An Interpretation

On the Spot: The Story of Improvisational Comedy in Edmonton
by Christopher Wiebe

Biographical Note:

Christopher Wiebe is a freelance writer who has written on the literary arts and Edmonton's architectural history for such venues as the Edmonton Journal , VUE Weekly, and AlbertaViews. A relatively new convert to the wonderful world of Edmonton's comedy improv scene, it has made his recent exile to Ottawa all the more melancholy.

Introduction:

If Edmonton's extraordinary indigenous theatre community is a family, then improv is the underappreciated but ultra-cool sister.

When the actors come on stage at Die-Nasty!, a weekly improvised soap opera that has run continuously since 1991, it is hard not to think that improvisational comedy is the secret soul of Edmonton theatre - the holy of holies and the pleasuredome mixed together.

Collected before you are the best actors in the city, most of them also dramatists and sketch comedy writers. You wonder what they are doing up there, why they keep doing it year after year. By the end of the evening, of course, you understand. Something intimate has been going on while your face became sore from laughing - you have been watching a group of friends unselfconsciously playing together and having fun. You realize you have witnessed a sort of improvised dance performed by impossibly skilled imaginations, and that you, in the audience have been a participant.

Listen to Cathleen Rootsaert, arguably the most experienced improviser in Edmonton. "Doing improv can become an addiction," she says. "It's like drag-racing, you could crash at any moment." Don Masson, who played for a decade, likens it to skydiving. "You walk out on stage not knowing what is going to come out of your mouth, but the lights are on and you have to do something. For the audience the pay-off is not knowing what is going to happen, the danger." And he's absolutely right. The audience is perched on a knife-edge, dreading the rush when the house of cards falls apart, and ecstatic when it holds gloriously steady.

"Improv has a sort of rock and roll, wrestling kind of youth appeal. It gets them excited about theatre," says David Belke, a playwright and long-time improviser. "You're building from the ground up every time, and it's hugely exciting to be right there in the creative moment. With other art forms, the audience isn't there at that moment of discovery."

When one surveys Edmonton's richly talented and diverse group of actors, directors, and writers, one wonders how it happened, why so many of them stayed here. Much of the answer, I think, lies in Edmonton's unsung improv comedy scene. No one set out in a premeditated quest to build an internationally renowned scene, with soaps, long and short-form improv, and improv-based sketch comedy. It happened organically. The excitement of players for the form drew audiences and other players who saw different possibilities, and in this way it became a truly "collective creation" of the Edmonton community.

We tend to take the quality and diversity of Edmonton's local theatre for granted. But the casual acceptance on the part of audiences of the improv comedy scene is what keeps it from becoming self-important. For improviser/playwright Chris Craddock, this is a good thing: "Toronto is dog-eat-dog, but in Edmonton there isn't much to eat. That takes the pressure off and allows us to focus on creativity."

The Dawn of TheatreSports
The umbrella term "improv comedy" shelters many things and the history of improv comedy is no less eclectic. It almost defies documentation, since by its very nature it is unscripted. Nevertheless, certain developments can be traced.

In the last few decades, improv has become a staple of drama school curricula, promoted by American drama guru Viola Spolin; and it is present in the "collective creation" work of groups like Toronto's Theatre Passe Muraille. The high-octane propellant that brought improv out from behind closed-doors, in Canada at least, was TheatreSports, a form of improv that used team competition to make it engaging for audiences. University of Calgary drama professor Keith Johnstone began developing these improv techniques with his students and founded Loose Moose Theatre in 1977 to bring it to the public. It was not merely fun and games. In Johnstone's influential 1979 book Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre he observed: "If you improvise spontaneously in front of an audience you have to accept that your innermost self will be revealed."

TheatreSports didn't promote real competition between teams, explains Rootsaert Rather the judging and team rivalry was a way to give structure to the looseness of improvisation and to take the pressure off the players. "Johnstone was interested in the audience-actor relationship and knew how to make players succeed. He would encourage the audience to boo the judges, making them the bad guys in order to help the players." To Johnstone's disappointment, TheatreSports and improv generally seem to have naturally settled into comedy - "mistakes" are funny, and laughter releases the pressure on players and audience alike.

UBC drama professor Stephen Heatley says Johnstone claimed he was teaching actors at the time. "He was encouraging them to live in the present, to listen and respond to what was given by their partners instead of thinking what to do next." But Heatley thinks that in the long run his techniques were also training writers.

Heatley, who has been described as "the godfather" of TheatreSports in Edmonton, came upon it almost by chance. A University of Alberta drama graduate, Heatley attended Alberta Showcase, a cultural trade fair, in the spring of 1981, after he became artistic director of Theatre Network. He met John Gilchrist of Loose Moose Theatre who told him: "I want TheatreSports in Edmonton and I want you to do it." Heatley thought it could raise the profile of his theatre and bring in new audiences.

