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Get Up
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Wednesday, May 16, 2007
 Shannon McCormick and Shana Merlin are two of the most accomplished and experienced improvisers in Austin. Shana teaches improv classes on a weekly basis, and Shannon helps run The Out of Bounds Improv Festival, now in its 6th year. Together, they form Get Up, an improv group that focuses exclusively on longform narrative... aka stories. We talked with Shannon about Get Up, narrative improv, and the past and future of improv in Austin.
DB: Get Up is one of the few troupes in Austin that focus exclusively on narrative longform (the only other being Shana's other troupe, Girls Girls Girls). What is that you find so compelling about narrative-based improv?
Shannon: As I suspect is true for a lot of people doing longform improv, it’s partly just a question of what I got into first. My first real compulsion to do longform came after seeing We Could Be Heroes’ Six Degrees format. And even before that, all of the longform shows I had seen, or at least the ones that I can remember making an impression on me, were narratives. I lived in Atlanta for a while in the late 90s and saw a few episodes of the first season of Dad’s Garage’s improvised soap opera Scandal. Those shows were pretty great. I even saw a show back in maybe ’93 or ’94 at the Annoyance in Chicago called Brainwaves: The Baby-Eater, which, looking back, I suspect was largely an improvised narrative, although at the time I just thought it was one of the craziest, silliest plays I had ever seen.
I think, too, though, that it’s a question of temperament. I’ve been doing theater in some capacity steadily since 1992, and even earlier if you count high school stuff, except for two years that I spent in graduate school in New Mexico, where I basically spent my time discovering that I didn’t have the discipline to become a professional fiction writer. In some ways I think my frustration with my own writing was I didn’t understand story structure very well and couldn’t find how to make events engaging on the page. Most of my characters were kind of stuck in their own heads. So when I started taking classes at the Hideout with Shana and Sean and the people from BATS who would come out, I found this vast wealth of knowledge of story structure, and the kinds of things that hold the audience’s attention that I had been butting my head up against elsewhere in my life. The hooks got in pretty deep and I haven’t stopped being interested in understanding story and narrative structure since.
But I still haven’t quite answered your question, have I? I guess for me, Get Up does what it does because I find narrative to be deeply and profoundly human. All cultures have narrative and storytelling traditions. We’re just wired for it. Humans are narrative beasties. It’s how we relate to one another. Even something as simple as asking someone how their day was, you’re going to get a story. Hell, it’s how we relate to ourselves. Think about your own past or make projections about the future, and you’re engaged in story-making. And because we’re wired this way, even if you’re doing something onstage that doesn’t seem like a story, the audience is going to be projecting that narrative instinct and craving onto the actions onstage. I think a lot of times scenes live or die depending on this narrative projection the audience does, and rather than ignore that, I’d like to get good at it and use it to my advantage onstage. Which is not to say Get Up wants to tell stories that the audience already knows or that are formulaic. We’re just trying to be cognizant of what the audience is going to be doing regardless of our intentions. Finally, I consider myself an improvising actor before I think of myself as a comedian. Doing narratives is the best way, for me, to keep the audience engaged without being too worried if you’re slaying them with the funny. I like the sensation of an audience silently waiting on the edge of their seats to find out what comes next almost as much as I like getting a big laugh, and I’ve found that often the former makes the latter more likely.
DB: After doing improv in Austin for so long with various groups, how does it feel to have a consistent 2 person troupe? Do you approach it differently than your other projects?
Shannon: That’s interesting. There’s something almost weirdly snotty about being in a duo, even more than doing a solo show. It’s like “Hey everybody, we have this great connection and we don’t need anybody else.” Which from the outside could be kind of icky, I guess, like watching some newly coined couple grope each other in public. But yeah, I love doing scenes with Shana. We’ve worked with each other in some capacity for a long time now, and for me, at least, she’s the person I ‘get’ most consistently. We understand where our scenes are going a lot of times even before we initiate them.
 What I really like about doing a two person show is you’ve got no time to hang back and stew over whether the show is going well. You’re just on all the time and you just have to keep pushing the thing forward without pre-calculating too much. With no one else to back you up but your partner, it forces you to listen really hard. If you drop something, there’s not much hiding you can do. We’ve had some shows recently where we’ve been able to playfully incorporate some miffed offers into the show, but we don’t want to make a habit of it.
