“Sorry to come in here, but I just want to say that this is the kind of beautiful interaction that I’ve never heard before in my life.”
I’d been chatting to Neil Curran and Luke Benson of Improv Fest Ireland about improv for about ten minutes in the front bar of Anseo when the girl interrupted the interview. Later, after the pair had left to perform in Tightrope (Ireland’s first weekly improvised comedy night), I went over to where she was still at the bar to ask her what she meant.
“I found their honesty beautiful; men talking about their feelings means a lot to me,” she explained. She went on to tell me how her grandfather had died from prostate cancer “because he was too ashamed to talk to anyone about what was happening.”
Welcome to improv comedy.
This is where people talk about pretty much anything and any notions of shame are left at the door. Don’t be fooled by the name though, the players are at pains to point out that it’s more about the improv than the comedy, although laughter does arrive, as I would find out in Tightrope later that night.
The Tightrope audience
“Improv and stand-up is like comparing football and rugby, both are sports with a ball but are very different,” says Neil, who is the founder of ImprovFest Ireland, back at the bar.”It often gets lumped in as the bastard cousin of stand-up comedy but they’re very different. Improv is all about making your partner look funny, comedy is a by-product, but it doesn’t have to be funny.
“Stand-up is about hitting the spot each time and every time. There is no practice or rehearsal in what we do.”
Upstairs in Anseo, Tightrope is getting underway. Neil is up first with his show ‘Neil +1’. A member of the audience is required to take part and when I’m asked by Neil to be the stooge I offer only modest resistance. Hey, I’m here to learn more and what better way to do so than full immersion?
The show begins by Neil asking a series of questions (Where do you work? JOE.ie; What’s some good advice? Marc Maron said on his podcast today “virtuosity is not relevant to getting across what you need to get across”; What would you be if you weren’t doing what you do? Playing music; What’s the first CD you bought? Ehhh…). Neil then launches into a series of improvised role-play scenarios where I have the arduous task of playing myself and Neil plays imagined protagonists from my life, armed with the information I’ve freely given. I’m already wondering why I’ve agreed to it. 
Confronted by the illegitimate son I’ve never met – pure drama
What I ended up sharing with Neil and a small audience of strangers was basically the contents of a bizarre dream – a combination of buried memories, mashed up with stuff that I’d been thinking about during the day. For example, my shocking revelation that my first CD was ‘Spice’ by Spice Girls (‘2 Becomes 1’, that’s all I can say) became the cornerstone of our improvised drama, where Neil plays, at turns, a band-mate just as we’ve written a song called ‘Wannabe’, a pregnant band groupie, the same band groupie who’s now looking for alimony payments and finally, and explosively, the son I’ve never met. Stand aside, EastEnders. 
I genuinely can’t remember what the hell was going on here
Because there’s no script, weirdness seems to be part and parcel of this kind of improv but it’s a lot of fun to be involved and the audience laughs a lot. I really enjoy it. It kind of feels like therapy. Luke Benson of Improv Fest Ireland would agree.
“There are absolutely therapeutic aspects to improv.” Luke explains, “coming from my own background, I struggled massively with social anxiety, with speeches in class, with reading out in class – to the point that I didn’t attend most of my first year in college. Improv allows me now to walk out on stage, I don’t have a script, I don’t know what I’m going to say and I’m ok with that.
“Some nights you fail and that’s fine because it’s about putting yourself in a position to fail and that being OK. I’ve come a long way and I put that down to improv and now I can talk quite openly about this. If you learn to challenge yourself every week, that becomes part of who you are.”
Improvisers regularly point out the difference between stand-up comedy and what it is they do. Don’t come and expect to laugh. With a very serious face on, Neil tells me that improv is an experience and comedy is a by-product.
Even the name ‘improvised comedy’ is misleading; Improv is primarily a shorthand for improvisational theatre.
The earliest documented use of improvisational theatre in Western history is found in the Atellan Farce of Rome in and around 391 BC. The modern variant is best known for the shorthand improv used in Whose Lines Is It Anyway? Chicago is the spiritual home of American improv and Paul Sills’ established the first modern improv troupe, Second City, there in the 1960s.
But can you now make a living from improv in Ireland?
