Magenta Theater’s improv players build scenes one `yes’ at a time

What if your job was to agree with, embrace and build upon every ridiculous thing you heard? It might be a good way to survive these deeply divisive times.

“If somebody says, ‘The sky is orange and the ground is blue,’ I don’t say, ‘No they’re not.’ It leaves me nowhere to go,” said K.C. Cooper. “I say, ‘Yes they are,’ and then I add something. ‘Yes, and the fourth moon is setting.’ If you do that, you can start building a scene.”

Cooper is a longstanding comedy improviser with Magenta Improv Theater, a subset of trained cracker-uppers embedded within the ranks of downtown Vancouver’s Magenta Theater. They perform a family-friendly comedy show a handful of times per year; the next one is set for 7:30 p.m. Saturday. Cooper also teaches beginning and intermediate improv classes Sunday afternoons at Magenta; the next six-week series of classes starts Jan. 5.

Comedy improv usually gets going with suggestions from the audience. That’s not so different than getting your day going with “suggestions” — that cannot be refused — from the world, Cooper said.

“Something happens or somebody says something and you process it and figure out your response. The conversation I’m having with you right now is improv,” she said. “We all do improv every day of our lives.”

But in the improvisation called life, she added, you probably already know what you think, what you’ll say, what you’ll do. If so, you may only be half-listening to people.

“Most of the time when we think we’re listening, we’re already formulating our response,” Cooper said.

That’s why improv training emphasizes “really listening, without thinking, ‘Oh I can make the scene go in this direction, I can drive it,’ ” said Cooper. She’s been known to stop a scene in improv class and ask one of the players what their partner just said. “Sometimes they don’t remember.”

Everyone can use sharper listening skills, Cooper said, whether they’re improvising for laughs or improvising their way through life. “It helps with children and loved ones. It helps with colleagues and work,” she said. “Improv is rewiring yourself to be a little more present in the exact moment you’re in.”

Ham fam

Katie Skinner grew up on 10 acres near Woodland, where her parents provided no television until she was 12 years old, she said. What replaced screen entertainment, in addition to books and board games and playing outside, was a hammy family that provided its own comedy, she said.

“My mom was such a hilarious lady,” she said. Skinner recalls passing time with Mom during drives to the big city — that’s Vancouver — by the two of them taking on various roles and silly voices and “interviewing” one another for their tape recorder.

“I think I was 8 or 9,” and her mom behaved as if she were 8 or 9 too, Skinner laughed.

When Skinner took acting in high school, she said, nobody called sharpening your listening and reacting skills “improv.” Those were just tools you needed in your drama toolbox, she said.

“Improv comedy” has taken off as a trend since then, and Skinner, a regular member of the Magenta acting company, was invited to join the offshoot Magenta Improv Theater in 2011.

“It’s a great way to explore your creative side. It’s a great outlet and it doesn’t require you to memorize anything,” she laughed.

Skinner looks back on those drive-time interviews with her mom as ideal improv training.

“You have to be a child on the playground,” she said. “You have to believe, ‘Yes, a frog is driving this pirate ship into space.’ ” If you believe, she said, the audience will believe too and they’ll even get curious: How did that frog become captain? How does the crew like taking orders from an amphibian?

“The heart of each scene is about the relationships between the characters,” Skinner said. Striving to behave and converse normally while facing the unexpected is something everyone can relate to, she said.

Failure bow

Some improvisers learn to go long, weaving complex tales that span many scenes. Magenta Improv Theater keeps it simpler, sticking with short, three- or four-minute scenes at most, and the emcee enjoys the privilege of abruptly ending the scene — usually after it’s reached a “sweet spot,” Cooper said.

“Sometimes you get into the game within the scene,” she said. For example, she said, a doctor is telling a patient, ‘Sorry but the news isn’t good: You’ve got grandulary solifinoids.’ That’s when a nurse might rush in and add, ‘Doctor, more tests just came back and he’s also got flustular trigmalia.’ And the patient might chime in, ‘What about my uvulus greeble?’

“That becomes the nut of the scene, the piling on of all these ridiculous diseases,” Cooper said.

Unless the scene falls flat. There’s no better reason to cut it off quickly, Cooper said. When things simply aren’t funny, Cooper and Skinner both said, the best possible remedy is by acknowledging and celebrating your imperfection — turning lemons into lemonade — with a failure bow.

“You’re out there giving it your best, you’re at the pinnacle of achievement, and it falls flat like the proverbial souffle,” Skinner said. “When it crashes, you accept defeat and you take your bow. It’s an acknowledgment, that was spectacularly horrible, and the audience loves it anyway.” That is, they love you for risking your dignity and stretching your brain cells, all just to make them laugh.

“Failure is funny,” Skinner said. “That’s the lovely thing about improv. You can fail at it and push past it and recover.”

We do this in real life all the time, she said — we just don’t usually stop for applause.

Play at work

Both Cooper and Skinner have put their improv skills to work facilitating business meetings and training sessions, and Cooper has taught improv as a corporate team-building exercise.

“We don’t play together at work,” Cooper said. “That’s something I bring up a lot. It’s great to have an excuse to get silly with your colleagues. You can learn about them while learning to listen better.”

Improv can disarm people who are out to “get your goat,” she said. “If you’re told, ‘You eat like a pig,’ maybe your response is, ‘Well, I used to eat with the pigs. They wouldn’t eat until I ate first.’ ”

Not everyone is destined to follow in the zany, super-fast footsteps of master improviser Robin Williams, Cooper said. But everyone can learn to listen and react with grace and confidence.

“I’ve had a number of people who take improv because they want to improve their social skills and their confidence,” she said. “In improv, we practice thinking on our feet and shoving to the side whatever nervousness we bring.”

Skinner said improv has improved her confidence.

“Whatever I need to talk about,” she said, “whatever gets thrown at me, I know I’m going to be OK.”