The other aspect of being in a duo that’s different and really helpful for me is at the practical and logistical level. With only one other’s person’s schedule to worry about, we can rehearse and do shows without too much difficulty. We’re pretty portable, which, as a dad and dude busy with other projects, I’m really appreciative of. If I were in a larger ensemble, I’d have a much harder time being able to juggle my schedule. It’s one of the reasons I don’t play Maestro and shows like as much as I’d like to.
DB: Where would you like to see the future of Austin Improv develop in the next five years or so?
Shannon: I’d love to see us continue with the awesome upwards trajectory we’ve had for the past couple of years. New people coming here to learn or to do their own thing, a multiplicity of styles and voices, and the same open, inviting spirit that we have. That’s one of the hallmarks of our scene and one that I hope doesn’t go away. I think we’re starting to gain a reputation as a cool place to do improv, and I’d like to see that develop and get to the point where some folks at least, can make a decent living just being dedicated to improv. I actually think that time isn’t that far off.
The other thing that I’ve always loved about Austin improv, and a lot of credit here should go to Jeremy Lamb, is a desire to find our own way forward without wanting to just copy what’s been successful elsewhere. The Jury and later the Cupholders have always been a model for me of how to push forward and make your own kind of show, and I think that leadership has rubbed off on a lot of people, like with all the new show formats PGraph has been doing or McNichol and May’s Guided by Videos. I’d love to see that tradition continue.
And of course, I’d love to see Out of Bounds keep getting better and better and more known in the improv world.
DB: Tell us about the origin of Get Up, and your history together as performers.
Shannon: We’ve got kind of an Obi-Wan and Anakin thing going on, in that Shana was my first improv teacher, and now we’re doing shows together. And yes, in most ways I’m definitely the Anakin in the relationship. But yeah, we’ve been doing stuff with each other for a long time. My first two and half years doing improv, I was constantly doing shows, a lot like the Pgraph or ColdTowne guys are right now, with We Could Be Heroes—still a much better name than Heroes of Comedy—as the Heroes were sort of the only game in town. Shana and I did tons of stuff together within that context. Then my son Emmett was born in 2003 and for about a year I took a big step back from doing improv. That time also coincided with a general malaise in the Austin improv scene and I wasn’t really all that compelled to get out and do shows that much. But that time laid the seeds for all kinds of developments with Andy Crouch starting to book shows and make room for people to do their own thing at the Hideout. In the fall of 2004 he asked Shana and I to do a three-person mainstage show at the Hideout for a month or so. We called ourselves, or the show, Hat Trick. It was sort of intended to be a show in the spirit of 3 For All, narrative-based improv. The chemistry wasn’t quite right with that group, most likely because, to my discredit, I’ve not always been the fairest person in the way I’ve treated Andy. But in the aftermath of those shows, I asked Shana to move ahead as a duo and see what that would be like. Our first show was in early 2005 at FronteraFest, where we made it to Best of the Week with our 24 Minutes format. And we’ve been doing a couple shows a month ever since.
DB: Get Up in particular seems to like to tell stories with lots of characters. Obviously this is a challenge with only 2 cast members. What techniques do you use to create distinct characters and to keep all of these characters' traits separate in your head?
Shannon: We’re not always successful with this, but we try to make the various characters we each play within the shows have energies different enough, both from one another and from our own natural tendencies as players. When we remember to do that, the shows usually turn out pretty well. It’s when the characters get samey that we run into problems, especially when we’ve packed a scene with 5 or 6 characters. We both like to play really physically, so grounding the characters in some kind of physical location or with a physical trait helps keep everything straight. Some of the voice-over narrative techniques we use in the show help too, although we use that as much to expand the visual picture in the audience’s minds as we do to sort our who’s onstage.
 Also, doing a narrative really helps, and when I do shows with Shana and we edit to a new scene, it’s rare that I don’t know who I’m supposed to be in the upcoming scene. It’s not that we have specific scenes we need to cut to, but when the story’s really clicking along, we can both just sort of feel what needs to come next. In that sense it’s not that hard to remember which character you’re playing.
Recently we’ve rehearsed some more specialized stuff that we’ve noticed ourselves having trouble with, like how to do crowd scenes or group combat scenes without them getting muddy. It’s taken us a while to master little stuff like that, but once we put our brains to it in rehearsal the math of those techniques was pretty easy to piece out. It’s kind of like mapping out a football play, with lots of “to make that scene work, you swap sides of the stage so we can fight each other, and then we’ll spin the scene around so we can change characters and see what’s going on over there.”
