All-female comedy festival BONERAMA starts tonight

This Thursday through Saturday, the Philly Improv Theater will present the first-ever all-female comedy festival in the city by the name of "Bonerama." It's the brainchild of Alexis Simpson, Artistic Director of PHIT (member of Illegal Refill and Rare Bird Show), Meg Favreau, Managing Director of PHIT (stand-up comic and one half of Meg & Rob) and Tabitha Vidaurri (of The Sixth Borough) and will feature some of the best female improv, sketch and stand-up comedians that Philadelphia has to offer. We recently took a moment to chat with Alexis about the fest.

Why a female comedy festival?
Tabitha and Meg were actually planning on doing an all-female comedian show. I know people like Karen[Getz] and Kelly [Jennings] of from Cecily and Gwendolyn have done it before and it's always a good thing. It really does celebrate the underdog in a boys' club and when they emailed me I said, “yeah that's a really good idea, why book just one show when we have a lot of really awesome female improvisers that can make a three-day weekend out of it?”

Do you see it as an opportunity for these performers to do something different?
I think that BWP and Cecily and Gwendolyn are two-women improv groups that probably won't do anything different and will just do their show which is great, but I think the most different thing will be what Amie Roe (of Illegal Refill) came up with, “Real Housewives of Philadelphia.” It's going to be a chance to see some improvisers do something really different. And the cabaret-style show, “The Bonerama Variety Hour”, which is what Meg and Tabitha originally planned, is a really good chance for people to experiment and maybe go outside of their comfort zone.

“The Real Housewives...” seems to be something ripe for parody...
It writes itself. I'm addicted to the show, I think it's amazing. I got hooked on the New York one. I just love watching these self-important, completely delusional women. They're rich, fine, great, and some of the women on that show actually made their own money and that's cool, but they're delusional and sick and there's so much drama that doesn't matter. Someone was asking me about it and I said “this is what happens when you don't have bigger problems to worry about.” You get mad about who said what about you at the Gucci party because you don't care about paying your electric bill. We're taking little bits and pieces from all of them. Liz Scott (half of BWP) is thinking of challenging herself to speak in only lines from the show. They're great characters, it's just fun to play awful people.

Do you think that these female performers have been limited in what they usually do on stage?
I don't think I've thought of it that way, but I guess that's the way it is. I do think when I watch a lot of comedy, and it goes back to why I feel good about this festival, is that I really feel that women are put into roles by men and allow themselves to be put into roles by men in which they are playing either the wife, the girlfriend or some slut. I've seen a lot of sketches written that way, I've seen a lot of improv sets go that way and I think “come on, do something else!” I do think that I've seen bits here and there that are different. Tabitha and Meg write really great roles for women. And there might be some other women involved that would like to do something more experimental in a show that is just for them.

You can see that limitation in movies too, I'd say...
Yeah, there's some hot girl that they want and usually she's hotter than the guys that's she's dating. I hear The Hangover was a great movie but the girl has the same ten lines like “Where's the groom? If you don't get the groom here I'll be a bitch!” And I see it too if they are not the hot girl that isn't very interesting, they're the crazy chick that's kind of funny.

How does Philly compare to other cities as far as female characters?
I think within the larger context, I think Philly has a really strong driving community and I feel like everytime I turn around I'm meeting more comedians. I feel like New York has some amazing female comedians. I will say, I went to L.A. and [female comedians] are there, but some of the women I saw were in the shadows. I played there and it seemed like they were surprised that a woman could be confident and in the forefront. I thought “Really, this is L.A.! This is a big town.” You see it exploding on the national scene though, so I don't think we're too far behind. I just don't how many other cities are women really in charge where they are running their own companies. And you see Tabitha running The Sixth Borough and Meg being half of a sketch duo that's very prolific and talented...I don't know how much that happens other places.

BONERAMA starts tonight and runs through Saturday. Visit PHIT's website for ticket information.

Read more...

