Tomorrow sees the first Off the Cuff rehearsal in a proper rehearsal space in a few weeks (we’ve had some venue issues recently). It’ll be good to get back to regular rehearsals – we do rehearse, not because we plan what’s going to happen in the shows, but because like everything it’s better if you keep up the practice.
Anyway, we’re still performing short form improv shows on the first Wednesday of every month at the Brunswick in Hove, and we’ve also confirmed some dates (six, I think) for the Brighton Fringe at the Sanctuary Cella.
I wasn’t an actor or even a comedian before I first started doing improv, nearly five years ago. I wanted to be a writer, and mostly wanted to write comedy, but had no interest in performing whatsoever.
In an attempt to improve my writing ability I went to some evening drama classes, where I met someone who was in an improv troupe called the Maydays (no link, just noticed their website is down). I went to see them do a show in which everything was totally made up by the actors absed on suggestions from the audience. I thought it was amazing (having worked and improved along with them for three years, I can now confirm it was not actually very good at all). Anyway, one of them convinced me in the pub afterwards that I should go to one of their weekly classes, so I did, thinking I’d take advantage of the free first lesson then bugger off.
What happened instead was I became hooked, and found to my surprise that I could be quite good at performing spontaneous comedy. I ended up going every week and was lucky enough to be asked to join the Maydays after a few months.
Like I said, I worked, learned and performed with the Maydays for three years. I learned absolutely loads about improvising and performing in general. Through them I also got some acting jobs, started performing stand-up comedy, and even started teaching improv classes myself.
In fact, I learnt so much that I developed some quite strong opinions about what I wanted to do creatively, and how I wanted to do it. I started pulling in a different direction from the Maydays and eventually we parted ways. I got bloody loads from the time I spent with them but the majority of the rest of the group wanted to go in a very different direction. Best of luck to ‘em.
After six months of improv cold turkey I was lucky enough to find Off the Cuff, whose more relaxed and anarchic approach to improv suits me a lot better. That’s where I met most of my Pink Bear Club cohorts too, so it really was lucky. What can I say? We just have chemistry – like Dr Jekyll…
