Raleigh's Village Idiots want to have some fun this summer.
We're not performing our regular show over the summer (our crowds are never great during vacation time) at the theater. We are performing sets of gameprov pretty much weekly (Thursdays 9-11) at Tom Caruso's new restaurant, Brooklyn Sal's in the Clayton Corners Shopping Center just as you enter Clayton on Hwy 70. This return to our improv roots (our current show do a 2-set show starting with a strongly scene-based theatrical short-form set which is followed by a long-form set) has us jazzed up for change.
What's the best way to experience change in improv? New formats? New styles? Nah, that's superficial. The heart of improv is the improvisors and that's the only way to change. Now, we're not actively out to change our troupe, but we want some new blood around. How to reconcile those two opposing viewpoints?
Open rehearsal up to other improvisors. Genius, thank you. But, we don't want to intrude on other troupes or look like we're trying to steal people or ideas away.
So while any experienced improvisor is welcome to contact us, the people we are really targeting are ex-improvisors. We're contacting members of former troupes we've been involved with and friends that we know can improvise. But I thought it couldn't hurt to put a note out here and ask you all to pass the word in the Triangle area to improvisors you know.
We'd like to invite improvisors to contact us about joining our rehearsals (Wednesday Nights, 9-11) during the month of July (7/7, 7/14, 7/21, and 7/28) and maybe into August if things are going well and we want to extend it. We just want to shake things up for ourselves and at the same time give people a chance to have some fun doing something they used to love.
Anyone interested can reach me at 919-368-5955 (evenings or weekends, or leave a msg there during business hours) or at Matthew@idiots.net. Or, if they know another active Idiot (Falcon Arendall, Mikey West, Romni Rossi, Lisa Hall, Katie Stephens DeJong) they can talk to them instead.
I don't have a hardcore agenda of what we want to do. We just want to have fun and share ideas and styles. If we have a bunch of short formers join us for the month, we'll do a lot of short form. If we have long formers, we'll do that. If we have a mix, we'll do both. We just want to play and have fun (and maybe we'll all learn a bit in the process).
As a stylistic backgrounder, you should know that we follow no master. We've all read Spolin and Johnstone. I've workshopped under Johnstone and I'm very influenced by his philosophies on how to work a crowd and what an audience wants/expects compared to what you should give them. As a teenager I trained under the founding cast of Chicago City Limits and after college I spent a few years with ComedySportz in Raleigh and Chapel Hill. The biggest factor in my directing philosophy, however, was a 4-hour workshop with Jeff Wirth that changed my improv life. Rules became tools and the Idiots no longer follow any "this is how it must be" philosophy. We ask questions, we say no, we start scenes with strangers . . . when it is right to do so. We're not dogmatic about any so called rule. We love short form, we love long form, we love forms in between. We want to have fun and give an audience a good time. We're kind of like Caine.
We're not performing our regular show over the summer (our crowds are never great during vacation time) at the theater. We are performing sets of gameprov pretty much weekly (Thursdays 9-11) at Tom Caruso's new restaurant, Brooklyn Sal's in the Clayton Corners Shopping Center just as you enter Clayton on Hwy 70. This return to our improv roots (our current show do a 2-set show starting with a strongly scene-based theatrical short-form set which is followed by a long-form set) has us jazzed up for change.
What's the best way to experience change in improv? New formats? New styles? Nah, that's superficial. The heart of improv is the improvisors and that's the only way to change. Now, we're not actively out to change our troupe, but we want some new blood around. How to reconcile those two opposing viewpoints?
Open rehearsal up to other improvisors. Genius, thank you. But, we don't want to intrude on other troupes or look like we're trying to steal people or ideas away.
So while any experienced improvisor is welcome to contact us, the people we are really targeting are ex-improvisors. We're contacting members of former troupes we've been involved with and friends that we know can improvise. But I thought it couldn't hurt to put a note out here and ask you all to pass the word in the Triangle area to improvisors you know.
We'd like to invite improvisors to contact us about joining our rehearsals (Wednesday Nights, 9-11) during the month of July (7/7, 7/14, 7/21, and 7/28) and maybe into August if things are going well and we want to extend it. We just want to shake things up for ourselves and at the same time give people a chance to have some fun doing something they used to love.
Anyone interested can reach me at 919-368-5955 (evenings or weekends, or leave a msg there during business hours) or at Matthew@idiots.net. Or, if they know another active Idiot (Falcon Arendall, Mikey West, Romni Rossi, Lisa Hall, Katie Stephens DeJong) they can talk to them instead.
I don't have a hardcore agenda of what we want to do. We just want to have fun and share ideas and styles. If we have a bunch of short formers join us for the month, we'll do a lot of short form. If we have long formers, we'll do that. If we have a mix, we'll do both. We just want to play and have fun (and maybe we'll all learn a bit in the process).
As a stylistic backgrounder, you should know that we follow no master. We've all read Spolin and Johnstone. I've workshopped under Johnstone and I'm very influenced by his philosophies on how to work a crowd and what an audience wants/expects compared to what you should give them. As a teenager I trained under the founding cast of Chicago City Limits and after college I spent a few years with ComedySportz in Raleigh and Chapel Hill. The biggest factor in my directing philosophy, however, was a 4-hour workshop with Jeff Wirth that changed my improv life. Rules became tools and the Idiots no longer follow any "this is how it must be" philosophy. We ask questions, we say no, we start scenes with strangers . . . when it is right to do so. We're not dogmatic about any so called rule. We love short form, we love long form, we love forms in between. We want to have fun and give an audience a good time. We're kind of like Caine.