March 25th, ComedySportz, Portland

This week I did something utterly radical and went to an improv show. Gasp! And not just any improv show, but a family friendly, rated G for general audiences improv show in Portland, Oregon. My compatriots on this little adventure were my partner in crime and travel, Tarah, and our precious hosts who are 65 in age but eternally young at heart. They kindly bought us all tickets to the show when they found out I’m a renowned comedy critic. “We better not end up in your blog!” one of them chided on the drive to the club. Forgive me. The show was hosted by ComedySportz in Northwest, which has been holding improv classes and performances for kids and adults since the 90s. At 6:45 we pulled up to what looked more like a community center you’d hire out for your kid’s birthday party than a comedy club. Think low ceilings, wall-to-wall carpeting, rows of stackable chairs for seating, a concession counter stocked with root beer and M&M’s (no pints). Blue-black-gray was the unifying color palette. Tbf this show was marketed for all ages and there sure were a lot of kids. 8-14 year-olds made up about half of the audience and 100% of the front row. Everyone else was their parents. The format of the show was that two teams of four (five?), identified by their respective blue and red custom jerseys, competed in a series of games and challenges. The winning team was be decided by audience members brandishing blue and red fly swatters who held one up when prompted to cast their vote. All of this was overseen by a referee/MC dressed in the appropriate black and white striped sports shirt and armed with a whistle. 

I won’t lie, this show unearthed a lot of my internalized anti-improv snobbery. Including this one, I’ve been to two improv shows in my entire life here on Earth. I don’t have a clue about the technical terms, strategies, history, or exercises players practice. I don’t even really know what the goal of improv is? Obviously making people laugh seems ideal but surely audiences expect performers to fumble the bag a bit because they’re going into every scenario blind? So what are peeps hoping to get out of the show exactly? Mysterious. The reason I haven’t bothered to see more improv is because…it’s not very hot to me. There’s something intrinsically hot about stand-up because it’s all about one person commanding a room with nothing but their presence and their words. It’s an art of seduction and delayed gratification. Sure, in practice a set can be boring, embarrassing, or honestly sad. But as a concept?!? Ooh la la! A bunch of adults scrambling to act out a zebra in pajamas making margaritas with Shakespeare just doesn’t have the same innate sexiness. To me anyway. And if it’s not hot, well then I think not! Having said that, this show certainly made the case that improv’s extreme goofiness - über goof! - is its most compelling attribute.

Goofy is indeed this show’s no. 1 descriptor. I’m talking adults ranging from their mid-20s to middle age playing charades with extremely complex scenarios like “a washing machine made of legos and full of eyelashes for Picasso,” serenading an audience member about her love of pinot and disdain for bad drivers, pop-corning puns for “photosynthesis” and “meatball,” and making up skits about the Easter Bunny. The children in the audience were having a ball. Rambunctious kiddos hurled their fly swatters into the air when asked to vote. Without hesitation they hollered keywords for the various skits and charades. “Baseball!” Banana!” “Beyonce!” When one team asked for an audience member to participate in their skit, a boy sitting in the front row jumped up and gave a hilariously dry, confident performance wherein he discovers his dad is secretly the Tooth Fairy. I spy a theater kid;) ComedySportz certainly knows its audience and how to please them. Imagine how hilar it would be as an 8 year-old to watch fully grown adults (just like their parents!!!) do a bunch of silly voices and run around on stage pretending to be the Easter Bunny or a pop star? As a kid I would’ve eaten that up and then written a review in crayon. 