As a side note, I’m really excited to see Cathcart and Olson at Out of Bounds this year, plus they are coming down next month to play at ColdTowne. They’re also a male-female duo who play tons of characters over the course of their shows, but rather than the foolhardy eight-person shoot-out climaxes that Shana and I seem to end up doing a lot, their shows consist of a series of interlocked two-person scenes that unspool over the course of the show. It’s a pretty cool approach.
DB: What improv groups or performers, past or present, influence or inspire you?
Shannon: Man, so many people. I mentioned Jeremy earlier, but there are so many leaders and inspiring figures on the scene in Austin right now it’s awesome. Obviously, Keith Johnstone’s philosophies have had a big personal impact, and from elsewhere the 3 For All and BATS guys and Dad’s Garage guys have been pretty influential. Speaking of BATS, I’ve been lucky enough to have become pals with a couple of guys from Kasper Hauser. Best sketch comics in the game right now, in my opinion. Dasariski really blew me away last year. I could watch those dudes eat soup onstage for a half hour and I would be very happy. I’m really lucky as the producer of Out of Bounds that I get to help bring people down here who are inspiring to me and hopefully will be inspiring to the rest of the community.
I think it’s important, obviously, not to limit one’s improv influences to fellow improvisers. I’m really inspired by the kind of serial narrative TV shows that HBO does, films, fiction and non-fiction, especially history. Some of the best comedic writers in America right now I think are doing comics, like Chris Onstad at Achewood or David Rees’s My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable, and I love trying to bring those sensibilities to the stage as well.
DB: Ask yourself a question and answer it here.
Shannon:
Q. Seriously, I get to ask my own question? Okay, how awesome is Sara Farr?
A. She’s totally awesome. I think it took Shana and I a while to hit our groove with the kind of format we wanted to do. We both really like trying to, as Rafe Chase says, “blow out the stage,” meaning that since everything else we’re doing is made up, why be limited in our settings by the physical limitations of the playing space. Those possibilities didn’t fully click for us until last year at Out of Bounds when Sara added her cinematic sound design to our bag of tricks. I’m really crappy at improv tech, and Sara’s really awesome at it. And she did it all because she likes what we do and because she’s a real sweetheart. Just showed up one day with a library of cinematic scores and said “Hey, would you be interested in adding this to your shows?” It’s really allowed Shana and I to find our voice on stage. It’s to the point where I don’t really think of Get Up as a duo anymore, I think of us as two performers and a sound improviser. We should probably update our cast page to reflect that.
Get Up is performing in the Double Barrel on May 18, 2007.Labels: get up, interview
Improv for Evil
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Thursday, May 10, 2007
 Improv for Evil is celebrating their one year anniversary as a troupe this Friday, May the 11th. Spawned from the womb of Austin Improv just as the current upswell in the scene was beginning, the evil ones have had quite a busy year. We caught up with IfE on this momentous occasion to find out a little bit more about how it feels to be so very very evil.
DB: What are some of your favorite/proudest memories of the past year?
 | Jason: I have had many proud moments with my troupe but I think I was most proud of our run at ColdTowne with Pgraph and Spices. Being the new kids on the block, it was nice to be given the chance to do a two month run and share the stage with some extremely talented folks. It gave us a chance to bond more as a troupe and really pushed us to come up with a marketable format. We may have had mixed results with our "Apocalypse" format but I was really proud of us for trying something new and really going out on a limb.
|  | Matt: I remember our first show, when we were overwhelmed with the support we received - I remember a cookie cake from Pgraph, a bottle of Whiskey from McNichol & May, and the general good vibe in the green room. Some of the most fun shows we ever did were during the Blank Show slot - I remember we did a Nightmare format with just two people in the audience. By the end of it, they asked for our autographs! Another time, a bunch of us took a random road trip to the middle of nowhere to buy poppy seed rolls, and on the way we passed a giant LED sign advertising some lame pecan shack. Ever since, PECANS! has been a troupe joke when things start getting weird. We just recently took a troupe camping trip - Valroth of the Stump has spoken! Performing every Thursday in January and February with Parallelogramophonograph at ColdTowne was a huge highlight as well.