In September 1981 Theatre Network invited Keith Johnstone to do a workshop in Edmonton, after which a regular TheatreSports league was organized and by early 1982 performances - "Dark Mondays" - began at the theatre in an old Jehovah's Witnesses Kingdom Hall near the Northlands Coliseum. Some of those involved that first year were Rootsaert, Dana Andersen, Bonnie Green, Christie Heath, Tom Usher, Trevor Beck, and David Belke.

"My high school drama teacher was ahead of her time and taught TheatreSports," says Rootsaert. "She made us go down to Theatre Network for a Dark Monday in 1982." Rootsaert continued to go back while she completed a BFA in drama at the U of A, and went to Calgary for workshops with Johnstone, competing against the likes of Bruce McCullough and Mark McKinney, later members of "Kids in the Hall". Belke, then in his first year in Stage Design at the U of A, found improv in a similar way.

Annual high school tournaments called The Golden Nose -- the prize was a Groucho Marx nose and glasses of Andersen's devising -- gathered more TheatreSports adherents. Class clowns, Wes Borg and Joe Bird, entered the tournament in Fall 1983 and started doing improv every weekend. Borg enticed Paul Mather into the improv underworld by posting a TheatreSports message on an early internet bulletin board in 1984. The three formed Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie a few years later.

"Everybody came from the suburbs, " explains Don Masson, also hooked at a tournament. "Once you got into it that's all you did, it became your whole social world." Early on, people played on set teams, though by 1984 it was more flexible with captains picking ad-hoc teams each night, one of which became the comedy troupe "Free Food and Beer." By 1984, Theatre Network would hold guest workshops on Sunday afternoon, followed by an evening show. A master of ceremonies would warm up the audience, explain the concept and then keep the show running smoothly by pulling each 3 or 4 minute improv scene down on a laugh. "It was a very clean-cut, nice group of people for the most part," Masson continues. "Like Wes (Borg) always says, improv people are very different from stand-up comics - less screwed up."

Why Edmonton?
It's still an open question why improv comedy flourished so quickly in Edmonton, and produced such extravagant results. Eventually TheatreSports became part of Edmonton's comedy habitat with improv players moving fluidly between nightclub and stage, sketch and improv. The long history of community theatre and vaudeville in Edmonton, the enduring vitality lent by the U of A's distinguished drama program, and the particular efflorescence of new theatre companies, venues and festivals in the 1970s and 80s: all these come to mind as possible explanations. An important factor that is easy to overlook is the arrival of sketch comedy professionals in Edmonton in the early 1980s

Edmonton's comedy landscape was utterly transformed by the arrival of the Second City Television production at ITV in 1980.

Andrew Alexander, a Second City producer from Toronto, began using the cast of SCTV (Joe Flaherty, Dave Thomas, etc.) to direct the live shows he mounted in a downtown nightclub, Lucifer's Lounge, until late 1982. The standard format for a Second City live show in Edmonton and elsewhere was rehearsed sketches in the first half, improv in the second.

The improv generated characters and scenarios for use in the next evening's show. David Mann ran Second City workshops training local performers, which included Dana Andersen, Jan Randall, Bob Bainborough, Sandra Balcovske, Lorraine Behnan, and Sparky Johnson.

One of the most significant developments in the evolution of improv comedy in Edmonton was the advent of story-driven improv in the form of the "soaps." The catalyst in this case was Bob Baker.

Influenced by Johnstone's TheatreSports workshops at Vancouver's Langara College around 1980, Baker, Morris Panych, and others met weekly to play improv games, which developed into soap opera narratives - "What if characters A and B got together?"

Baker soon found himself back home in Edmonton as artistic director of the Phoenix Theatre, which had recently risen from the ashes of litigation surrounding its predecessor Theatre 3, though with a deficit and few subscribers. "I inherited an opportunity," as Baker puts it.

Ignoring the risks, Phoenix programmed wildly experimental new plays that attracted a local audience and nation-wide attention. Part of what fueled Phoenix's successful drama productions were the notorious "Friends of the Phoenix" fund-raising parties -- later "Hell Parties" -- held in the theatre's downtown loft space starting in 1984. They created a buzz around theatre, making it a fashionable social event.

Another essential element for Edmonton's burgeoning theatre subculture was the introduction of improvised soap operas by the Phoenix. The format debuted at the 1985 Fringe Festival as "Soap on the Rocks (With a Twist)" and continued with weekly shows for two regular seasons. Set in an Arlington Apartment-esque boarding house, it included actors such as Ray Storey, Rootsaert, and Leona Brausen. Baker recalls, "Stewart Lemoine, John Fischbach, and I would sit in a booth and improvise scenarios alongside what was happening on stage. Scene by scene we would name two characters and give them loose cues like, 'A and B have a bone to pick with each other.' We tried to hold it to a narrative arc, though the cast never knew what it was."