But the improv wasn’t just winning over the child portion of the audience, the adults were lapping it up too. People were howling at the musical numbers, especially the one about Michelle, the Pinot Fan. Michelle herself, who hopped on stage for her song, was absolutely loving it. She shimmied to the musical runs and burst into laughter when the singers waxed poetic about her bod. Meanwhile, a group of moms sitting a few rows down from us were some of the most enthusiastic in the whole audience, clapping and guffawing from start to finish. I thought the ref was going to have to pull her whistle out, they were so enthused. Even Tarah was chuckling away and that girlie is harder to please than I am. At the break, one of our hosts said that the show made her think of Pixar films which somehow appeal to any age group because of their masterful command of humor and subtext. It’s a good point and an admirable achievement for the performers. So many comedians chronically fall back on the usual thematic suspects like sex, drugs, and Twitter to get a laugh. These folks were doing it with nice clean skits about household appliances and pickleball. Even this snob was grateful for the palate cleanse. 

Confession. As the show meandered along and I sat knocking back M&M’s and observing these adult goofballs, slippery, slimy tendrils of judgment kept worming into my brain. What could possess a person to set themselves up for potential floppage in the face of the unpredictable? And some floppage did occur. Team members fumbled their puns, a few waffled to come up with a storyline for a lightning round of skits, one forgot the name of a famous artist during charades. Everyone sang but only one and a half comics could carry a tune. Shane, if you're reading this, that “one” in “one and a half” is you. You were made for show biz bb; follow your dreams. Flops at the hands of the unknown, the ~improvised~, seem foolish. Don’t people know that they could avoid that flavor of embarrassment altogether by curating a set to the letter and performing it a zillion times? Or idk you could always hook up an IV of diet Coke and bash away at your keyboard all night until your thoughts & feels crystallize in a pithy (read: profound) 1500 word essay. But what ComedySportz revealed is that if anyone’s the fool here it’s moi because the magic of improv is that it’s play. That’s all that went on in there! Make believe. Games. Singing. Dancing. Just messing about and giving it a go. Celebrating when a funny story materializes, when a round is won, and shrugging it off when things don’t work out. And not just playing but playing together! No room for lone comedians and their monologues in improv (big only child energy for reallll). Nah, nah, nah. An improv scene’s success hinges on the ensemble’s chemistry and teamwork. For instance, during charades, one comic struggled to find the movements for one of the keywords (“polka” or “South Pacific Islands” or “Picasso” or “washing machine” etc, etc.) and another team member immediately swooped in to help them out. Earlier in the show a couple comedians belted out a three-part harmony, parodying Broadway stars. Two of them were v sharp but the chemistry and bravado was still there. Amusing stuff! Plus even from my outsider’s pov, this gaggle of players seemed like bffs. From the sidelines, they whooped, whistled, giggled, and bantered with the players on stage. My heart smiled a little when one girlie announced she’d be doing another improv show later that night with two of her best friends from the ensemble, gesturing to two middle-aged men🥺🥺 Besties for the resties? For real though, improv is kind of precious. How often do adults get to be super silly and just play?? Our delightfully fast-faced, production-smitten hamster wheel of a society makes it a little tricky sometimes. That and fun police like me:). All this isn’t to discredit the skill + practice that goes into improv behind the scenes. I wouldn’t know personally, but I’m sure there’s a bunch. This is just to say that witnessing adults be light, playful, and risk-taking without pretension feels refreshing and dear. And I know there are comics who would say there’s buckets of play in writing and performing stand-up. Fo sho, bro, fo sho. But after hearing my friends lament over whether to say “grocery store” or “supermarket” and how they’re possibly going to memorize 200 one-liners for their next show, I’m skeptical. That sounds like work to me. 

I won’t pretend that ComedySportz has converted me into an improv stan. Ultimately we don’t choose our loves and mine just happens to be when a solitary soul slinks on stage, says something crazy like “hey, how’s everyone doing tonight?”, performs 5 minutes of material they wrote a year ago, and verbally incinerates anyone who interrupts them. Wistful sigh. Just imagining it rouses a butterfly or two. But last night’s show did remind me that there’s magic to be found in an art form that values such spontaneity and silliness, that can be clean and funny, that rewards the abilities of the group over the glory of a single individual. Playfulness? Collaboration? Intuition? Sounds kind of…hot to me💫