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Dramatic Improv:
HARSH and Revolving Madness... Taking improv seriously in New York City and San Francisco
Written by Jill Bernard
When the average person thinks of 'improv,' they automatically assume 'comedy.' Improv comedy certainly has a more visible profile, but dramatic improv is on the rise. Two groups navigating darker waters are HARSH from New York, and Revolving Madness from San Francisco, both featured this month at the Toronto Improv Festival.
Revolving Madness was formed by six college friends who moved to San Francisco after three years of working together as members of UC Santa Barbara's BFA Acting program. In Santa Barbara they studied and acted all day and then rehearsed at night to hash out their own style of longform improvisation. "We would be working on Pinter during the day and get together to improvise at night with that in our minds," recalls founding member, Lauren Pizzi, "It was amazing, just wild." Their shared experience in traditional theater created a uniquely grounded style. They play in venues around San Francisco, including the San Francisco Fringe Festival.
HARSH began as an Upright Citizens Brigade Theater master class. Director Ari Voukydis explains: "I sort of wanted a 'dirty dozen' kind of squad, who were tired of all the jokiness in improv and were willing to embark on something that would take six months to a year to really get good at... I tried to make the class listing feel like that ad that Ernest Shackleton took out for sailors to the South Pole in 1914: 'Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success.' That kind of thing." The team now performs in New York, most recently at Juvie Hall and at the Del Close Marathon.
"If it's a given that every week Daffy Duck is going to be hit in the head with a mallet, shouldn't we at least explore the possibility that it results in severe brain damage and loss of sight in one eye?" - Ari Voukydis, HARSH
Voukydis says the inspiration for HARSH was "the eleven hundredth corny, winking 'Father McKid-toucher' scene...where some improviser is playing a Catholic priest and, whoa, surprise, he's got the hots for the altar boy. I hate that scene, and not just because it's hack and overplayed ? which it is ? but because it signals the dreamless death of comedy." Emotionally scarred boys and guilt-ridden priests are, Voukydis says "reduced on stage to, 'Ay laddie. That alter boy's lookin' mighty hot in them wee jeans.' Fuck that...We can make fun of anything, but we have to respect its power."
Revolving Madness, too, set out to dig a little deeper. "We spent three years together [at UC Santa Barbara] - that kind of intimacy and love and growth and hate really makes a difference. We're actors first before improvise. The drama the scene structures and the characters are most important to us, not the hilarious hijinks that ensue."
"In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved." - poet Wislawa Szymborska
HARSH and Revolving Madness are not without their funny moments. "HARSH wasn't meant to be funny at all, but it's some of the funniest shit I've ever seen," says Voukydis. "I didn't set out to make it un-funny, either. I wanted it to be tragic and emotionally intense, and we'd see where it went from there."
Revolving Madness is also quite funny without aiming for it, Pizzi attests. "The one thing we are trying to do is start from real life and go from there, and sometimes life is funny and sometimes it's really not funny...We're never trying to do anything."
Voukydis believes that life contains both elements at all times: "One time, years ago I was coming home from a really bad show I'd done, feeling sorry for myself, and as I was getting off the F train I slipped on a banana peel. And you know, it fucking hurt. And I sat there for a few seconds thinking, Wow. The comedian just slipped on a banana peel after not being funny onstage. That's ironic."
"A funny, talented bunch of ruffians" - John Cleese
Both groups have had the benefit of remarkable mentors. "We use a lot of edits and scenic devices that I learned from my mentor, Joe Bill," Voukydis says of the Annoyance Theater improviser/instructor whom he calls HARSH's godfather. "Stylistically, HARSH is a product of my influences. You'll obviously see a lot of UCB in there, plus Joe, Mark Sutton, Mick Napier, Rebecca Sohn, Susan Messing. Now I'm name-dropping but I want to give credit where it's due."
As far as name-dropping, Revolving Madness does one better. While taking a comedy class at UC Santa Barbara, "our teacher went on sabbatical, and in walks John Cleese. He'd never taught before, he lives in Santa Barbara just thought he'd give it a try," Pizzi says. "First and foremost he's just the nicest man we've ever met and the most generous." He was a great influence on their comedy but also on their more dramatic work, advocating for the "absolute seriousness involved in playing comedy." Cleese himself is not an improviser, Pizzi explains. "He's afraid of it, he won't do it. He's a writer, and he just happens to be better at performing his own writing than anyone else."