Amy Poehler on the "spirituality" of improv comedy

Amy Poehler was on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross last week and while the conversation revolved mostly around her time on Saturday Night Live, her husband Will Arnett and her new NBC show Parks and Recreation, Amy did get a chance to discuss her improv background at the end of the interview. After a brief mention of Del Close as "one of the more famous guys in comedy that people don't know", she was asked if she always had confidence on stage not knowing what she was going to say:

I don't know if I always had that confidence but it always felt exhilirating in a good way to do that kind of work. It felt like you were in control even though you had no control over what was happening. I still get up on stage at the Upright Citizens Brigade, which is the theater that I along with Matt Besser, Matt Walsh and Ian Roberts that we started in New York City and now we have a theater in Los Angeles. I still perform because that feeling of it being a little bit dangerous is still exciting for me and it's good as a performer to make sure that you're not getting too comfortable. But also it's a social thing, it almost becomes the closest thing I have to a communal religious experience where you just meet up with people that you love and you do something together and there's someone witnessing it and hopefully you feel different after. I think my experiences doing improv have provided a spirituality in a way that maybe I wouldn't have otherwise.

Certainly there is something to be said about the affirmation that a live performer can receive when a joke gets a laugh. And while the audience isn't talking, there is a conversation between the performer and audience when live comedy is done right. Have you ever felt a connection between either your fellow performers or the audience? Or as a member of an audience have you felt a connection to a comedian and the crowd around you? Is there a moment that sticks out in your mind as "spiritual" or "religious"?
Read more...

VIDEO: Philly Improv Theatre house team ACTIVITY BOOK

Today we offer you more video from the Philly Improv Theater house team premieres. Monday it was The Scramble, and up this time is ACTIVITY BOOK, consisting of Mike Schwartz, John Nolan, Jana Savini, Kim Breslin, Jason Stockdale, Alan Williams, and Kelly Jo Little. The group is directed by Rick Horner.

Read more...

VIDEO: Philly Improv Theatre house team THE SCRAMBLE

This past weekend, the Philly Improv Theater premiered three new house teams and all this week we'll be showing their debut performances at the Shubin Theatre.

First up is THE SCRAMBLE, directed by PHIT founder Greg Maughan and composed of Shane Jenkins, Bob Swenson, Meg Favreau, Jefferson Haynes, Rob Cutler, Katie Horahan, Nick Gillette (not in this video) and AJ "Milkshake" Horan. Their format is, fittingly, "The Scramble", as Greg explained in an interview this April:

You’ll see one scene come out and start on stage and then you might see two other people come out and start a completely different scene but in the same stage space. You might have people talking over each other and you might have two actors on the sides of the stage playing different scenes and one actor in the middle of the stage who is in both scenes but is switching between the two scenes. So the thing about it that’s cool is that one of the things about improv is “don’t think” and you can’t when you do this form because often you are stepping into a scene that is already in progress but you have no idea what it is about. Similarly, for the audience they can pick and choose what they want to focus in on. And the third thing that I really like about it is that when there are all of these things happening on stage at once, you get weird callbacks that are totally subconscious from the actors. So the actors are involved in their own scenes and something they overhear peripherally comes into their scene. And the actors have no idea and the audience sees it, and that’s really cool.

UPDATE: Sound has been fixed!
Read more...

INTERVIEW: Greg Maughan

When Greg Maughan moved to Philadelphia from Detroit in 2001, he figured there would an improv theater already in place. “I assumed that I was a total jerk kid that didn’t know anything and I would very shortly see great improv all over the place.” But this didn’t turn out to be case, so in 2005 he started the Philly Improv Theater (PHIT) with the help of some other Philly long-form improv instructors (Bobbi Block, Alexis Simpson and Matt Holmes). Now, PHIT organizes a monthly show run by The Ninjas at Fergie’s Pub, one week of comedy shows every month at the Shubin Theatre and will present over two weeks of improv at The Adrienne main stage during the Fringe Fest this year. And most recently, the theater is holding auditions for PHIT house teams Monday April 28 at the Arden Theatre (40 N. 2nd St.) from 5-10PM (with callbacks Monday May 5th).

How many active improv groups do you think there are in the city now?

Well, if you consider side projects and people doing random collaborations, it would probably be 25-30. But the total number of performers between improv and sketch would be just a little under 100 people. So it’s not an insignificant group.

So at this point does Philly need more shows or more talent?