|  | Bob: Doing amazing work with a great bunch of people. Our Wafflefest show was a real high point.
|  | Marc: It's been great watching everyone learn new techniques and hone their skills and grow as improvisers over the last year or so. There have been plenty of ups and downs, but it's all gone by so quickly that it's hard to pick out specific bits. I suppose that the high points performance-wise have been our festival appearances - at Frontera and WaffleFest - and our recent two-month run at ColdTowne. Also, some of the best moments we've had during shows are when we can hear certain other improvisers with distinctive laughs cracking up in the audience. Sometimes, the not laughing is even better, though - we've had a few shows with some longish scenes that we thought were dying because nobody in the audience was laughing or making any kind of noise, but then, when the scene ended, got a big round of applause. I love those.
|  | Mike: I guess my proudest moment of the past year was our very first show. I guess we were all anxious to get to the show and really do a great job. I was really nervous when we were warming up, but once we hit the stage everything just seemed to fall into place and I had a great time.
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DB: How has IfE's improv/philosophy/style changed over the past year?
| Jason: We have tried so many different things just trying to find our own voice in the community. When we started out, we were pretty much strictly shortform players. Since then we have branched out into multiple longform styles with varying results. I think our current philosophy/style is a very organic one. We like to try out different forms and blend the elements we enjoy into a new form that plays to our strengths as performers. That's the goal at least.
| | Matt: We've elevated our game significantly over where we started from, but we know there's always further to go. We started out with your basic flowy donut montage, but we've done Deconstructions (or our modified form, the Destruction), Nightmare, Harolds, Armando, and even forms we've made up the night of a show, like the successful Groundhog Day style or our current project, Lines. Our philosophy is that we can learn from all of these styles, and we shouldn't be afraid to try them.
| | Bob: We've gone back to a more experimental approach, trying new intros and formats rather than working on a signature format. It's helped the group develop its chemistry and made us a bit more agile and confident.
| | Marc: I don't think it's changed all that much, really. We've always been about pushing the boundaries of what we already know, and constantly trying new stuff - new formats, new techniques, new everything. We like to take risks, and see how far we can go before breaking down completely. We've really gone out and failed hard on occasion, either doing something totally wacky at a Blank Show, trying crazy ideas for the Cagematch, or jumping up with a new, untested format on a Friday night show - sometimes these come out better than we'd anticipated, sometimes they flop horribly, but I think we've learned something from most of them, and come out better for it.
| | Mike: I think our style has changed from performing mostly the same stuff (Montages, short form) to where we are more apt to take chances on new formats. We've tried several new formats: Groundhog Day, The Cutting Room Floor, A Harold, and now we're trying our hand at a modified "living room" format called Lines. We've definitely left our comfort zone and are looking to try new formats and ideas to really challenge ourselves.
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DB: IfE has brought in a lot of coaches throughout your career so far. What skills and techniques have you learned from them that you might not have picked up otherwise?
| Jason: I'm not going to name names for fear of leaving someone out. There are so many talented and generous people in the Austin improv community and I am very glad that we have had such a diverse array of coaching. Here is a short list of things that I have learned from coaching.
* Improv is not for cool people
* Gay Balls!
* "I've got a confession to make"
* Eye contact!
* Be obvious
* If you're uncomfortable on stage, the audience loves it
* Play big to small houses
* LISTEN!
* React emotionally
* If you can't think of what to say, start with a sound
* If you're not failing, you're not pushing yourself
I really could go on and on and on but I'll stop now to conserve bandwidth.
| | Matt: We're very lucky to have the chance to work with such talented people - they've given us a perspective on improv that you just don't see by going to a jam or playing in Maestro. Christina de Roos, Dav Wallace, Shana Merlin, Erika May, Asaf - all of these people have helped us grow as a troupe. Everything from ways to open a show to group warmups to exercises in rehearsal that help us focus in on aspects of our play that need work. Every troupe should have such good coaches!
| | Bob: Though they've used different techniques, every coach has pushed us to be bolder and stronger, to play to our strengths but not use them as a crutch. We have a tendency to go all 'crazy town' and we've learned a lot about grounding scenes and starting with an emotional investment.
