Improv Conspiracy Blog

This is a post in our "Five Questions" series of interviews with Improv Conspiracy members.  During the 2013 Melbourne International Comedy Festival we'll be posting a new interview on every day that we have a show!  You can find out more about our show "Our Friend Harold" and buy tickets by clicking here!

What was the first improv you saw that made you think "Wow, I'd like to do that!"?

It’s going back a bit but I believe it was an old video of Australian Theatre Sports our Drama teacher showed us when I was 13. I remember thinking that it must be scripted, as nobody could be that amazing and God-like by just coming up with stuff on the spot. I decided then and there that I would investigate how I too could become one of these superior beings.

This is a post in our "Five Questions" series of interviews with Improv Conspiracy members.  During the 2013 Melbourne International Comedy Festival we'll be posting a new interview on every day that we have a show!  You can find out more about our show "Our Friend Harold" and buy tickets by clicking here!

What was the first improv show you saw that made you think "wow, I'd like to do that!"?

I can't actually remember the first 'wow' improv show I saw, because I started doing drama when I was young, so by the time I was seeing shows I was already familiar with improvisation. However, when travelling through America, I saw shows by 'Improv Asylum', 'Second City' and 'IO Chicago'. Although I was already doing classes at the time, seeing these shows really inspired me and opened my eyes to the range of formats and the endless possibilities that come from imagination and creativity. It also made me jump at the chance to start doing Harolds, because it was more in line with some of the things I had seen overseas and I knew it would broaden my improv horizons!

This is a post in our "Five Questions" series of interviews with Improv Conspiracy members.

What was the first improv show you saw that made you think "wow, I'd like to do that!"?

The BBC's "Pebble Mill at One" circa 1985. I was at home from school sick watching this now defunct English daytime TV show, when they had a troupe of local actors on performing, a new acting style called "improv". It was crazy. There were no scripts. They just made it up as they went along. They wore bad jumpers. Wild.

Back then though, there was a lot of buzz about improv in the British Isles, so much so a local group could get on TV, just do some short form games and everyone would be impressed. I seem to remember this group playing a scene involving a box. Unfortunately the box never got opened leaving this viewer wonder to this day as to its content. Lesson 1: Open the box.

This is a post in our "Five Questions" series of interviews with Improv Conspiracy members.  We aim to publish one per week over the next few months!

What was the first improv you saw that made you think "Wow, I'd like to do that!"?

In 1998, I wrote a (real, handwritten ink) letter to my mate Geary saying, I've read about this upcoming show Whose Line Is It Anyway?, and made some precocious evaluation like "the concept has exciting potential, do you not agree?" Like Columbus 'discovered' America, I discovered improvisation.

This is a post in our "Five Questions" series of interviews with Improv Conspiracy members.  We aim to publish one per week over the next few months!

What was the first improv you saw that made you think "Wow, I'd like to do that!"?

I guess it would be Whose Line Is It Anyway, the British version. I particularly loved the songs. I did a bit of improv and a lot Commedia dell'Arte (a style of theatre where stock characters improvise within specific scenarios) at school and university but then I took a break from performing for a bunch of years. About a year or so ago I started doing some Standing Up Comedy but found myself quickly getting a little bored and a little lonely performing by myself.  Improv was a certain cure to this loneliness, as I would have team mates that would have to be my friends (or at least act like my friends on stage!), I did a bunch of impro/improv classes and now I'm the most popular kid in school.