Shawn Kinley

Voor het augustusinterview zijn we geen groep gaan opzoeken om een maand in de spotlight te zetten, maar hebben we de vraag van Appel au Public voorgelegd aan niemand minder dan Shawn Kinley, de reizende impropersoonlijkheid uit Canada.

De vraag luidde als volgt:

How do you experience the differences between improv in the Theatresports/Johnstone countries (England, USA, …) and the Match/League d’improvisation countries (Quebec, continental Europe,…)?

Geniet samen met Improfeest van een uitgebreid antwoord van deze topimprovisator:

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Keith Johnstone created Theatresports more than 30 years ago at the Loose Moose Theatre in Canada. He created games to correct bad habits with actors. The games took on a life of their own and audiences were drawn to them in impro based performances.

Keith grew up in an environment where the working class people were drawn to and responded enthusiastically to live wrestling (which was as much of theatre as it was sport). His desire to get a theatre audience to have that same enthusiasm evolved into Theatresports.

The competition is faked for the audience but when it is played properly, the audience reacts the same as those who watched their favorite wrestler fight through adversity and defeat his opponent.

The big problem with the “Theatresports” that many groups play is that they think they are playing it properly. Most are not.

Theatresports was really the first format to structure an improvisation evening. Keith and the early players had no idea it would draw thousands of improvisers around the world to play it. (At one time, there were groups from more than 50 countries playing). As with many things, Theatresports evolved and mostly it evolved poorly. Keith always says that groups took away the risk, they made Theatresports into an evening of banal, light entertainment.

Improvisers would remove the horn for boring because “it was too hard on the improvisers”. That argument sounds, at the least short sighted and, more likely an arrogant protection of the performer’s ego. The show is not for the improviser. It’s for the paying audience. The chance to have a boring scene thrown off stage gives the audience a larger chance they will see something worth watching ànd, if the performers weren’t so narrow sighted, it would give them a back door out of bad work. They could then blame the “evil judges” who were set up to take the heat for such decisions.

In any case, as an attempt to help maintain some integrity in Keith’s creation, there was a movement to create licensing. Groups who wanted to play Theatresports would have to purchase a license. (That situation still exists today). Through the history of licensing and with the body that provides the license (International Theatresports Institute – theatresports.org) there have been a lot of mistakes and troubles but at present things are moving in a good direction with more than 60 registered companies who care enough about the artistic vision of Keith Johnstone to take part in this flourishing global community.

Having said that, I would encourage groups who are playing Theatresports illegally to either sign up with the rest of the groups or to stop calling what they do “Theatresports”. I find it very frustrating to walk into a theatre and see what some people are calling Theatresports. This gives the actual Theatresports (and Keith Johnstone) a bad reputation. The real format is vibrant, alive, exciting

and can fill an evening with laughs, tears, screams and excitement from the audience. If you really want to learn how to play it right, contact the ITI or drop me a note and I’d be happy to come by or put you in touch with a reputable teacher.

Now… having cleared that up, let me get to the question…

What are the Improvisation style differences between the countries focused on Keith Johnstone style and other styles such as the League, Match, Comedysportz and others?

Improvisation played well under any style has merit if the audience walks away and feels like they would like to see more. Improvisation that falls back onto crutches – to the point where they are predictable – is giving a bad name to improvisation and stands no chance to sustain itself over the long run.

My preference is for narrative based improvisation because the audience remembers a good story years after the fact. Easy laughs and cheap gimmicks work well in the moment but are not memorable. That kind of work loses its audience fairly quickly. The improvisers then blame the formats and come up with new gimmicks for the crowds. Basically, the performers become dancing poodles, learning new tricks that can never truly feed the long term appetite of an audience.

I think I am a very lucky person. I get to travel around to many countries every year meeting many improvisation groups. Over the years, the style of many countries becomes evident. Similar problems emerge in one city that appear in most cities where improvisation occurs in a given country. It becomes easy to see where the improvisation comes from and what influenced it.

I’m sitting here with Nadine Antler from Wuerzburg Germany and we have been discussing German improvisation. I think for the population, there are more improvisers in that country than any country on the planet and there are similar problems. The qualities of the improvisers might come from the culture or from the training (probably both). I think early on however, there was some superficial training that missed the point of good improvisation practices. Early on in Germany, Improvisers learned games that made an audience laugh and when the audience stopped laughing, they learned a new game and then a new format. But, did those improvisers ever really learn to improvise or just learn better tricks to jump through hoops?

It would be highly irresponsible to say that all improvisation in one country is the same. I know of a couple improvisers in Germany for example that are amongst my favourite in the world. Groups that learn good technique and are grounded in good theory last for a long time and stay excited and energized as performers without the need of putting all their focus on the value of a format.

Keith and other strong teachers create certain games to solve the problems that improvisers are having. When the problems are solved, the game can be removed. The same can be said about formats. Is the format serving it’s purpose or is it there to make up for weak skills?

Formats can train the performers in a good way and a bad way. Micetro is another format of Keith’s. It can help a mixed group of improvisers create a great arc to a show as the stronger improvisers are given more time on stage as the evening progresses. Shows end stronger than they begin. On the negative side, playing it too long can start to train unskilled improvisers to be weak when it comes to taking initiative in scenes (they passively wait for the director).

I like Norwegian improvisation at its current state of development. There is a playfulness you don’t see in much of the rest of Europe. Canada is strange. Because the country is so big, companies rarely play with each other so styles vary greatly BUT, much of it based in Johnstonian impro tends to have a supportive quality that blends well with chaos and finds it’s path to narrative. In Chile and Brasil, I like the performers very much. Again there is not much consistency because it it a relatively new form and the groups are only recently interacting with each other. Their influence from clown work makes many groups charming and “present”.

It was interesting for me to talk with many South American Improvisers who have a frustrated attitude with “the Match”. Many feel reluctant to play it and are uninspired with it. On one side I think that there is something they could do to make themselves become more inspired (more basic skills) but on the other side, I think that the style of that format lends itself to limitations that do not enhance their experience and quality of work. (Limiting the time and numbers of people in a scene do nothing to help the scene or show when those decisions are arbitrary…) Formats need the ability to adapt to the moment. Being clever with packaging of your work is not a reasonable trade off to inspired work.

When I was in Washington I met two groups. One group was performing Keith Johntone based Theatresports and the other group was playing “Comedysportz”. On the surface, I have a lot of problems with the idea of Comedysportz because it is so “packaged” and predictable – learn games “one two and three” and then graduate to games “four five and six”. Having said that, the performers I played with were in such a good state and willing to break the rules whereas the Johnstonian performers were less inspired.

The Irish Comedysportz players in Dublin were frustrated and stuck to the rules so much that they froze when the improvisation went in an unexpected direction. So, it’s less about the format in the two Comedysportz groups.

Groups that are influenced by television “Whose Line…” (England/USA), “De Lamas…” (Holland) or “Thank God You’re here” (Australia) are often stuck to short sharp laughs and not much fun to work with if you want to create a story.

Basically, it comes down to this: Impro is almost everywhere and everywhere it’s bad and good. In communities where it is safe and contrived, it will slowly kill off its audience and will eventually die. In communities where the improvisers take risks, are vulnerable and keep their egos out of the way of the work, improvisation flourishes and the performers are never bored.
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