| | Marc: Wow - we've had so many great people help us out in the last year. From our original sessions with Christina, classes from Buckman and Bob and Erika and Shana, more coaching from Andy and Wallace and Rachel and Lamb and Asaf and Jastroch and everyone else that's come by that I can't remember right now. We've learned so many different things from our different mentors, sometimes we get all confused and start bumping into each other and yelling at walls and whatnot, but we eventually pull ourselves together and get down with the science. It's nice to have so many resources to draw from, but it can lead to a lack of focus at times. I'll let everyone else answer for themselves, but for me, I've gotten a lot out of learning to take it slow with the funny, being comfortable with just being on stage and being quiet and patient and leaving room for stuff to happen - crazytown can be fun, but you don't have to live there all the time.
| | Mike: I have learned a great deal from all of our coaches. Erika helped a lot in maintaining characters, developing a stage presence, and keeping grounded when the desire is to go off into some odd place. Asaf just taught me a great technique to really keep the scene between the improvisors and not get lost in the scenery or the extraneous stuff. It's these little bits of information you pick up from those who have a lot of experience and stage time that you can't learn by yourself. I like the idea of a coach because they can give you an honest evaluation of your performance and show you where the rough spots are, then let you know how to correct them. I may think I'm doing well, but a coach will see me blocking, dropping out of character, or just not committing to the scene as I should.
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DB: If you could change one thing about the troupe, what would it be?
| Jason: I wish we could all quit our day jobs and focus on honing our craft.
|  | Nadine: doing more narrative long form | | Bob: I'd lose thirty pounds and we'd get a giant robot. I guess that's two things. Maybe we'd get a giant robot which would help me lose thirty pounds. And crush SUVs. The robot would have to be able to crush an SUV, definitely.
| | Marc: Everyone advances at a different rate, even in the same troupe, but I'm feeling like everyone's at a really solid spot right now, and really starting to take off, skill-wise. I'd love for IFE to get some more regular performance slots, so we can play with a couple of different formats, and just nail them - really polish them up and get good at one thing for a while, and just knock it out. But we still love variety, so it'd be nice to have a venue where we could do that on a regular basis, still playing around with a lot of different styles while being able to take the time to get a good handle on each one. I'd also love to start moving in the direction of working on some longer narrative-style improv with IFE sometime, too. A lot of us have strong Johnstone-style narrative leanings, and it'd be fun to bring that out to shows more often. And a lot more singing. La La La!
| | Mike: I wouldn't change a thing about any of the members of the troupe. I think we all bring something to the stage and our different personalities and interests allow us to really create some good scenes and stories.
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DB: You were the new troupe in town for almost a year. Now, with the advent of groups like Look Cookie and The Starter Kit, how does it feel to be all grown up, and what advice would you give to the new troupes just starting out?
| Jason: It does feel kind of strange not to be the new kids anymore. I'm excited for the new troupes and hope they all break their legs. My advice to them would be...
* Get a coach (talk to me if you'd like recommendations)
* Rehearse EVERY week
* Remember to have fun
| | Matt: Its about damn time! We thought we'd only have the honor of being the noobs in town for a couple of months, but with the groups coming up, I'd say it was worth the wait. I can't wait to see their shows!
Be fearless! Take as many classes as you can digest, because there is so much talent in this town to draw from.
| | Bob: Play a lot. When you fall down, get up and try again - don't worry about it. You can work hard and have fun - if you're not having fun, something's wrong. The stage is the best teacher, but get a coach to help draw out the best that you don't know is in you. Forward!
| | Marc: It's nice not to be the "baby troupe" any more. I know that moniker rankled some of us every time we heard it, but we pushed through, and check it out, now we're the surly teenaged troupe with a bad attitude and a inflated sense of self-entitlement and hair growing in weird places. It's been nice, though - everyone in the AIC was super supportive when we started out, and we continue to feel that support as the troupe matures. I look forward to the future, when we're able to vote, drink, drive cars, and fire automatic weapons at foreign devils. Advice for new troupes: Get as much stage time in front of an audience you can - play in maestro, make cagematch teams, go to the jam, do shows in bars and coffee houses, whatever. Every minute you're up there helps. Get as much coaching, training, and advice as you can handle, then sit down and figure out how to integrate all that good stuff into your own individual troupe style. Work it the way you know. Don't forget the shameless promotion, either - you don't have to start out being the best performers in the world, but if you have good marketing, you can build a following, and play more, and become the best performers in the world, then get hooked on the dope, become fat and bald, and die in a puddle of your own vomit. You really can make dreams come true.
