Long Form Improv stretches performers along with the run time

But what is Long Form Improv? According to Jim Karwisch, founder of Atlanta’s JaCKPie Theatre Workshop, central elements include “free play of imagination, solid character work and relationships. For us, Long Form is an intellectually stimulating, emotionally accessible and often humorous experience for both the improvisers and the audience.” Whereas in Short Form, characters tend to last only for an individual scene, Long Form often (but not always) features recurring characters, improvisers playing numerous roles and even actors swapping roles.

These techniques have led some to refer to Long Form as “spontaneous theatre,” and have produced a litany of original forms that are expanding the concept of what improv can be. Here are a few shows that have gotten the improv community buzzing.

Bassprov (Chicago)
Joe Bill and Mark Sutton are revered in the improv world, having studied and/or performed with gurus Del Close and Mick Napier in the ‘80s. Their show, Bassprov, has been a fixture on the festival circuit since its standing-room-only debut at the Chicago Improv Festival in 2001.

The form casts them as fishing buddies Donny and Earl, with a set that includes little more than two chairs and a well-stocked beer cooler. After getting audience suggestions, the actors mime boarding a fishing boat and casting their lines while launching into a 30–60 minute dialogue that may veer from Britney Spears to world affairs, from irreverent hilarity to thought-provoking existentialist musings.

The concept evolved out of an improvised portion of a scripted show their Screw Puppies troupe performed at Chicago’s Annoyance Theatre. “Any scene that went on too long because the actors were milking the improv cow was known as a fishing scene,” recalls Bill. “One night, Mark and I said ‘Fishing scene!’ to each other backstage as the lights were pulled on the previous scene, went out, sat in two chairs, and the seeds of Donny and Earl got planted. We knew we had something, because the audience went nuts and the rest of the Screw Puppies hated it.”

Unlike other shows, in which recurring characters serve as a through-line surrounding scenes inspired by their dialogue, Bassprov confines the performers to two characters, a limited space and real-time dialogue. “We thought about going out of the boat,” admits Sutton, “but scrapped it really early. Our friend Jeff Davis said, ‘I love the fact that you put your foot in the bear trap in the first 15 seconds and then spend the rest of the time getting it out.’ Once you’re in the boat, you can't swim away. I think it was the challenge we were both looking for.”

As the form evolved, the duo has experimented with inviting friends into the Bassprov boat from time to time, but their emphasis remains on taking their time and always making sure their characters are out there to go fishin’. As 20-year improv veterans, Bill and Sutton are in constant demand to perform and lead workshops around the country, spreading their passion for improv to an increasing horde of acolytes.

“I think people love not knowing what will happen next,” agrees Sutton. “It's like being at opening night of a new play every night.”

Drum Machine (Minneapolis/St. Paul)
The ratio of men to women in improv is probably about 10:1, but punk-influenced powerhouse Jill Bernard proves that ladies can be just as fierce and funny as any fella with her one-woman improvised musical, Drum Machine.

Influenced by Lisa Jolley’s one-woman cabaret, Jolley On The Spot, and Andy Eninger’s Sybil, the former University of Minnesota Theatre major claims the show’s concept came to her in a flash of inspiration. “I woke up one morning and thought, there should be a show called Drum Machine,” she recalls. “I walked down to the music store, but didn't really know what a drum machine was. I saw this little translucent blue one with pink light-up buttons that was clearly the drum machine for me, the Zoom RhythmTrak 123.” The rest, as they say, was history.

Bernard’s show is anything but mechanical, incorporating details of a single audience member’s life into an organic tapestry that combines rich characters, warm humor, historical elements and music, with the titular contraption providing the beats. The results are as quirky as Bernard herself.

“I realized I liked telling stories from history,” she says, “so I started combining elements of an audience member's life with some period of history. As things went on, I realized we all tell the stories that are formative in our mind.  When I was 11, we moved into my grandparents’ old house and it was filled with Isaac Asimov books. I was also stealing my mother's romance novels.  Thus, the type of story I'm likely to tell draws elements from Asimov and Harlequin Romance. Once I realized that's what I was doing, I gave into it more wholeheartedly. The stories are unabashedly romantic and odd now.”

Still, she acknowledges that creating an improvised one-woman musical does take up all of her energy and her brain capacity, and that the risk of failure is a major part of the fun. “The audience is engaged and excited because it's right here and right now and they're part of it.  Somebody else said that it has the same appeal as NASCAR, because the audience wants to see you win, but they're also watching to see if you'll crash and burn.  It's thrilling!”

Giant Robot (Edmonton)
The most popular Short Form improv format, the competition-style TheatreSports, originated in Calgary and was developed by Keith Johnstone. Formed as a TheatreSports company in 1988, Edmonton’s Rapid Fire Theatre emerged as a groundbreaking force in improv, attracting troupes from around the world to its annual Improvaganza Festival.

As a veteran who’s been performing with Rapid Fire since 1992, Mark Meer is one of the Great White North’s most respected improvisers, having spread the gospel of Canadian improv everywhere from Atlanta’s World Domination TheatreSports Tournament and Montreal’s Just For Laughs Comedy festival to Berlin’s International Improv Festival. So when he teamed up with veteran improviser-turned-filmmaker William Minsky to form the duo known as Giant Robot, the results were immediately inspiring.

“Giant Robot was a slightly derogatory term used in note sessions at Rapid Fire Theatre,” Meer explains, “used to denote excessive weirdness in scenes. As in, ‘It got a little Giant Robot out there tonight, fellas. That scene was about two college roommates: How the hell did we end up being held hostage on the moon by Hitler's brain?’”

So, it was with a gleeful sense of irreverence that the duo decided to create a show that not only allowed them to give in to the more left-of-center concepts that emerged from their creative subconsciousness, but actually encouraged it. “When Bill and I formed Giant Robot, the idea was to embrace any weirdness completely and provide a forum for any ideas and stories involving mutants, aliens, zombies, superheroes, time travel, werewolves and, yes, giant robots.”

Their show is a complex amalgamation of techniques that includes everything from monologues and role swapping to performers playing multiple characters at once (the only way they can create group scenes). But the form’s most distinctive element is its seamless incorporation of filmmaking elements into scene edits, using terminology such as cuts, fade-outs, close-ups and split-screen, as well as descriptive narrative voiceovers to help the audience imagine, say, a high-tech scientific laboratory where there is, in fact, nothing more than a bare stage.

The result is Long Form Improv at its finest, telling stories in a span of 30–40 minutes whose complexity and innovation puts most Hollywood films and TV shows to shame. If it weren’t for the incorporation of audience suggestions and the joyous sense of discovery the performers possess, you might think the show was partially scripted.

The show is riveting and often breathtaking, as the actors establish an occasionally frenzied spirit of spontaneous creativity. “I'd say the biggest challenge is the fact that you never get a breather,” Meer admits. “Because there's only two of us, we're both responsible for the story almost 100% of the time. There's no sitting back and seeing what the other guys come up with.” Then again, he quips, “The two guys who do it are particularly hilarious!”

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