By Rachel Bush
A few weeks ago I found myself on stage (for maybe the fifth time in my life), in front of a modest crowd at Chico’s Blue Room Theatre. My heart was racing and I was sweating in different places, but I didn’t have much time to dwell on that.
My scene partner Jen looked at me, motioned her hands into strange shapes, and said “we just have to finish this round of balloon animals by this afternoon”. I picked up my own imaginary balloons and quickly began twisting them with her, as we now had a deadline. A few beats in, we discovered that we were also lovers, teetering between an engagement and breaking up. With each new, absurd scene development, I felt my nerves soften. I went on to play a psychologist, diagnosing fellow player Dennis with mommy issues. Then I was a giraffe, while my partners played disgruntled Walgreens employees. By the end of the show, my six teammates and I had woven a strange but entertaining medley of scenes together, completely made up on the spot, for our Level 2 Improv Showcase.
People from vastly different backgrounds had signed up for this, all for different reasons such as an insurance adjuster wanting a change of scenery, while others wanted to make friends or just act silly for a few hours. Our team spanned every decade from 30 to 80 years-old, our commitment to doing something new was one of our few common threads.
I left that show feeling energized; I almost forgot about the nerves that were sitting at the bottom of my stomach before. I don’t have a theater background; I’m an over-thinker; and the stage is not my natural home. But I wanted to see what it felt like on the other side of my comfort zone, and I knew improv could do that.
So, what is improv? Most of us have seen snippets of Who’s Line Is It Anyway, so you probably have a loose idea of the form. From his book, Improvise. Scene from the Inside Out, celebrated improv instructor Mick Napier (of Chicago’s famed Second City theater) explains “It’s getting on stage and making stuff up as you go along. That’s it.” It’s unscripted theater, where all the player needs to go into a scene is an open heart, a willingness to listen, and not much else.
Chicago’s Second City has been particularly influential on emerging generations of improvisers (most of the original Saturday Night Live cast came from there), and other theaters like Groundlings and Upright Citizen’s Brigade soon followed. As the genre flourished, students could take workshops, as more experienced improvisers formed troupes to perform unscripted shows.
In Chico, theater and comedy luminary Dana Moore is currently spearheading efforts to build the improv/comedy scene through classes (recently rebranded as The Nerve, with Chico comedian DNA offering stand-up classes). Moore spent ten years in New York studying and performing improv at the Magnet Theater and Upright Citizens Brigade, eventually teaching the trade at various venues and festivals around the country.
“After living in a big city and coming back to our medium sized college town, I can see the holes, I can see what Chico doesn’t have. But I don’t feel limited, I feel excited and empowered to create something new,” she said.
Since 2021, she’s been teaching improv at various locales such as Chico Theater Company, Gnarly Deli, and most recently, the reinstated Blue Room Theatre (now located on West 1st Street, next to the Oasis Bar).
“Blue Room is a Chico institution to me. They always put on unique, interesting shows.” Since the theater’s recent revival, they’ve hosted several quirky, original acts, including their ‘warped Christmas show’ Late Night With Krampus, and the January one-man-show Garvey, an autobiographical profile of an agoraphobic-ish shut-in, directed by Moore.
“It’s always been a place to innovate and embrace new and weird ideas”, says Moore, who believes this aligns perfectly with the spirit of improv. For her, teaching the fundamentals of improv—and not just playing class games or skits—has been crucial to growing a community of confident improvisers. “People don’t know how to go into something new if they don’t have the skills to do that.”
What does that look like in the context of one of our classes? We’d start with warm-up games to get us feeling properly silly, like a mimicking exercise. Teammate Warren might turn to me, bellow a loud roar, and I’d copy his sound and every mannerism, down to the way he curled his pinkies. Then we’d dive into scene work. Even with a few suggested word prompts to spark ideas, the rest of the scene was completely open to play with, and Moore often let it go long enough to develop character relationships and proper conflict. Later we’d loosely dissect the scenes, noticing what worked or didn’t. While anything goes in improv, there are still rules and structures that help move scenes into what theater people love to call “dynamic spaces”.
For me, the most important and hardest lesson was to consistently practice getting out of my head (a truly tough one!) Not having a script is equal parts liberating and terrifying, and during every class, someone would fall victim to stalling, without a clever idea yet to start a scene. “Don’t think, just…go” Moore would kindly nudge, a reminder of improv’s goal.
While going into something without an idea was terrifying, the concept of “Yes, and…” became the soothing balm of improv for me. “Yes, and…” is an improv rule-of-thumb that you should support whatever your scene partner says or does, and help them build that reality. If your partner comes onto the stage and asks you for the spatula (or to twist some balloons), you comply. How comforting that whatever idea I brought to the stage would be supported and built on by someone else, often making for very funny and inspiring moments. And even when it didn’t land, the sense of support eased the jitters.
At the end of the day, the improv scene became a playground to have fun with my adult peers. “Improv isn’t just for traditional performers or ‘funny people’,” Moore says. “Everyone is actually really funny, and people surprise themselves with that in every class. And [improv] translates to real life because you have to be in the moment, say what you want to say, without judging yourself, which helps you trust yourself and your choices.”
I still get nervous when I step into a new scene, and I still overthink what punchy ideas will work best. But it happens a little less now, knowing that the other side of my jitters will always be worth it.
Dana Moore’s next round of improv classes with The Nerve start Feb 2nd and 3rd.
To learn more or sign up, visit https://www.chicocomedyclasses.com/classes
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