VIIF Report

The approach to Granville Island from downtown Vancouver is on a 4-lane causeway over what is named, with what would be considered British meiosis, False Creek (which is far too wide to be a creek, and is, as it turns out, only a small bay cutting into the heart of Vancouver).  The Granville Street Bridge (which helpfully reminds you in crayon written messages on the periodic street lamp poles) pulls away from downtown to reveal Vancouver's picturesque quality: misty mountains feel comfortingly close to the city center and tall egg carton style apartment buildings fill the skyline, twinkling with green glass windows.  The only truly distinguishing buildings are the BC arena (where the Cannucks (hockey) and White Caps (FC) play) and the Telus Science Center, an Epcot shaped dome at the far end of False Creek's quayside.

Stateside, a bridge like this would likely not even have a pedestrian allowance and any walkers would probably be seen as potential jumpers rather than commuters, but in Vancouver, there is a steady stream of impossibly attractive people walking back and forth, dressed in the standard local attire of a rainproof jacket with attached hood.  For visitors to the Vancouver International Improv Festival (VIIF), this bridge will become a familiar crossing to reach Granville Island proper.  Once down on the far side of the bridge, a small walkway winds down under the bridge, and a short walk underneath it's gargantuan cement canopy leads to the entrance to the island.  Warm, red neon letters state where you are, with a helpful smaller neon sign reminding you that this is Canada.  It's here on the island that the VIIF is taking place - five days of workshops, shows, and fellowship, distributed among what seems to be an improbable number of working theater spaces.

I'm here as part of the International Ensemble, an assemblage of ~2 dozen improvisers broken up into two teams (Bravo and Echo) who spend 4 days rehearsing and performing together.  Applicants to the ensemble submit as an individual, and, if selected, get to rehearse with players they've likely never worked with before, doing forms and shows they've likely never encountered before.  My team (Echo) has players from Vancouver, Atlanta, Winnipeg, Toronto, Edmonton, and Portland and represents a deep roster of modern improv talent and experience, filled as it is with regular performers, teachers, and theater heads.

The first thing I notice about my fellow ensemble players is the high level of familiarity they have with each other.  In contrast to the states, Canada thrives on two big factors that significantly drive the greater national community.  The first is a festival culture that has largely eluded the US up to this point.  Improvisers regularly travel to a number of similarly sized improv festivals both in and out of country, probably fueled not in the very least by a travel and vacation oriented culture that the US seems completely adverse to - as if we can work ourselves to death and productivity simulatenously.  But the second factor is probably the most significant: the Canadian Improv Games.  Every year, high school improv teams from around the country attend this competition, all united under a common banner from the time they entered secondary school.  Because of this, Canadian improvisers have often met and seen each other's work since the time they were 15 and have deep running ties and friendship to each other.

Stepping into the lion's den is a little un-nerving for me for a little while.  I won't cast aspersions and assume that I was going to be better than the Canadians that make up the majority of the cast, but I'm rattled by how easy it seems to be for them, and how professional they are.  Trying to step into a conversation with a dozen people who have known each other for a decade already is an uphill battle for everyone, except the Atlanta extrovert on my team who easily seems to slide into the right groove.  The work is challenging; 5+ hours a day spent rehearsing, in a blend of workshop, laboratory, practice, and class.  But the challenge is exhilerating too - a large group doing new work requires patience and perserverance and the learning curve feels tilted up to the heavens in a way that I haven't truly felt in a long time.  And I can't speak too little about the work ethic I see on display here; a dedication to care and diligence that I see far too rarely back home.

The festival feels huge (I amtold that 138 total improvisers are performing in the festival over 5 days) but intimate at the same time (there seems to be a veritable army of volunteers doing a litany of tasks, but I continually see the same rotating array of them).  The latter I think is due highly to the concentration of events - most improvisers are staying at the Ramada on Granville Street (an amazingly hospitable hotel that gives it's residents free umbrellas and has intimately close walls in the hallways and stairwells) and all the shows are on the island, so the festival quickly gains a camp-like atmosphere.  There are frequent Facebook posts on the performer's page asking if people want to get breakfast every morning, or to let everyone know of an outing to watch the Blue Jay's game at a pub near the old Olympic Village.  And despite the large sandbox feel and often 100+ member audiences, I start to form proximity driven friendships with people, in only the way summer camp (or good festivals) can do.

