Calling all stand-up comedy fans: the Improv Centre is coming to town.
Talented Vancouver-area performers Jalen Saip, Riley Hardwick and Helen Camisa are bringing their group’s signature brand of fast-paced storytelling and larger-than-life character work to Whistler. They’ll construct a show on the spot, based on whatever wacky pointers audience members give them.
“There’s something both risky and really rewarding about that element of improv—the idea of giving up control,” says Saip. “We have to accept the fact that it’s not going to be our idea. It’s not going to be exactly what we thought or hoped the scene might be. It’s going to be probably better than what we hoped it would be.
“Improv is a collaboration, and two, three or four minds are better than one. Sometimes you think: ‘I know where this should go, I know how this should be,’ and then a team partner or audience suggestion veers way off course. If you understand what your main goal is, and if you accept that whatever happens can be joyful, then you can find your path back in a way that’s really almost magical.”
Whose line
The Improv Centre was founded in 1981. Each year, more than 60,000 artists, students and members of the public visit the company’s 186-seat theatre on Granville Island to experience “theatresports”: a unique type of live comedy that pits two teams of actors against each other in a contest to earn audience approval.
Originally, the idea of theatresports came from late British-Canadian educator and theatre director Keith Johnstone. Saip explains the competitive aspect of the program is entirely for show, as there are no real stakes for losing teams. Instead, it’s viewers who truly win: those in attendance become judges, scoring each scene and letting performers know what they liked most.
The upcoming Whistler show won’t be a full theatresports presentation, but it will give locals a taste of what the format entails.
“We’ve been playing this type of improv for over 40 years, and we have taken it and morphed it into what suited our audiences best,” says Saip. “As much as it’s a competition—and I would put that word in air quotes—it’s also just a lot of fun.”
Saip first discovered this particular type of fun eight or nine years ago. She was once a conventional stage actor who, like many of her peers, faced difficulty in establishing herself on the local dramatic scene full-time. The Vancouverite grew up watching Whose Line Is It Anyway? with her dad, but never envisioned herself as an improv artist.
Why would she? The format was never offered to her: not in high school, not even in any of her university theatre classes.
‘Joyful and collaborative’
Nonetheless, Saip caught wind of the Improv Centre and decided to sign up for a class, flexing her acting muscles in a new way.
“It snowballed pretty quickly into just loving this art form,” she recalls. “I definitely grew up in a household that was very witty and quick. We poked a lot of fun at each other and ourselves, so I did love comedy in a certain sense—but I was never a comedian.”
That’s also part of the beauty of improv: one need not be a traditional stand-up talent or performer to get involved. Saip has brushed shoulders with all kinds of people, including teachers and software developers, who have excelled as improvisers in their own right. She looks forward to meeting a bevy of fresh faces in Whistler.
“It’s a very diverse place in terms of where people are from, because it’s such a destination,” Saip remarks. “You don’t know what you’re going to get when you’re performing for a Whistler crowd. There’s the people who are hardcore Whistlerites for life, and then there’s also people who are just there seasonally.”
The actor-turned-improv whiz thinks what she and her peers bring to the table will appeal to a plethora of personalities.
“Improv is a joyful and collaborative way to present comedy,” she adds. “It’s not an individualistic presentation of your own funny ideas. It is a group effort, a team effort where we’re all accepting each other’s ideas and building off of them.”
Saip, Hardwick and Camisa will grace the Maury Young Arts Centre on March 20 at 8 p.m. Tickets and more details are available here.