With good acting and strong character development, the soaps became fabulously popular with funky 20 and 30-somethings, generating long line-ups for tickets seven hours before showtime. "The Phoenix's programming at the time was just as wild and outrageous as the soaps, so they dovetailed beautifully," says Baker. "It was part of the energy of the times."

Masson points to the wider implications. "With Soap on the Rocks and TheatreSports' presence at the Fringe, improv made the crossover to a wider public. It was no longer looked upon as just geeky kids in a warehouse, but part of the theatre scene." When the Phoenix lost their loft space in 1987 the soaps were discontinued. Theatre Network tried to capitalize on the success of the soaps by running variations - The Young and the Nosey, Air Network - for a few seasons at the Rice Theatre, but with the shift in venue the momentum was lost.

In Edmonton, there was a real pride in never repeating yourself, of always going into a danger area." Another distinctive part of Edmonton was the collaborative, rather than cliquey, tone that prevailed.

From roughly 1986 to 1988, the comedy troupe Free Food and Beer (Christie Heath, Karen Bernstein, Bill Wagner, Bonnie Green, Randall, and Andersen) performed with the Trolls at the Sidetrack Café in now legendary Monday night shows. The Trolls, now joined by Rootsaert, soon parlayed their nightclub success into extremely popular Fringe dramas in the late 1980s - annually traveling to all the Western Canadian Fringe festivals - that cemented their reputation.

The Trolls went on to do collaborative theatre and musicals with such groups as English Suitcase Theatre, and write weekly "Challenge Plays" for Theatre Network. Paul Mather and Donovan Workun formed Atomic Improv in 1989 and won awards doing improv shows across Canada, from university auditoriums to the beer bottle hurling bars of logging country.

Kudos came in 1988 when an improv team from Edmonton (Borg, Belke, and Rootsaert) won a TheatreSports Bronze medal at the Olympic Art Festival in Calgary. That same year, TheatreSports left the Theatre Network nest and formed its own company, Rapid Fire Theatre. "Theatre Network was facing up to the fact that didn't have the mindspace to let TS gather momentum," says Heatley. Run for many years by Olivier Moreau, Rapid Fire took up residence at the Phoenix and the Arts Barns, before settling into the Chinook Theatre in 1992.

Weird and wonderful entertainments were concocted in the winter of 1991 in a Whyte Avenue burlesque club made over as Comedy West, by Free Food and Beer and others, who mounted an ambitious slate of weekly shows under the name of Union Theatre.

Improvised "Gilligan's Island" episodes ran late Friday nights featuring Christine MacInnis, Jeff Haslam, Cathy Derkach, Stephanie Wolfe, and Stephen Heatley, while other days there were improvised movies, and an Andersen-led improv show that incorporated audience members. Late in their run, Union inaugurated a weekly political satire cum news wrap-up show, "You Gotta Wonder." As director Ian Ferguson commented at the time, you can't beat straight news for weirdness: "It's found comedy. You just wake up and there it is."

In March 1991 they revived improv soaps genre with "Soap on the Wagon," set at a rehab clinic near Cold Lake. Christine MacInnis who had played in "Soap on the Rocks" acted as a concept advisor, passing on the hard won lore of the genre. It featured a cast of six (Wagner, Green, Andersen, Derkach, Wolfe, Ted Kozma), with characters and scenarios devised by Ferguson, who had a background in "serious theatre," and an uncanny flair for promotion.

Slightly later, in March 1992, Union veered off into the first of many raunchy and provocative two week shows of political satire in sketch and song that had attention- grabbing names like "'The Diaries of Dale Getty." This first show brought the ire of the Premier Don Getty's wife, ensuring the vitriolic troupe a loyal audience.

Beginning in November 1991 at the Nexus Theatre, Union's "Die-Nasty" picked up where "Soap on the Wagon" left off, and forged a new soap distinguished by a big cast, supplemented by guest celebrities, and less planning in the way of plot lines. Andersen remembers that these early shows had a lot of directorial interventions - suddenly telling performers to move in slow motion, or break into a quick game show - as if the company didn't quite trust the soap narrative to hold audience attention. In later years, direction and improvisation became more seamless. "As a Die-Nasty director," says Belke, "you have to be an improviser as an actor, because you are making choices in scenes.

The best metaphor I've found is that you are a surveyor for a railroad crew, figuring out where to go next. Problem is the workers behind you may be building the track in a different direction!" Die-Nasty moved to the Catalyst Theatre and the Media Club before finding a permanent home in September 1993 at the Chinook (Varscona) Theatre, by which point the cast list had essentially settled.

