Sondheim UnScripted, produced by Dan O’Connor for Impro Theatre and Matthew Quinn of CAFÉ (Combined Art Form Entertainment), plays Fri.-Sat., 8 pm; Sun., 7 pm; through Nov. 22. Tickets: $20. Theatre Asylum, 6320 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood; 800.838.3006 or online at brownpapertickets.com
In its 21st year of existence, Hollywood’s Impro Theatre is determined to come of age and put away childish things. The troupe was born out of the wildly popular TheatreSports, a competitive performance style placing improvisation in a pro-wrestling milieu, propagated by improvisation guru Keith Johnstone (author of the seminal book on the subject Impro) through the latter part of the 20th century.
A trio of young classically trained actors (with a penchant for improv) arrived in Los Angeles from San Francisco determined to make their mark. They began by bringing the TheatreSports concept to the southland and formed a 10-year partnership with Theatre/Theater. Soon they began branching out into full-scale improvisational shows, including their highly successful Triple Play - in which drama, musical theatre and film are spoofed in successive acts.
Dan O'Connor
Of the three progenitors of ImproTheatre/LA TheatreSports, writer-director-actor Dan O’Connor remains. He is at the helm as the company’s Artistic Director and has seen the troupe through the development of several improvisational formats, all the while creating a reputation as a foremost school of the art form. They continued to experiment with the form until O’Connor and Impro’s Associate Artistic Director Brian Lohmann were offered roles in Keith Johnstone’s Improbable Company’s off-Broadway production of Lifegame, in which improvisers created stories from the real lives of audience members. O’Connor followed that up with a stint in Las Vegas before returning to his growing Los Angles career.
When he returned to Hollywood it was clear the Improv School would no longer be the focus of the organization; instead they opted to become a theatre production company, concentrating on the creation of a hybrid style in which improvisation would be married to tightly controlled rehearsals and planning. The result has been a series of “unscripted” plays, happily celebrating and spoofing Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams before exploding with the successful Jane Austin UnScripted, which has developed an amazing fan-base of die-hard Austin readers.
The reaction to the work has energized O’Connor and his fellow artists. “We’ve been aggressively working to build an ensemble with the idea of creating a different play every night and being taken seriously as a theatre company rather than as an ‘improv troupe’ - which has almost become a pejorative. Earlier we did a couple of formats of improvised musical comedy and soap opera. We did improvised Chekhov at an improv in New York in 2000 which went over very well so we thought there was something in this. As part of Toronto’s Edgefest we did improvised Dickens, Chekhov and Shakespeare. These were just one-nighters.
Michele Spears and Brian Lohmann
“Then in 2006 we started doing a full run of improvised plays. Tennessee Williams UnScripted was the first time we hired a setting and lighting designer to come in and build a set that was improvisational. It looked good at the top of the show and we could move it around and put it back up. We started doing more and more of this work and the Jane Austin was the most popular one. This was the first time in a while the LA Times came and reviewed something.”
Currently the troupe is attacking one of its most difficult targets: Stephen Sondheim. They had experimented with the musical genius several years ago. “It was good but we still needed to attack it the way we are attacking stuff now, which is to really rehearse and rehearse and rehearse. A lot of people become improvisers because they don’t want to learn lines. We realized we’d have to do just as much work as a scripted show in order to succeed on this level.
“Sondheim writes about real things in a fantastic way. He is perfect for us because we can take any subject matter and put what we know about Sondheim and what our three different musical directors understand - they all play a little differently. That’s another variable. What he does for us is to blow it wide open so we can sing about anything.”
Patrick Bristow, Stephen Kearin, Brian Lohmann, Brian Jones
Along with co-director Michele Spears, O’Connor stars in the Sondheim shows along with Impro members Lisa Fredrickson, Brian Jones, Stephen Karin, Brian Lohmann, Jo McGinley and Edi Patterson. The talented cast is tough to wrangle. O’Connor explains, “Everyone in the company is a working actor, which is a great, but when someone lands a television or movie job we have to be able to gather the other actors and keep them focused. Everyone has to be an actor and writer - with Sondheim we add singer and composer. It is very challenging to prepare for that experience.
“Some of the actors in our troupe are also musicians so they think about it in a very left-brained way while those of us who are not musicians think about it in a completely spontaneous right-brained way, just hoping the rhyme is there at the end of the line. With Sondheim I am fairly terrified every time I do it. Still, if anything does go wrong it is a blessing; it’s fun. Every mistake is a wonderful opportunity. In the Sondheim I am a little on the balls of my feet thinking about sounding good as well.”
Adding to the professional demeanor of this outing are improvisers of all sorts. There are three improvisational musical directors, Dr. James Lent, Ron Schneider and Peter Smith; each has a different approach to Sondheim’s difficult melodies. Additionally the company depends on the instant improvisation skills of lighting designers Jim Sabo, Nick Massouh and Ruben Vernier who have to be in tune with the cast.
In the early days of Impro Theatre/TheatreSports, the goal of the actors and directors was to burst into television careers. But with the intensity they have recently placed on fully mounted and supported theatrical productions, ambitions have changed. O’Connor sums it up very simply, “I want to take Impro Theatre to the West End and to Broadway. We really feel strongly this is a terrific, visceral form, not only for us but for the audience.”
Production photos and feature image by Rebecca Asher: (front, l-r) Brian Jones, Lisa Frederickson, Michele Spears, (back, l-r) Dan O’Connor, Edi Patterson, Patrick Bristow, Stephen Kearin, Brian Lohmann
Headshot by Blake Gardner