I think actually at this point it’s neither; we’ve got great talent and always more showing up all the time in classes so talent isn’t a problem. Shows aren’t so much a problem, I think you see less shows just scattered around, you see more people just booking in here when they get offered slots, so the big thing we need is audience. And that’s been happening over the last couple of months too. This space [the Shubin] when it’s packed accommodates 60 people and we want to be in a space that’s bigger than that, probably between 80 and 100. And if we move into a space permanently with about four times as many shows, you’re going to need a lot more audience to support that. The biggest thing we need is a growing audience.

So why are you holding auditions for house teams now?

The reason why we're doing auditions now is because we have this good talent base but actually a lot of them we are not seeing do much at the moment. There are a lot of really talented people, if I didn’t even put out an open casting call, I could probably get 8-10 great improvisers that aren’t doing anything at the moment. And really one of the big parts of the auditions is that we know we have those people, so we’ll hold auditions to see who comes out of the woodwork, to see who walks in that is amazing that we’ve never heard of. And the response for the auditions so far has been pretty good, we’ve been talking about maybe having to add a day or extending the hours of the auditions. And the auditions are just as much a tool for finding new talent as they are a tool for getting the word out.

Where will these house teams perform?

They’ll rehearse for a few months and we’ll see how the casts gel, but the plan is to have all of the groups have a premiere here at the Shubin before the end of the year and they’ll probably play the Fringe Festival. For the Fringe, the PHIT has booked out the main stage at the Adrienne which is this beautiful space. Every single show there is going to be improv for the two and a half weeks of Fringe. Then if someone wants to do a show in Northern Liberties then we can do a show there. And they’ll also tour, we’ll submit them to festivals. Miami, Charleston, Gainesville, I’m thinking of all of the sunny places because the weather is getting nice. Chicago, Toronto, obviously Del Close in New York. Anyone that wants us can have us; we want them to spread the word about the theater across the country.

You’re talking about different cities, on the PHIT website you talk about teaching a "Philly-style" of improv. What would that be?

Well that’s what we’re working on. Alexis Simpson [interim artistic director] and I talk about that a lot because there are things that are unique about the way improv is done in each city. In New York, the Upright Citizens Brigade grows out of Del Close and “The Game” of the scene which is this concept that the UCB teaches almost exclusively. “The Game” is basically that in the first interactions of the scene you can find a pattern established between the two actors that you can explore and heighten to crazy, ridiculous absurdity. Someone might trip and fall coming on stage and that can be the game of the scene because now for the rest of that scene the dynamic is that the person that didn’t fall sets the other person up so that they can fall down and do physical comedy.

So like callbacks?

Yeah, sort of like mini-callbacks that are happening constantly. If the idea is that one character is swindling the other character, you will just keep allowing yourself to be swindled and the person will just keep swindling more and more ridiculously and outlandishly. That’s “The Game”.

So what is Philly’s style like?

We’re not sure yet, it kind of just emerges. I think Philly is really obsessed with formats: the styles, the setups, the behind-the-scenes stuff, how the performance rolls out. So the classic structure for a performance is called “The Harold”. It’s basically a behind-the-scenes thing that let’s all of the improvisers know that “oh, we’re going to do ‘The Harold’,” they have a sense of what the flow of the show is going to be. They don’t know how it’s going to go, but they know how many characters are going to different scenes and when scenes will come back and will try to tie together. Philly groups are really obsessed with creating their own format and playing it here in Philly, which I find really interesting.

The format for the house team that you will be directing is “The Scramble.” Some people may not know what these formats mean, so can you explain “The Scramble”?

“The Scramble” is a form that Joe Bill, one of the best improv teachers in the world, came up with. It’s different because it’s kind of like watching a couple of shows at once. You’ll see one scene come out and start on stage and then you might see two other people come out and start a completely different scene but in the same stage space. You might have people talking over each other and you might have two actors on the sides of the stage playing different scenes and one actor in the middle of the stage who is in both scenes but is switching between the two scenes. So the thing about it that’s cool is that one of the things about improv is “don’t think” and you can’t when you do this form because often you are stepping into a scene that is already in progress but you have no idea what it is about. Similarly, for the audience they can pick and choose what they want to focus in on. And the third thing that I really like about it is that when there are all of these things happening on stage at once, you get weird callbacks that are totally subconscious from the actors. So the actors are involved in their own scenes and something they overhear peripherally comes into their scene. And the actors have no idea and the audience sees it, and that’s really cool.

