Improvilicious
‘Look Ma– No Script!’
By Shirley Van Sanden
Shirley Van Sanden’s interview with Sam Longley and Damon Lockwood about Improvilicious – the latest offering from WA’s Barking Gecko Theatre Company and The Big Hoo-Haa!
Even in the most meticulously rehearsed piece of live theatre, anything can and often does happen. Lines are dropped, entrances missed, furniture tripped over, props broken and sets knocked down. Actors just have to be prepared for the unexpected. This is what makes live theatre both thrilling and terrifying. The terror can manifest as stage fright and the thrill is what makes it all worthwhile for the stage struck!
But when you can’t rehearse a show, because there are no lines to learn and the scenario hinges on a random suggestion given by someone in the audience – what do you do? Answer: Improvise.
This is something that Sam Longley, the man behind Perth’s popular Improv show The Big Hoo-Haa! does very well.
If you’ve seen Theatre Sports or watched Thank God You’re Here on Channel 10, you’ve seen Improv. If you haven’t - imagine bungy jumping for Thespians.
Sam Longley’s definition of Improv: ‘Stepping out on stage fully prepared for the unexpected with a bunch of fellow actors who are ready for anything.’
Improv, short for Improvised Theatre, has been around since the 1980’s. For actors it is infectious, addictive and demanding. To knowingly put yourself into a situation where you have to think fast and risk egg on your face is a truly courageous thing. It really is a stage-life or death situation that offers the audience a unique opportunity to watch actors fly by the seat of their pants.
According to Sam,
The adrenaline rush comes from making something out of nothing! - You never know where you’re going to go. Sometimes it works well. Sometimes it’s crap. And even when it doesn’t go well, the audience can still love it!
Sam caught the Improv bug in 1988 when Michael and Angela Sanderson-Green (founders of the Australian Institute of Theatre Sports) brought a Theatre Sports Workshop to his high school, John Curtin College of the Arts. John Curtin is the WA school that offers gifted and talented education programmes for students in Artsmedia, Ballet, Dance, Drama, Music and Music Theatre. Sam’s team won the Theatre Sports competition that year and the adrenaline rush is just as
palpable for him today. Sam
loved ‘going out there with no idea and doing something that
the audience enjoyed!’
Sam’s enthusiasm for this theatre form sent him to Chicago (USA) to study at three different schools of Improvised Theatre. Between 2000 and 2001, he attended Improv Olympic (aka IO), Second City and Comedy Sportz where he was schooled in three different approaches to Improv.
Improv Olympic taught what’s called Short Form Improv, where participants learn to sustain improvisations that last for two or three minutes. This is the style of improvisation mostly associated with Theatre Sports. The Second City focus is centred on improvisation for sketch comedy, where the improvised work is the catalyst for a written script. Comedy Sportz specialised in Long Form Improv, where a suggestion taken from the audience is played out in an improvisation lasting up to
half an hour.
When Sam returned to Perth, he shared his skills with the local acting community and, I dare say, re-invigorated the comedy scene in Perth with The Big Hoo-Haa! This comedy event kicked off on 15 June, 2002 at the Fremantle Hotel where they played on the last three Fridays of every month. Then in December 2004 The Big Hoo-Haa! moved to its current home at the Brisbane Hotel and switched to becoming a, Saturday night comedy mainstay. Hoo-Haa improv tends to position itself between Short Form and
Long Form, usually lasting
up to ten minutes.
The Big Hoo-Haa! has not only brought cheer to many a punter lucky enough to get in the door before the show sold out, but it has been a training ground for a fine new crop of talented adrenaline junkie Thespians. Some of the people who have Hoo-Haa’ed their way to bigger, brighter things include Claire Hooper (How the Quest was Won, Rove, The Sideshow) and Gibson Nolte (who scored a role in the film Ghost Rider as well as more prestigious theatre roles).
Although it is an enjoyable, entrepreneurial diamond, The Big Hoo-Haa! is hardly innovative with many Improv venues around the world pre-dating it. However add to the mix Barking Gecko Theatre Company, the school curriculum and a bit of invention and you get the innovative part of this story, Improvilicious.
Barking Gecko Theatre Company, WA’s leading professional Theatre Company producing work for young audiences, has an international reputation for excellence and innovation. The company has toured shows
around Australia and around the world to Canada, Korea, Singapore, USA and Mexico.
Many of the Hoo-Haa! actors have worked for Barking Gecko as have Sam and his partner in Improvilicious, Damon Lockwood. Damon is also a playwright with a number of successful productions under his belt including Pri-Mates (Barking Gecko Theatre Company) and Muttabuttasauras (Spare Parts Puppet Theatre). Sam introduced Damon to Improv by inviting him to be part of the inaugural Big Hoo-Haa! team.
Damon Lockwood’s definition of Improv: ‘Scenarios that are based on pure imagination.’
Sam and Damon, who have done Improv Workshops in Primary and High Schools, pitched the idea of an Improv show for schools to Barking Gecko’s Artistic Director, Jeremy Rice. Jeremy said ‘Why not!’ then took things one step further and proposed that the show should fit in with the school curriculum as well as being a whole lot of fun. He suggested that they tailor it around ‘The history of theatre in 55 minutes.’ And thus Improvilicious was born – well, it’s still in gestation as this is being written, but it will have been born by the time Lowdown is in print.
Rehearsing Improvilicious begs the question, how do you rehearse an improvised show that is reliant on suggestions from the audience? Sam says, ‘It’s a bit like football. You need to get your skills up! You practice kicking a goal and eventually you set it through.’
So for Improvilicious the rehearsal process includes swotting up the history of world theatre and matching historical periods and dramatic genres to various improvisation games.
Damon gives some examples:
For the Restoration (period) we use a game called Entrances and Exits. The players each have a (trigger) word, and each time the word is said, if they are on (stage) they have to exit, and if they are off they have to enter…We have Greek Tragedy Scenes and Shakespeare Scenes…and a rubber chicken that is used often and anywhere.
For Sam,
The challenge in creating Improvilicious is how to keep to the context of the History of Theatre in a show where you don’t know what the content is going to be. It is really forcing the performers out of their comfort zone.
The show has four players who form two competing teams, chosen from a stable of six actors comprising Sam, Damon,
Jimmy James Eaton, Xavier Michelides, Sean Walsh
and Teagan Mulvaney.
And what will these actors have to contend with in the way of audience suggestions? Damon gives a couple of examples from Shakespeare: ‘My kingdom for a – what?’ and ‘Out, out damned – what?’ Other audience suggestions may include providing anything from everyday objects to modern day celebrities. The audience also decides on the winning team for each show.
The good thing about Improv is that no one can accuse you of forgetting your lines. It’s a licence to be, if nothing else, innovative on a personal scale. And as slapstick comedy has proved through the ages, there’s nothing like seeing someone suffer to make an audience laugh – which ought to make Improvilicious a sure fire hit!
My definition of Improv: Two teams of gladiators armed with mediocre mime skills and desperate one-liners duelling to win the ‘thumbs up’ of applause. ■❚