| | Mike: I like the fact that we're not the "new kids" anymore. A year has passed, and I think we've come a long way since that first show. Advice? Hmm. Just have fun. Be playful. Be open to new ideas and don't be afraid to being any new ideas you may have to your troupe. I love the fact that IfE can just sit down and say "Hey let's try __________ next time!" It took me about six months, but I really learned to have fun while on stage. I think having fun and being playful is important.
| | Nadine: Have fun. |
DB: What are your plans for the future?
| Jason: I would love to develop a following for our troupe locally and eventually branch out to take over the world. I would also love to make a name for ourselves on the improv festival circuit. We've got a ways to go but we are getting better with each show and rehearsal. Also, I want to purchase an island in the South Pacific, call it "Evil Island" and have improvised luaus year-round.
| | Matt: Take over the world.
| | Bob: Push to do tighter, more evocative work. Make every show more fun and more interesting than the last one. Play some festivals, see the country.
| | Marc: More shows, more venues, more different good stuff. There's idle talk about opening a theater someday, which will serve as an ideal foothold in our quest for world domination. I want to start a white-boy nerdcore rap group, too. Oh, and we need lots more groupies. Talk to us after a show to set up an audition.
| | Mike: Get the cloning vats online and create a genetic race of supermen all in my image.
|
DB: Ask yourself a question and answer it here.
| Jason:
Q. Who is the greatest rock vocalist of all time?
A. Ronnie James Fucking Dio
| | Nadine:
Q. what is your favorite food?
A. sardines!
| | Bob:
Q. What's been the hardest problem IfE has faced this year and what did you learn from it?
A. Problems with group chemistry. They're tough to deal with because you want to be on good terms with everyone. You have to trust your partners implicitly and have zero reticence to going onstage - you can't pick and choose your scene partner. You can't force people to get along if the chemistry is broken. The most you can do is support people, not take sides, try to mediate, and not fuel the fire. You also have to be honest with people when their behavior is distracting the group. It's impossible for everyone to agree all the time, but at the same time it's really difficult to work under the shadow of stupid interpersonal bullshit. You do the best you can to make the group work or leave when it's a lost cause. I've been in that situation before and it's awful. I wish there was a way to channel that energy into something positive; my best advice is to not feed it and just play forward.
| | Marc:
Q. How many times have you ascended in Kingdom of Loathing?
A. Twenty-five, with twenty-one in hardcore. An adventurer is me!
| | Mike:
Q. What is your favorite non-improv moment with your troupe?
A. I would say our camping trip in March. We were able to just head out to the woods, drink beer, and just hang out together. We were able to get together in a non-improv setting and just have fun together, be it making a cake in a box, drinking gallons of alcohol, grilling, or just sitting around a fire and talking about nothing for hours. It was a really great trip.
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Improv for Evil is playing in the Double Barrel on 5/11/2007 at 10PM.
Labels: improvforevil, interview
Massive
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Thursday, May 03, 2007
 Massive is a community of improvisers and improv troupes in Houston, Texas. About once a month Massive sends a group of performers up to Austin to show their stuff. The team performing in the May 4th Double Barrel is The Space Cassettes, made up of Michael Garcia (pictured left), Matt Archambault, Guy Schaafs, and Alison Corriel. Michael, Matt, and Guy were kind enough to answer a few questions about Massive and the Houston Improv scene for us.
DB: It seems like the purpose, structure and makeup of Massive has changed a lot over the past few years. If we're not mistaken, Massive is now an umbrella organization composed of lots of separate troupes. Explain what Massive is today, and what it was in the past.
Matt: Massive is an improv community, made up of members and teams. We perform, we coach, we teach, and all to build an audience here in Houston. The audience is out there, they just need a scene to come to...
Michael: I'd like to think that the purpose of Massive has always been the same. That purpose was and is to build a longform improv community in Houston and force the rest of the country to take notice. Over the last year we've had quite a few solid improvisers leave Houston and make their way to other parts of the country but luckily we've also had a number of talented individuals end up in our city.
Guy: Yep. Sorta. I mean it is and it is. Massive has turned into an energy in the Houston community. The core of Massive is dedicated, DEDICATED, to growing improv in this city. We don't want to be good for Houston, we want to be one of the best in the nation. What we have now is as hippie as it gets -- a tip of the hat to the compass players and all the kats that kicked it off.
