It’s unscripted, created spontaneously by the performer, with a “Yes, And” attitude. Improvisational comedy has early roots in ancient Rome where masked improvised farces took place. Skip ahead 2000 years, and people are still marveling at performers who entertain with no script. In the Valley, improv comedy is alive and well with Rocktown Improv, a collective of comedy performers who “yes and” every first Friday at Court Square Theater in Harrisonburg. WMRA’s Chris Boros spoke with two members of the troupe, Johnathan Stewart and John Huffman. Chris asked Jonathan about his introduction to improv comedy.
Rocktown Improv Members:
Ashton Pease, Bethany Popelish, Steve McClay, Britney Mongold, Stephanie Sorge, John Huffman, Jonathan Stewart
Friendly City Fables Cast:
John Huffman, Ashton Pease, Britney Mongold, Brian Smallwood, Jonathan Stewart
Rocktown Improv First Friday’s at Court Square Theater
Friendly City Fables: “Improvised Theater meets tabletop rolling playing games!”
• At Court Square Theatre on the 4th Wednesday of every month.
Johnathan Stewart: We did a bunch of plays at our high school, where the licensing was loose. So the director of these shoes just let us kind of say whatever we wanted sometimes. So we started improvising lines and some of these sort of lesser known plays and then sort of more formally in college was introduced to it by some friends. I studied theater in undergrad.
WMRA: Do you remember the first time you got on stage to do improv and what that was like?
JS: It's exciting, right? It's exhilarating. It's different than having a script in hand to be able to get out there and just be in a scene and make something happen.
John Huffman: My first time was horrifying so I don't know what Jonathan’s talking about. It was not fun at all. I was terrified the whole time, I'm kidding. I do remember the early days. I unfortunately have some video proof of the early days.
WMRA: Oh, we need to see that.
JH: No, it's erased. In fact, I’m going to need the recording of this saying that I have recording of that because it is that bad. But friends getting together, trying out this new art form. Just creating together on stage something that is unscripted is something I love doing then, and I love doing now. Yeah, improv is just great.
WMRA: It can be a little terrifying, though. That is true. If I was in a play, like a year ago, and I was asking some of the actors: hey, who does improv comedy? And all of them said, ‘oh, not me. I need a script’ and I was really surprised by that reaction.
JS: Yeah, I mean that's the sort of the exhilarating piece for me, is that sometimes it is horrible. It's either you're going to have these moments on stage where everything is flowing and it feels perfect. Or you find yourself in a situation where you're like, this isn't working, the audience knows it's not working. I know it's not working and I'm going to remember this 30 years from now, but you don't. You do improv enough and the failures become lessons and the wins become things to celebrate.
JH: Well, I'm sold Jonathan. He's absolutely right about those moments. What you said about traditional theater people being intimidated by improv, I've experienced that too. I've also probably had those experiences when I was doing it early on. There's like a shame barrier that you break through a little bit, but also, as opposed to some other things you're doing on stage, like stand up, you have trust that you have for the people that you're doing it with, can overcome those things. And so it ends up being this moment where you're on stage, the audience is rooting for you. Your fellow improvisers are rooting for you and you're engaging in the act of creation together and I think that's the beauty of it. So, if you're out there and you're doing theater and you're intimidated by improv, give it a try. The first couple times you might fall on your face but some of the best improvisers in the world that I've ever talked to have told me sometimes it doesn't work. And that's okay. You're making a pizza together and somebody throws in an anchovies and it doesn't go with the rest of the mix and it's okay. The next one will be better, the next suggestion could be better, the next game or the next scenes better.
WMRA: Can you talk about the history of Rocktown Improv, how it got started, how long it's been going on?
JS: Some of us have been doing improv together often on for over 10 years, but Rocktown itself was pre-Covid. Bethany, and Steve, some of our collaborators and performers in the group, had gotten together, wanting to bring some folks together in a sort of collective type of format. Like a leaderless movement to have it be like an open space where people could just come and meet one another and try things out. They had reached out to some other folks that they had done improv with in the past and we put out some calls and just sort of open invite for folks to come hang out and do some open practices and that's sort of how the collective kind of popped up. At this point, we the two performance groups that have come out of it quarterly and we do sort of open practices where we we say to folks anyone come join, learn about improv, get to meet some other people, and sort of talk about what it means to do this work and laugh together.