"Why always take the easy route out? Why always let the woman give birth to a watermelon?" - Lauren Pizzi, Revolving Madness
Both groups work hard to stay away from going for the joke, or the quick laugh. The key seems to be commitment to character and emotional truth, both Voukydis and Pizzi agree. "When I think about the best improv I've ever seen - the stuff that really sticks with you for years - it always comes from a place of emotional truth," says Voukydis. "To really invest in a character you have to care about what happens to them, and to do that the character has to be vulnerable. That means bad things have to be able to happen to them - bad things that matter."
Pizzi explains that one of the things Cleese taught them is that when you're playing with integrity, "you're so devoted to what your character wants in the scene you don't have any time to comment on yourself," and go for the joke. "It's not like it hasn't happened if someone feels like, 'Wow, we're really dropping the ball,?" says Pizzi. "I think we just find that the payoff is just so much better if everyone can hang on. It's more satisfying."
"You know how when a bank-robber takes a bunch of hostages, they often kill one just to show the police they're serious? That's what I'm advocating, I guess. Shoot some hostages." - Ari Voukydis
Satisfying, yes, but frightening. Voukydis explains, "We just kind of approached it from the perspective of: If you take a group of expert improvisers who can get laughs at will, how do you know they're not getting laughs at least partially out of fear that an audience will otherwise sit there stone-faced, silent, not loving them? So we took out the laughs. You've got to be really fearless to do improvised tragedy, because you're not getting those laughs. That constant reinforcement isn't there."
"Don't try to give the audience what they want. They don't know what they want. That's why they came to your show." Mark Sutton, as quoted by Ari Voukydis Reading the audience when they're not laughing is a challenge. "That's the risk you take when you do dramatic work," affirms Pizzi. The cast has been delighted when audience members come up to them after the show to say a scene was great or touching, or sweet, but that's after the show. "Comedy you're going to know how they feel about you, but when you're doing drama, you're not."
Voukydis describes his approach: "To do tragedy, you have to learn to ignore the audience. Honestly, maybe even moreso for comedy....you can't depend on them to tell you what is sacred and what is holy. Know that shit on your own. Show up. Do your work. If it's good they'll love you."
Pizzi's audience philosophy contrasts: "They're paramount, they're really paramount....I want the audience to feel like, wow, this was only done this night this time with this energy because we were here."
"You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks." - Ludwig Wittgenstein
For Revolving Madness, the Toronto Improv Festival will be their highest level of exposure yet. "We are nervous and excited and think this is a big open door for us," Pizzi confides. "We consider ourselves extremely naive but we are fine with that. Naivety causes you to take risks you would never take, to get out there, and we wouldn't be here, we're thankful for that."
Before improv festivals were common and Whose Line Is It Anyway? was on television, comedic improvisers across the country were relatively unaware of each other's work. Voukydis believes that pockets of dramatic improvisers may be spread in the same way. "I think not enough people are wading into that grey area [between funny and tragic]. They will though. We certainly didn't invent this idea. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised at all to find out that some other dojo in Orlando or Phoenix or Chicago or Toronto is doing a similar thing." HARSH's performance in Toronto may well provide the beginning of Voukydis's dream: "an actual 'Aspen Tragedy Festival.' That'd be awesome."
Revolving Madness is Mike Michalske. Christy Daly, Lauren Pizzi and Elizabeth Rawls, with Colin Gage. See them at the Toronto Improv Festival's Showcase stage on Thursday, Aug. 18 at 8 p.m.
HARSH features Matthew Adams, Brigid Boyle, Michelle Dobrawsky, Kassi Dougherty, Lauren Hunter, Tommy Lanois, Eileen Malone, Michael Marinoff, John Montague, Evan Morgenstern, Adam Pally, Mikal Reich, Vanessa Rennard, Ashley Sronce, and Claire Wyckoff, directed by Ari Voukydis. See them at the Toronto Improv Festival's Showcase stage on Friday, Aug. 19 at 10 p.m.
Jill Bernard is Yesand.com's Minneapolis Editor. She has been a member of ComedySportz-Twin Cites since 1993 and directs their workshop program. She has a solo show, Drum Machine, and a duo Resist Butch, as well as being a founding member of Huge Theater.