While Rootsaert appreciates the camaraderie of Die-Nasty!, Belke relishes the opportunity to constantly build a character. "You make discoveries, you make choices that will have far-reaching consequences. It's a very rich space. There are inherent liabilities in TheatreSports where you are creating disposable characters. It eventually wears you out." In fact, some Die-Nasty characters have taken on a life of their own in video projects and sketch comedy shows such as "The Johnny and Pokey Variety Hour" (1995-99) and "Oh Suzanna."

New Directions
Much of the vitality of the Edmonton improv scene is explained by the steady flow of new people it attracts. A Trolls led improv class at the Citadel's Teen Fest of the Arts in 1992 brought Mark Meer, Ron Pederson, and Jacob Banigan together, who then formed the long-running troupe Gordon's Big Bald Head. "Improv invites the younger crowd to the theatre," says Banigan. "It has given many young actors stage legs, and faith in their power in front of an audience. If you can entertain without a script, think of what out could do with one." This is an example of the mentoring spirit of Edmonton improv that continues through organizations like Rapid Fire Theatre who, since the early 1990s have held improv summer camps for young people.

By the early 1990s, the organic interconnections between the "theatre" and "improv" spheres became so numerous that these distinctions became less meaningful. Catalyst Theatre, for example, instituted an improv-inspired fundraiser in 1993 called "4 Play" in which four new plays are written and performed in the span of one day, with participants coming from both improv and "serious" theatre backgrounds.

Even as the theatre community was finding ways to incorporate this virile "spawn of improv," the improv players were writing their way into theatres through the backdoor. The Trolls were writing dramas like "The War of 1812," and people like Rootsaert, Belke, and Chan had plays of their own performed.

Improv, players will tell you, produces writers as well as actors. "My theatrical career is very much grounded in my skills as an improviser," says Belke. "I definitely wouldn't have discovered I was a playwright if I hadn't done it. If you're paying attention improv shows you how to structure a scene, it's a great laboratory. You quickly learn what works and what doesn't." Improv and the Fringe, according to him, help explain the high productivity of Edmonton playwrights - most write between two and three plays a year.

In recent years, Edmonton improvisers have been seeking out international improv competitions as a way of engaging with new ideas.

Rapid Fire teams, including Banigan, Meer, Belke and Chris Craddock, have won trophies at the World Domination TheatreSports tournament in Atlanta four times, and gone to Vancouver, Seattle and Berlin.

"It's broadening artistically," Craddock says, "especially Seattle, which is more technique based, more like a bootcamp, with workshops that are grueling but rewarding." Since 2001, Rapid Fire has been mounting the biggest improv event in Canada - Improvaganza - which sees groups from North America, Europe and Australia, come to Edmonton.

Exposure to improv styles abroad led Banigan, Craddock and others to christen Chimprov in the summer of 1999, a forum for long-form improv that seeks to get around the clipped interactions of TheatreSports. "Edmonton's improv is about forwarding a story, getting out of the safe zone," says Banigan. "It sounds strange but you can't improvise just trying to be funny. You have to play honestly, and focus on the story. If you aim for funny, your only option is failure, but if you are in the moment, you have millions of possible outcomes. We always try to surprise each other onstage."

The grand dame of Edmonton improv, Die-Nasty!, has changed its setting every year - now the cruise ship Kukamunga, now dustbowl Oklahoma - but what keeps the cast together is the constant reinvention in more fundamental ways.

"These days we want the audience to think they are seeing a play," says current director Andersen. The cast dispensed with pre-season character and plot planning entirely, so both the actors and the audience are figuring it out moment by moment. "Next year it has to be different, always back to square one."

Improv's Contribution to Edmonton Theatre
Improv comedy, as players will tell you, is about looking for things that go "wrong," about harnessing the creative energy within the unexpected to make exhilarating theatre for players and audiences alike.

At its best, improv combines spontaneity and virtuosity that keeps everyone delightfully off-balance. Edmonton's deep pool of improv players, from a diversity of drama and comedy backgrounds, have discovered and nurtured each other's talents and then collectively taken those creative resources in a multitude of unique directions. In the process of doing so, they have quite unexpectedly changed the face of Edmonton theatre.

"Part of the Edmonton theatre community is that it is a community," Belke explains. "Everyone is aware of what is happening in other camps. You don't get the sense that people are competitive, and that they are honestly impressed with their fellow players.

The improv community is strong because people are not into look-at-me posturing but rather the idea of, let's build a scene and make everyone look good."

If Edmonton's extraordinary indigenous theatre community is a family, then improv is the underappreciated but ultra-cool sister. The community's spirit is reflected in the truly collaborative theatre experience of improv comedy, in which audience and actor enjoy each other's creative goodwill, and laugh themselves silly.