WMRA: Rocktown Improv does a first Friday show just about every month and tomorrow you'll be performing a Court Square Theater. What's the show like?
JS: Our first Friday shows are your kind of classic short form improv that you might see in the televised sort of popular improv. And it's some short games, some scenes and audience suggestions throughout and we'll probably do 10 or 11 games with a handful of different improvisors in each scene and sort of just build a show as we go.
WMRA: Do you pull audience members up to play with you guys?
JS: For sure. Yeah, we usually have at least one or two audience participation games in every one of our first Friday shows.
WMRA: Is there a favorite game for you?
JH: So those shows are great because they kind of incorporate a lot of different styles of improv. So, you've got the short gaming scenes and those are improv games that have a lot of limitations on them that are designed to kind of create humor from those limitations and from the audience suggestions. But I think I'm going to speak for you, Johnathan, and say some of my favorites are the ones where it's just a longer scene, where we have a chance to kind of build an arc in a story based off an audience suggestion. So, we do some of those things as well.
JS: I think John and I share that sort of love for the sort of simple scene games where we have a chance to start build a thing. If the scene goes well the audience love it, right? But the audience is used to some of the silly games that have a restriction built into them, but games like Questions Only that you see on TV that you people seem to love, but for me it's like, oh man. It's the worst. When I'm teaching improv to groups, whether that's kids or in professional settings, it's one of those things - we try to start with some of the basic rules of yes and. For the time being try to not ask questions. So when you introduce a game that's like the whole point is asking questions. It can be become tricky to break out of some of those habits especially for new improvisers.
JH: Chris, do remember when you attended one of our open rehearsals or open practices and we played freeze tag. So that is something simple like that where there's a restriction. You have two performers up and they're making weird movements. And then anyone in the group can yell freeze and pause them and come in and start a new scene in those same physical positions.
WMRA: Yeah, and we did it where the person had their backs turned so they couldn't see the scene. That was fun because you couldn't even see what's going on. You had just got right in there.
JH: So I love that because especially with newer people there's no chance, no opportunity to pre-plan anything. There isn't in any of our shows anyways, but it just further illustrates that fact that there you couldn't plan.
WMRA: You talked about the different forms of improv of these short games that a lot of people know, but there's also long form improv too like the Harold for instance, where there's a lot of different scenes that tell a bigger story. Do you delve into that too?
JS: The last couple of shows we've been doing a la ronde, a shorter version of it, but we treat it like one big scene. I might be wrong, I think it’s based off a German play of the same name, if I remember correctly, and for theater historians out there, I apologize.
WMRA: Well this is an NPR audience, so you will be fact checked.
JH: I’m a historian and I’m infuriated.
JS: So it's essentially where two characters start a scene and character A leaves the scene. Character B stays. Character C now enters that scene and now it's B and C. Character B leaves the scene and character D joins that scene. Now it's D and C. So those characters stay the same and it goes all the way around, back until character A comes in with character H or however many people you have in the scene. So, you try to tell one story through this - one person enters, one person leaves, one person stays kind of situation and that's a lot of fun. That's sort of a long-form game that we've been not only doing in our rehearsals but also putting into shows lately.
JH: II know we're talking about the first Friday shows but the most fun, long-form thing that we do is actually the other show.
WMRA: Yeah talk about that, what's that other show called? What's it about?
JH: It's Friendly City Fables - it's a long form show where we have set characters at the beginning that we've kept throughout the run of the show. They're based off of classic tabletop fantasy game characters. So like Dungeons & Dragons style characters - we have a cleric, we have a wizard, but we also have a twist on some of those characters, but then in the beginning of the show we ask for a problem in a fantasy setting. And then we just kind of go from there.
JS: It’s an hour-long fantasy, sort of live role playing. We do like a gladiator style thumb up thumb down situation where we have a bunch of woodcut placards that are the human D20. So we have the audience vote on if something is successful or not throughout the show.
WMRA: But it makes sense. When you play those games, it's improv.