DB: What's the Houston Improv scene like?
Michael: I hate to sound cocky or conceited but we are the scene. There are maybe 2 other longform groups here but as far as ensembles go we're it. That's why we've made an effort over the past few months to include other groups in our shows, even shortform groups. We know that in order for improv to catch on here it needs to be represented well. Each time I go to Austin there is a new theater or ensemble performing and teaching. Ultimately I think that pushes the community to do more. That's what we want in Houston.
Matt: The scene here is tribal. There are a few small groups who don't tend to interact much. That's where we come in. We've taken it upon ourselves to introduce everybody...this way we can work together. Then there's ComedySportz Houston, who are great...we love Dianah over there. At Massive, we're lucky to have members with some serious training. There is talent and passion down here in Houston, that's for sure...
DB: What school/philosophy of improv does Massive primarily focus on? We've noticed quite a few Harolds from the Massive groups that have come lately.
 Guy: There is a definite change in the Massive school/philosophy as of late. It revolves around the positive, say yes, attitude we adopted. Over the last six months a team of people, who are in Houston for one reason or the other, have made their way into the Massive family. Some were trained in Chicago (both at IO and SC), others in New York schools and some from the West. We are truly blessed and wholeheartedly feel fate has brought together all of these styles to create something unique.
Matt: With all the recent changes in structure and ensemble, we're still figuring out precisely what our artistic unity revolves around... There's a couple teams who are doing Harolds right now, but The Space Cassettes, Deep Fried, and Soviet Bunnies are all playing with some different structures. We're hoping to see a lot more groups and forms here in the next year.
Michael: The last thing we want to do is assign forms to our teams and our shows. When you come check out a Massive show you're probably gonna see something that derives from the Harold but strays from the norm. We work on established forms but at the same time we have a strong interest in creating our own. For instance, I perform a 2 person show with Alison called f*squared where we do a live set and then immediately follow it with an improvised short film inspired by another audience suggestion. The short is then available for the audience online the next day. We take chances at Massive and that's one of the things i like about us.
DB: What are Massive's goals for the upcoming year?
Matt: In February, we plan to have the second annual Houston Improv Festival, and ideally by then have regular performance slots twice a week...and not necessarily the same venue. We want to be able to provide performance time for as many of our members as possible.
Michael: We want to keep putting quality shows out there to let Houston know what a great art longform is.
Guy: We would also like you Austin guys coming to us. We want to start asking the questions.
DB: How many improvisers make up Massive? We've lost count.
Matt: There's about 20 right now. Plus we perform with groups that are in Houston, but technically not under our umbrella right now...
Michael: Our strength is definitely not in numbers. Instead, our strength lies in the passion and dedication that we have for improv. If you've seen the movie "300", that's us except our abs aren't that good.
DB: What is it that keeps you performing improv?
Guy: Oh, it's entirely for the money. You guys too right?
Michael: For me its knowing that I was here at the beginning of the movement. Just knowing that you were actually part of establishing and nurturing an artistic community of any kind is a very powerful thing. That and someday we want to have a giant "Warriors" style gang fight between Houston and Austin. Right now we're greatly outnumbered so we have to keep building or you guys will kill us.
Matt: Wow, this is personal! Everyone in the group has a different answer, I'm sure... Matt Archambault, part of the leadership team and the coach of Scatter! would say: To create a breathing, interactive universe to delight a live audience. ...eesh, I may regret that in the morning...there's just so many reasons! At the base, the laughter, the imagination, and the relationships are what draws me to anything...
Michael: Did Matt just refer to himself in the third person?
DB: Ask yourself a question and answer it here.
Michael:
Q. Why don't you have a girlfriend?
A. Improv is my girlfriend and I make sweet love to her in front of an audience each time I step onstage. I haven't met her parents yet so I'm not sure how serious it is. We might be exclusive but I'll check with her later when I pick her up from the airport. She went to Vegas with some friends for a bachelorette party.
Guy:
Q. What would make Texas blow up nationally?
A. An I-10 that goes both ways with Austin teams and Houston teams sharing the stage and boosting each other's scene.
Massive's The Space Cassettes are performing in The Double Barrel on 5/4/2007.Labels: interview, massive
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