Punchline
Tina Hassannia
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(Clockwise from top) Cari Leslie from Crush, Jim Davies from Insensitivity Training, and Jody Haucke from Crystal Basement strike a pose.
photo: Ben Welland
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Improv(ing) the local scene
Improv, the spur-of-the-moment comedic sketch activity most commonly associated with Whose Line Is It Anyway?, has an extensive history in Ottawa. Unfortunately, the present-day scene is not the flourishing phenomenon that exists currently in other cities, including not only three municipalities larger than Ottawa, but also towns like Calgary, Regina and Winnipeg. Recently, however, there has been a renewed interest in improv, thanks to regular nights organized by troupes both new and old."I think in the next couple of years we will have a really good, solid improv scene," says Scott Florence, a theatre professional who used to partake in and managed the Canadian Improv Games (CIG).
At this point in time, the CIG, an annual national tournament for high-school teams, is the only local improv activity to have persisted consistently for more than several years. This, however, does not a professional scene make. But in the 1980s, Ottawa did have a nationally successful improv troupe - one that founding member Dan Lalonde describes confidently as "Ottawa's own version of Second City." Called Skit Row, the troupe performed sold-out shows five nights a week. Consisting of improv nerds and radio-commercial writers, Skit Row was Yuk Yuk's only comedic entertainment competition at the time. The group disbanded in the 1990s for a number of reasons, one of which included a failed pilot television project with the CBC.
In the 1990s Ken Godmere became the city's improv guru through
coaching services and improv clubs that existed in numerous locations around the city. For Godmere, the term "improv" goes above and beyond a mere performance activity done purely by actors or comedians - it's also an essential human skill. "We're born communicators, born improvisers. We react spontaneously to external stimuli," he says. The use of improvisation in everyday life is a common theme among the professionals I interviewed. "You spend most of your life trying to get your way by saying 'no,' whereas in improv, you're trying to do it by saying 'yes,'" explains Crush Improv member Brad MacNeil, who believes that real-life communication can also benefit from such a mentality, because "saying no to people is just going to shut stuff down and prevent us getting anywhere."
MacNeil is referring to the "yes, and" rule of improvisation, wherein the performer takes the information provided by their scene member and modifies the scene by adding onto it. It's for this reason that people like politicians and job-seekers turn to Godmere for coaching. The term "improvisation" is more than a kind of comedic performance - it's also a mentality. The performance definition also doesn't consist entirely of short-form improv, or the kind witnessed in the quick comedic payoff seen in game play on Whose Line Is It Anyway? Long-form improv, which focuses on storytelling, consists of group members using only a couple of suggestions from the crowd to create 45- to 60-minute scenes. MacNeil's group, Crush Improv - which includes CIG alumni like Al Connors - specializes in the long form. At the moment, the group has only performed sporadically at Isme Cabaret open-mic nights and their own Improv Awareness shows, though there is hope for a regular event night to take place in the future.
Other groups worth investigating in the present-day scene are Crystal Basement and Insensitivity Training, both of which specialize in short-form improv. Insensitivity Training is the youngest group in the city, as well as the most frequently run - the troupe performs every Sunday night at Yuk Yuk's. Crystal Basement, which has been around in some form or another for 15 years, has come back in the past year to make appearances at the Atomic Rooster every second-last Tuesday of the month. Consisting of local theatre professionals, the group incorporates song parodies and sketches into their short-form repertoire of improv games. There is no doubt that the improv scene in this city needs work before any real awareness occurs, but despite the gaps in activity throughout the decades, Ottawa's improv history is still rich, plentiful and holds lots of promise for a future professional scene.