JH: There’s also plenty of opportunity in the show for additional audience information to be added. Like we ask for at least one piece that my character asks for - I play the cleric and the cleric in a traditional fantasy game would be the cleric of a particular deity in the pantheon. In our show, Favio the character I play, worships the god of the audience’s choosing. And so, I've gotten some really great suggestions, things that I'm supposed to be getting help and aid from. The last one was shush - the god of uncomfortable silences. I've also got the god a vultures, the god a leafy greens and at one point.
JS: We take some wild suggestions, and we make it work in an hour-long show. It's been great.
WMRA: Earlier, you talk about one of the basic tenets on improv being yes and. And there's also something called finding the game in a scene. Can you talk a little bit about that. What that's all about?
JH: The game of the scene to me is like the first unusual thing that happens. The thing that you can then lean into or heighten that becomes the fun piece of it, it could just be something small like a character trait that somebody's walked into, if you keep returning to that thing then it becomes kind of a game to play with.
JS: So as an example, in the short form games, some of those games are set up with a game in mind already. So, it's like that, the game of Questions Only is literally that people could only ask questions, or there's games where it's like, this character can only say one word, but even within that, then you sort of find something to play with. For example, in Friendly City Fables show, John is able to sort of find the game within the scene based on the suggestion, which is the fact that his cleric is a cleric of something. So, he always has that to sort of lean on.
JH: I would say the game in the scene where my god was the god of awkward pauses or awkward silences. I would go to say something and then allow for an awkward silence to happen. So that was just something fun in the game that I could play with and return to.
WMRA: Your other people in the scene, they kind of had a play with you, because they probably also had a stop and have some silence.
JS: Absolutely. Which makes it weird to the audience getting uncomfortable so it was kinf od amazing in a meta way.
WMRA: As a radio guy, that's scares the heck out of me – awkward silences. Let’s have one right now. SILENCE. Ok, we’re back.
JS and JH: TeeHee
WMRA: How do you think improv affects your everyday life? Do you think that it helps you in normal life situations that you're able to improv?
JS: Personally, I think some of the tenants of it sort of help me. That yes and mentality for me is huge and it's again, it's the whole yes and as a rule but not yes and as the rule. Not everything is a thing to say yes to. Being open-minded to ideas and then, of course, learning from failure I think is essential. Having all these opportunities to sort of fail publicly and being okay with that. Knowing that, okay, we'll get it next time. I think that's a helpful thing for me over the last 20 years of my life or so.
JH: Okay, so cue the Avengers music, that's my secret, Chris. I'm always improvising. There's a part of it that's not that different than what we always do. Nobody walks into life with a script. So, I think that there are things that I've learned about performance that have helped me in my everyday life, but it's also just kind of this comfort with the discomfort. What I think Jonathan was saying a little bit. It's made me better at those moments. And it's just been a lot of fun. I'm sure it's therapeutic. It's probably doing something for my subconscious mind to be able to get up on stage and to engage in the act of play with other people that I don't think a lot of adults get to experience. Kids do it all the time.
WMRA: That's exactly it. I think you just hit it right there. It's that as adults we stop playing and in improv, that’s it is. You're playing house and you're playing school and it's one of the only times as an adult where you can play make believe.
JS: Which is awful. You say as an adult, but it's middle school, right? Unless it's organized sport or you join theater or something like that. Again, it’s middle school, from then on there's not a lot of imaginative play.
JH: I think something interesting happens when you're in a in a theater anyways where people are so used to suspending their disbelief for whatever the performance is and then for you to get up there without a script and no pre-planning and create something together - that is really special.
JS: There's just nothing like an improv scene that goes well.
WMRA: It keeps you young at heart too in some ways don't you think?
JS: For sure. Like you said coming back to that play.
JH: Is that what's keeping me immature? Is it the improv?
WMRA: Yes, that’s it. We’ve uncovered your immaturity, we now know.
JS: All those work reviews that say you need to be more professional.
WMRA: Or your old report card in grade school - acts up in class.
JH: Chris, I'm with you.
JS: I was the exact opposite. I was the perfect student.
JH: What happened? They would always send me out in the hall, which I don't know if teachers still do that. If you're a teacher and you still do that. I'm sorry. Find another method. Because I would love that - like you're putting me out in the world right now? I wasn't acting appropriately in this room, so you put me out into the world and that's going to fix it? I don't know.
