nice and that has translated in just very enthusiastic appreciative and energetic audiences and they've been they've been great. And what's it been like stepping back on stage for the first time? I was I've not been that nervous in in a while and I I do know the first weekend, er, despite us having the Zoom rehearsals and doing the ten, the twelve hour rehearsal time to prep for this show, I felt rusty I, you know I I was getting suggestions from the audience and I I remember just really having trouble fully wrapping my head around certain scenes and certain games and er but but you know like like like all things improv after couple shows er, you know I I was able to shake some of the rust off and by the second weekend it really started to fly and I'll say this like I mean I love doing duos and trios and stuff like that. It's been a nice change of pace for us artistically to go from a full a six person group to a three person group. The three people that are doing the show have connected in a way that we hadn't before and so it's been it's been good for us and and and er, the shows are getting better every weekend.
And as Boom Chicago gears up in Amsterdam for its first shows this weekend, how are they preparing?
The theatre is open much earlier for staggered seating so that not everyone is coming at once and there's more hand sanitizer than I've ever seen in my entire life it's really unbelievable and er and there's stations for it everywhere so everyone has to wash your hands immediately and they have to follow precautions to answer questions about their health status and things of that sort and then there's the is face shields at all of our bar staff and waiters wear. We have socially distanced and seating, we have traffic patterns so you're only allowed through one door and then out another er, you're able to be sat with friends but if you don't live together there is a divider and our our tech we have, I mean we have this giant beautiful er large large theatre and we have our tech that is all the way up in the rafters. We have our musician who's a very socially distanced off to the side of the stage from us and then in terms of cast I think, you know, the difference for us that's different from I think most places is we all live together so we are able to all performed together without masks and without, in our our stage is, you know I would say three feet up in the air and the there's a barrier before the audience starts so we're not close to the audience we have an entire backstage area and stuff so er, it is er yeah it is very strange though to see people like because we like I said we've done the student showcases to see how far apart people are in the audience because you know audiences usually are, you know, so close together and spreading laughter and it is such a different beast when they are so far apart. I think I'll be a little bit of a learning curve in terms of that. We did a show outside last weekend on this giant boardwalk um, and everyone was so so spread out, it was just like the widest audience I've ever performed for. So those are yeah, those are some I'm trying to think I want to make sure they say all of the things. I know that it's there it's safe, so safe and I'm like oh my goodness this is so different to everything I've ever known.
I was talking to Will Luera about how they've been doing it at Florida Studio Theatre because they just opened a couple weeks ago and it strikes me that you've got a slightly different situation with your onstage cost because they're on stage cast aren't all living together therefore they've got a grid basically on stage so that they all stay socially distanced from one another whereas I guess you guys can interact in the same way as you would do back pre COVID.
Yeah we do have that benefit of being able to kind of, and we have to make sure we say it that's also the thing that it feels like a weird announcement to be like "don't worry we live together" but like, we have to say that so people know that we're taking it seriously because we are like we we don't want to get COVID. I mean I don't know anyone that does first of all but um, you know we We want to do this thing we love but we want to make sure that everyone is completely aware and safe.
Stacey how excited are you for the weekend?
Oh my God it Im gonna die!! Coz it's like fourth July weekend, it's like truly independence day so I am very very excited to play with four of my favorite favorite human beings and to see what kind of er, you know, response we get. It's very exciting, it's very exciting to be able to have the space and the ability to experiment because it I'm just thrilled to see what we're going to make of it
Next time…. On the improv chronicle podcast….
As the world struggles to find connection during a pandemic, does being part of an improv community give you a head start on connection - and is there a difference to the sort of friendships we make through improv?
The improv chronicle podcast is produced and presented by me, Lloydie James Lloyd. YOU can help the podcast right now - Please subscribe and rate us on your favourite podcast app If you have an idea for a possible episode go to - www.improvchronicle.com