The festival is overseen by Allistair Cook, a dryly funny and self-deprecating improviser who seems to eschew the spotlight at every turn.  He takes a deeply personal care over the festival; I never see him on a walkie-talkie or cell phone, but I still see him everywhere: checking in on the ensembles at the beginning and end of every day, holding court in theater lobbies, and personally ferrying people to and from party or performance venues.  He seems to keenly know when his presence is needed, and when to allow the festival to run its course.  What I think really contributes to a very warm atmosphere is a bipartisan representation of the Vancouver improv scene - I know that Instant Theater, Blind Tiger, and Vancouver TheaterSports people are present based on the t-shirts I see, but the festival doesn't feel like the property of any company, it feels like it belongs to anyone, and represents everyone.

I see some truly outstanding performances; my personal favorites are an improvised TedTalk (TedXRFT, from Edmonton) and a duo that performed an entire set in gibberish (Chris & Travis, from Vancouver) that really demonstrate a high bar for improvised performance.  My two shows are excellent, the kind of warm, fun improv that I think exemplifies the spirit of experimentation that the VIIF is trying to accomplish.  My last night is relatively uneventful, a short appearance at the closing night party for a drink in a room that looks like a Nickeloden TV show's vision of a basement from the 90's (located at an unmarked door somewhere in SE Vancouver - where I can't really tell you because we take a short bus ride to get there in a vehicle that gives out Wurther's, has a disco ball, and plays 80's music).  I leave for the airport on Sunday morning, the festival a blur that I'll need a few days to still fully process as I slowly spin out of the orbit of this oustanding festival.

Not Emotions

For a lot of us, the word emotion when it comes to improv is a scary one with a lot of panicking connotations. Most of the modern improviser are logical, right brained ones, a product, most likely, on an emphasis on game play. Game play is by it's very nature analytical requiring the ability to identify and amplify “unusual things”. Even game heightening, though necessitating a finesse best exemplified in ways that math cannot quantitate, can be broken down into a series of moves – that the UCB improv handbook reads like a science textbook is no accident. Combine this with the fact that most “comedy nerds” are comedy historians raised typically on static, witty comedy programming and you have a recipe for the typical improviser – smart, word-based, unphysical.

As a result, improv spends a lot of time on workshops about “emotions”. We're trying to remove improv from being a purely intellectual exercise into one that respects that it is a performative, acting experience. For new improvisers, the idea of emotions feels absolutely terrifying – I know that I feel a knee jerk response to avoid emotion workshops when I see them offered. Our western society frowns on the idea of “emoting”. Emotions are seen as being volatile, unpredicatable, and mercurial, which are not viewed as valuable in a society that likes consistent, objective, and reliable. Emotion also carries with it the “actor” connotation – which is to say big, theatrical emotions. This baggage presupposes that all “emotions” must operatic or at least soap operatic. We assume that to “emote” is to be melodramatic, which is the other incorrect assumption about emotions – namely that they must be maudlin or depressing.

Other synonyms also fall short; “feelings” for instance, conjur up ideas of either new-age frufruism or being on the psychiatrist's couch. Terms that equally do not achieve what we want: “sensitiveness”, “vibes”, “sentiment”, “sensation”, and “inspiration” all either fail to fully describe what is happening when we “act”, or go to far. This inaccuracy in terms makes it difficult to describe and to teach people how to do them.

If you've watched a really good improv show (or TV or movies), you've seen people playing humans, which is what makes them interesting and engaging entertainment. If you've taken enough improv workshops, you've probably also noticed an identical-ness in the way we teach two “separate” ideas. Namely, that we teach people that playing characters and emotions are distinct, discrete concepts, but in reality they are nearly the same thing. Both concepts talk about commitment to ideas, point-of-view, and being affected. This gut-reaction stuff is about being more human, playing more than just ourselves, occupying fictional spaces on stage as though they were actually happening is: (drum roll) acting. (Another scary word.)

I think we can roll all of this stuff up into a single unifying concept. These are all just “states of being”. You, as yourself, is a state, where you as a cowboy is a different state. Angry is another state, and angry cowboy is another different state. States make you reactive (and sometimes even proactive) rather than “bulletproof” as a state. If you've followed me so far, let's evolve this into chemistry. All elements are constantly in search of making complete electron shells, 8 being the ideal number for those of you keeping count at home. Those elements on the far right are called the noble gases because they don't react with anything, because they have completed outer electron shells. The entirety of the rest of chemistry in pursuit of completing those shells, either by gaining, losing, or sharing outer electrons with other atoms to get to the magic 8 number.

What I'm preferring to think of emotions as now are “valences” - valence states being the difference in atoms to make molecules. Valence, in operative improv terms, being the difference in self to achieve something else – either something lost to another, gained from anther, or shared with another. How much valence dictates how different from ourselves the state is. This doens't really change how we do things, and doesn't change the necessity for being human and reactive but hopefully may give some solace of a new term to people wh oneed something that feels less terrifying and more analytical.