9 minute read
Improving Through Improv
BY MARCIA BIGGS
If there ever was a cheerleading squad for the power of improvisation, Carolyn Ramsey would be the team leader. By day, she manages an office for a staffing solutions company. But on weekends, she can be found at Spitfire Comedy House guiding a diverse cross-section of people into a world of unscripted interactions involving creative challenges and problem solving.
Ramsey teaches improvisation, a craft she has honed over decades of acting and directing at community theaters. To the casual observer, improv appears to be a slap-dash attempt at pulling imaginary characters and scenes out of thin air, a test of a performer’s cleverness and wit. In reality, the acting method allows individuals to work on personal strengths and weaknesses and a variety of other skill sets. The comedy that can result is the reward for both the performer and the audience.
At Spitfire, the demand for improv classes is high, according to general manager Hadas Cassorola. A six-week Intro to Improv class is generally sold out in advance and the drop-in classes on Sunday are usually filled with up to 30 participants.
People are turning to improv classes for different reasons. In a recent six-week Intro to Improv course, 15 students each arrive with different backgrounds and motivations. Some comments on why they signed up:
“I am super shy and struggle with speaking” … “I struggle with anxiety and wanted to do something that would force me out of my comfort zone” … “I’m a pre-school teacher constantly around small children; this is an outlet for me to meet new people” … “I am very introverted and wanted to try something new. My motto about coming here was to get serious about having fun.”
The class is Morel Miller’s big foray into stepping out of his comfort zone and trying something challenging. He admits to being an introvert. “I’m taking improv to become a little more open socially,” the 25-year-old confesses. “I enjoy music and acting so I’m exploring to see where I can go with it. … I feel like I am gaining a lot of necessary skills in this class, it’s quite a different experience and I feel it’s worthwhile.”
Another class participant, 25-year-old Jeff Wait, is establishing himself in the Tampa Bay area as a standup comic. He previously acted in community theater before deciding to try standup. Now he’s on stage about five nights a week, he says. His reason for taking an improv class is to strengthen his comedy skills.
“My biggest weakness as a standup is forgetting what I was going to say, when I just freeze up,” he explains. “I figured taking an improv class would make me more confident without a script. Carolyn has taught us that life is improv, there is no script day to day and there are a lot of opportunities to improvise, to feel confident and be a better communicator… I feel so much more prepared for those moments.”
“You will find every walk of life, every age, every culture, in our classes and that’s what makes improv successful,” explains Ramsey. “We are building a community that is comfortable and able to be very transparent with one another and participate at whatever level you want.”
For shy or introverted people, Ramsey says, performing improv is a way to work on overcoming personal fear and pressure of interacting with other people. For the outgoing and playful, it’s a way to get their creative juices flowing. For public speakers, improv teaches deep listening, focused attention, and openness to others. Improv is also credited with strengthening the capacity to cope with uncertainty, manage anxiety and depression, and boost creative thinking.
An article in Psychology Today references a 2020 study “Improv to Improve” in the Journal of Creativity in Mental Health. The study found “that improv promotes peoples’ ability to find creative and resourceful solutions and that therefore it can help us to think in more diverse ways or even break away from ingrained patterns of behavior.” The other finding was that improv improved participants’ self-esteem and self-confidence.
What is improv?
There are different types of improv from improv games (often called short form), to improv scenes (often called long form) to full length improvised plays, usually with a genre (often called narrative improv). But in all of them, the performer is challenged to think with split-second imagination. There are no scripts in improv, and the audience usually sets the stage for the characters and scenes.
“For me, it began as a fun, new acting outlet and something to try, and a way that I even was able to perform with two of my three kids,” says Ramsey. “Moving forward six years, I have found a literal family and a community that I care for far beyond my time on the stage. … Local theater at its core is a true community and you will find a literal family. Not by blood but by choice … and a lot of laughs.”
Let the games begin
At its most basic level, improv lessons are games, and Carolyn Ramsey has lots of them on her list. On this Sunday afternoon, it’s the final session of a six-week Intro to Improv class, a last chance to prepare for a final showcase next weekend when family and friends are invited to be in the audience.
In the 38-seat theater, she takes a seat at a podium with a giant bell at her fingertips and they are off to the races. She leads her class through a series of interactive games aimed at kick-starting the brain and finding a creative solution to finish a thought or a scenario with other performers. “I teach listening with your eyes and your ears,” Ramsey explains.
The game of Challenge asks participants to challenge a topic in two sentences. The audience yells out the challenge: Pop Tarts vs. Cereal, Army vs. Navy, Icey vs. Slurpee. When the bell dings the game is over.
In the Advice game, Ramsey instructs each person to pick a name and personality and introduce yourself as an expert. One is an expert on waterslides, another is knowledgeable in squirrels and trees, another is a professional digeridoo player. Advice questions come from the audience. Why do squirrels eat nuts? What happens after we die? What’s the key to happiness? What really happened in Roswell?
In the Remote Possibilities game, every ring of the bell means changing the genre of the scene in a split second, for example from a horror movie to a romantic comedy to a Broadway musical. As the audience yells out topics, the students must immediately launch into a new way of thinking.
Between games, Ramsey offers bits of advice and positive pep talk about “being yourself” and “helping your fellow performers.”
“Improv scenes can go in a million different directions,” she tells the class. “It’s unpredictable, like life, but don’t overthink it, on stage your thoughts will come. … Whatever your answer, you need to say it with utter and complete confidence.”
Drop-In classes
As the class wraps up, out in the lobby a line of people stretches out the door waiting to plunk down $20 for a session of Drop-In Improv. They hang out at the bistro tables chatting before instructors Zach Mouriz and David Morelli split the group of about 35 in half. One group heads to the theater and stage with Morelli, the other stays in the lobby with Mouriz.
“Sunday Drop-In is extremely popular,” says Mouriz. “A lot of people who come are regulars, showing up a couple times a month. Then others will be first-timers who are curious and just want to try it out. Some might even just watch and not participate, and that’s totally fine. We don’t make anyone do anything if they are not comfortable.”
Many of the participants today appear to be regulars, they are good at improvising and it shows. Today’s theme is Human Connection and Honesty and the exercises work on eye contact and speaking honestly. In one exercise, the participants use personal memories to create an improv sketch, or ask for help relaying a problem that needs to be solved.
At the start of each session, for both classes and drop-ins, the participants form a circle. “Circles are important for self-validation so the first-timers feel part of the group,” David Morelli says. The instructors are gentle and kind with their critiques, offering both positive feedback and suggestions on improving interaction and dialogue.
Two first-timers at the drop-in class today are Kendall Tobin and Tristan Beasley-Painter of St. Petersburg. The couple is active socially and “we like to try different things,” says Tobin, a 30-yearold paralegal. After the class, she said she enjoyed it because it “allowed me to tap into my emotions and creativity.” She said the couple will likely come again because “it’s a learning opportunity.”
Carolyn Ramsey concurs with that assessment.
“What improv does is not transform you into another person, it just finds those parts in you that you didn’t know you had,” she says. “We don’t do things if we are afraid of them. It doesn’t mean we are a different person if we do them.
“In improv, failure is imperative and that is going to happen in life. The difference is we celebrate it here.”
To learn more about improv classes at Spitfire Comedy House, go to spitfirecomedy.com. Professional improv shows run Thursday through Saturday. Spitfire is located at 1920 1st Avenue S. in St. Pete.