Can you explain the improv-to-script production for the Fringe Fest?

Mike Connor and Brandon Libby developed these two characters called The Hopper Brothers that they decided to do a Fringe musical around. The two characters are sort of these lovable morons who are home-schooled by their grandmother and are now a folk rock duo for kids. So they came up with an outline for a show and we cast a bunch of improvisers and we went off to this huge 40-bunk cabin in the woods for a weekend. We hung out non-stop the whole time and just over and over again ran through the scenarios and improvised the characters and did all kinds of acting exercises. Basically we ran the scenario 6-7 times with everyone doing different takes on the characters each time and then Brandon and Mike picked out the best parts and transcribed it into a script. So it was literally improve into a script. It’s going to be this hour and a half show called “The Hoppers Hit The Road” that travels with The Hopper Brothers as they go from Glenside, Pennsylvania to the Ocean City Music Pier in search of love and a record contract. There’s a bunch of characters and crazy music that will hopefully be a big hit at the Fringe.

You also perform in a few groups: Industrial and Holmes/Maughan (with Matt Holmes of Rare Bird Show). Which do you like more: organizing shows or performing in them?

Well, when the shows go well you always enjoy performing in them. I will admit I’m my worst critic so that doesn’t happen very much. I think I go 7-8 months between what I would call good shows and part of that is that I’m not the funniest person I know and I’m not the best or one of the best improvisers that I know. But I’m ok and I can get away with it, but I can’t always have a good show. In the day-to-day there’s a lot of joy that comes with running a theater though. I’m able to get a group of people that had a really cool thing going but not a lot of direction towards really getting momentum behind the effort to build the scene, to have a theater, to be here [at the Shubin] one week a month has been really awesome. And it’s getting to the point where it’s getting to be too much for me to handle and a lot of people are stepping in to take it over. It’s my hope that in a couple of years the theater will be able to run without me being involved all that much. Instead of being some crazy pet project that I’m doing a million hours a week, it’ll be a real thing that stands on its own and has a community of people around it. So that part of it is really exciting.
Read more...

OUT TODAY: ASSSSCAT Renegade Improv Comedy DVD

Filmed not even a month ago at the UCB-LA and aired last Friday on Comedy Central, ASSSSCAT has a new DVD out today:

ASSSSCAT comes to DVD March 25th from the Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB). ASSSSCAT features the original UCB four: Matt Walsh, Ian Roberts, Matt Besser and Amy Poehler and special guests: Will Arnet (Arrested Development), Chad Carter (UCB), Sean Conroy (The Swarm), Andrew Daily (UCB), Ed Helms (The Office), Jen Kirkman (UCB), Tom Lennon, Horatio Sans (Saturday Night Live), Paul F. Tompkins, Kate Walsh (UCB).

We caught some of it on Comedy Central last week (and DVRed the rest!) and what we saw was funny and well filmed. And PFT and Jen Kirkman doing the monologues!

Here's a video that isn't on the DVD from the recent SF Sketchfest with Neil Patrick Harris and others:

Read more...

VIDEO: Illegal Refill - long-form improv

February 9th at the Shubin Theatre, opening for The Sixth Borough.
Read more...

ADVICE: Lessons from Improv 201 at UCB

NYC comic Matt Ruby of the excellent blog Sandpaper Suit offers some notes from his Level 2 UCB improv class, some which apply to stand-up. The ones that especially make sense to us:

Whatever scares you, do it.

Specificity is our friend. Add it.

Honesty is our safety net. We can never go wrong if we speak how we honestly feel at the time.

Whatever you feel uncomfortable doing is exactly what you should try doing.

Go from A to C. Leaving the B out is often the interesting part because it lets the audience's brains make the connection.

First laugh line is often the audience telling you where the game of the scene is.

Be ahead of the audience. If you just thought of it, go for it. If they already know where you're going, you've lost.

Read more...