Chicago vs. SoCal

This week’s blog is in reply to a question posed by Jessica from Chicago. Jessica has asked: “What have you found to be some of the differences (big, small or just blog-able) between improvising in Chicago and in that strange wonderland they call, "California"?”

Ah, SoCal: sunny vacation spot, home to Sea World, and mere minutes from the underage drinking capital of the world, Tijuana. I came to San Diego last year, arguably spoiled on Chicago improv, but I personally believe that the differences between Chicago and SoCal are endemic to really any comparison between pretty much any city and the big three (NYC, LA, Chi-town). Despite being the 9th largest city in the country (recently bumped down by Houston), San Diego (or “the SD” for those in the know) is something of a cultural wasteland when it comes to improv - I’ve even taken to calling it “the hinterlands” when writing about it.

For starters, there is one improv theatre in town (heck that’s more than most cities can boast), which generates consistently large crowds on a consistently entertaining shortform show that mirrors what I’ve seen Comedy Sportz do (from what I hear, the theatre used to be a Theatre Sportz site until ten years or so ago). They have a “longform night” once a month, where they do (drum roll, please) shortform! And about 15 minutes of what I would roughly call longform. Other than that, there is only a smattering of improv troupes (about eight independent groups, by my count) all of which are shortform, with a few dabbling in longform. However, I believe the problem in this case is not particular to improv; from what I’ve gathered from my performing friends, even when stage plays go up in town, they usually recruit from the giant up the 5, LA. The proximity to LA I believe really hurts the ability of truly interesting work being done, because people probably assume that they could just drive the two hours if they want to see cool shows, and as a result, everybody who would perform it just drives the two hours to perform it up there. (Or move up there, audition, get cast, and come back to the SD to do the show.) This siphoning means that, generally speaking, truly motivated and talented performers will probably just leave the city entirely.

The result is that most improvisers are really something else for their day jobs, and I don’t mean that in the way that Chicago improvisers are. Every improviser in Chicago (excepting a few players) has a day job down in the Loop somewhere, but the difference is that in Chicago, those people moved to Chicago to be improvisers, but took Loop work to pay the rent. In the SD, nearly everyone is employed as something else, and just does improv as a hobby. As a result, there is less motivation and dedication to the craft, which results in a smaller pool of energized, dedicated improv minds, which leads to a lack of innovation. I read once that Chicago was so great because with so many people doing so much improv, the art form moves ahead in phenomenal ways just because there are so many people working on improv. It’s not that the quality of players is necessarily better in Chicago – it’s the “economy of scale”. There is definitely a lack of interest in trying new things (most groups in town just do shortform), and that is particularly frustrating. I was speaking with the director of one of my groups who moved here from Atlanta, and by the time we were done, you could’ve sworn we were bloodthirsty zealots, hexing the satisfied and complacent improvisers of the SD. Longform is a word rarely uttered down here, a symptom of what I think could be called “Hinterland Syndrome”. I remember the philosophy from when I lived back in Mississippi: why monkey around with this complex, challenging thing when what we’ve already got works just fine? This is related to the fact that with fewer groups to compete with, there’s less drive to come up with something new. (Not to mention that there aren’t that many people who know how to do it.)

This also means that there’s a smaller community, with most groups greedily trying to stave off new groups like lions shooing buzzards away from a fresh kill. The groups seem to operated independently of each other, with no one really looking at any one else for ideas, camaraderie, or inspiration. Like I said, there’s the one theatre in town dedicated to improv, and there’s only a few places available to rent for a show. Even worse, there is very little rehearsal space for new groups (especially on the cheap). There’s just no infrastructure, even if there was a group motivated enough. This makes it very hard for new groups to get traction. In the large cities, if you wanted stage time, you just audition for one of the several stages, or get a group together and start by playing at any number of the “pay to play” nights. In the SD when you want to get a new group, you have to basically rent the theatre out yourself and do all of the legwork without any support. And this is all a shame, because there are more than enough interested, funny, talented players down here, and definitely enough available tourists to cater to.

Got an improv question? Leave it in the comments below or send an email to stagemonkeyssandiego@gmail.com.