“No. It’s not about the money! With the exception of the high profile acts no one makes money,” Neil says. “The gurus – TJ and Dave from Chicago sell out every week, Dave Pasquasi is the psychiatrist in Groundhog Day, UCB set up by Amy Poehler and Matt Besser (Upright Citizens’ Brigade), Second City of course.
“The Showstoppers in London play the West End and that was a huge breakthrough for improv, The Maydays are in Brighton and Beer Shark Mice have the celebrity factor with The Janitor from Scrubs (Neil Flynn) and Anchorman’s, Champ Kind (Dave Koechner) part of their troupe.”
Pic via LAWeekly.com
Neil is confident that the Dublin improv community, which currently numbers around sixty members, is about to take off.
“We have a scene that is growing rapidly Ireland, the festival is built on the community, Tightrope is now our brand new weekly night here in Anseo in Dublin and we’ll be showcasing groups from around the country,” he says. “Most members of the public don’t know what improv is so the only things you’re competing with are the TV or the pub. The community is where it starts. In London, there’s improv every night and their community is huge. Around Ireland there is improv on 3 or 4 nights a week. We joke about improv being a cult!” 
All Star Show improv at Tightrope in Anseo
With something as unplanned as Improv, I imagine the opportunity for stuff to go wrong must be massive. After I come off stage in Anseo, I meet with several members of the audience, who I now realise are all part of the improv community.
They’re very generous in their assessment of my Improv efforts as I explain that I was worried at a couple of points that I was losing control of what I was saying. “No, no, that’s when you’re doing it right,” says Damian, who works in telesales. “When you completely let yourself go and open yourself up to the endless possibilities of who you can be, then you’re doing it right.”
I’m beginning to understand how improv empowers people. There’s a release involved and the opportunity is there to escape your inhibitions without having to rely on eight pints of Guinness to work the (temporary) oracle.
“I did Neil +1 in San Francisco,” Neil tells me at the bar in Anseo. “The audience member who became the co-star – I played his father. We fell out in the show and there were some touching moments and stuff. After the show I checked in with him and he became quite emotional and he told me that he felt awesome. His father had passed away the year previously and that was the first time he had connected with his father’s passing since the funeral.”
But if improv is designed to be so loose and impulsive, is it more Where Is The Line Anyway? than Whose Line Is It Anyway?’
“With improv you depend on suggestions from the audience,” Neil explains. “I’ve had ‘holocaust’ suggested more than once, but you’re professional enough to know you’re not going to do a show on a topic like that. You will always get that guy who will shout ‘gay porn’ for situational suggestions, as if no one has ever shouted that before.
“You don’t need to recreate the ‘gay porn’ on stage, but you can interpret it to create something else. In that sense, the audience will try and catch you out, but there’s nothing they can say that will make us say ‘that’s the worst suggestion we’ve ever gotten’.”
Seth McFarlane has had numerous pops at improv in Family Guy and I can see why it’s an easy target. There’s a seriousness in which the players approach what they do that can make it seem a bit farcical (and not the way they’ve intended) and, at times, you would wonder if the audience are enjoying the show quite as much as the performers. But maybe I’m missing the point here. Remember, it’s all about the experience.
What you can’t deny is the sense of community in Dublin Improv.
At Tightrope, everyone supports and encourages each other. There’s no glory-hunting onstage and I can see how it’s exactly what stand-up comedy is not – a group of people teeing up the next person for the laugh rather than themselves.
I realise that’s what Neil was skilfully doing during my own ‘stellar’ improv routine – making my ham-fisted inexperience funny to the audience.
And like the girl at the bar, who felt compelled to interrupt our interview, I’ve connected with what Luke has to say. Improv has clearly had a really positive impact on his life.
“Sometimes it’s easier to talk to a crowd than it is to talk to some of your best mates,” he remarks just after the girl has turned back to her drink.
“I never talked specifically about my difficulty in speaking in front of people onstage, but by speaking in front of people onstage, it has helped me with my difficulties. Do you know what I mean?”
Now I do.
The 3rd annual Improv Fest Ireland runs from November 15 -21 in venues across Dublin. You can book your tickets here. If you fancy trying your hand at improv you can find Neil’s classes here.
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