J.C. Vacheresse and Cassie Wanamaker are onstage at the Chattanooga Public Library performing a bit about a young man who leaves his family to escape religious oppression and moves in with nuns.
“I’m ready to join the convent,” Vacheresse declares to Wanamaker. “Give me the collar.”
As Wanamaker opens an invisible box, pulls out an imaginary collar and presents it to Vacheresse, the audience assumes she’s handing him the bleach-white attire of a Catholic priest. But Vacheresse is brewing a plot twist.
“I didn’t mean that kind of collar!” he exclaims as he looks with shock at the salacious item in Wanamaker’s hands.
The joke is implied, but the audience gets it and responds with raucous laughter.
Welcome to a performance of Improv Chattanooga.
There was no script for the scene that played out during Improv Chattanooga’s Storytelling Sept. 28 performance. Neither Vacheresse nor Wanamaker had to memorize their lines before stepping onto the stage, nor did a director tell them where to sit or stand. Rather, they created the material in real time as the audience watched.
The set up – a man moves in with nuns to escape a suffocating religious environment – sounds like a punchline, but it was God’s honest truth, says Vacheresse, who offered the true story of his life to his castmates as fodder for their fun. But the troop improvised everything else on the spot – including the spiked leather collar.
Improvised performances have existed in one form or another for almost as long as the stage, an article published on the University of Chicago website titled “Improv, Explained” reveals.
Author Tori Lee further writes that theater educator Viola Spolin and a group of students at UC birthed modern improv in the 1950s. Celebrated improv theaters like Chicago’s Second City and iO sprung from their efforts and sprouted the comedic careers of John Belushi, Bill Murray, Tina Fey, Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert and many other household names.
Despite the fame of these comedians, as well as the popularity of the comedy show “Whose Line it is Anyway?” improv is not necessarily geared toward humor, says Becca Cato, a learning facilitator at BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee who moonlights as an Improv Chattanooga cast member.
“Improv isn’t about being funny, it’s about talking with other people,” Cato explains. “People do improv every day, just in a form that’s more socially familiar than acting onstage. Right now, we’re having a conversation that has never existed, and we’re improvising what we’re saying.”
As improv actors engage in dialog, hilarity does often ensue. Before Vacheresse and company conjured the image of a Catholic priest wearing S&M garb, Wanamaker told the true story of a friend who used tarot cards to predict she’d meet a new love interest at a concert. As foretold, Wanamaker met and connected with a man that evening at a music event in Chattanooga.
Wanamaker’s castmates then took her plot points and improvised a series of madcap vignettes that progressed from a scammer asking Wanamaker for her mother’s maiden name at the concert, to a bizarre speed-dating experience, to Wanamaker having a physical encounter with her new acquaintance as the ghost of his mother watched from the back seat of his van.
Somehow, it all made loose sense, and someone in the audience chuckled at every lunatic turn in the narrative.
Bethany Morgan, fraud manager for the shopping rewards app Fetch and a 25-year improv veteran who grew up within earshot of Second City in Chicago, says the laughs will come if the cast is feeling it.
“I tell the students in our improv class that their only responsibility is to respond authentically to the last thing someone said to them. And if their authentic response is to tell a joke, or to riff off the last line, then that’s who their character is, and they can lean into that.”
When members of the 29-performer cast of Improv Chattanooga get on a roll, they can riff off each other like seasoned jazz musicians. After a recent practice session at Barking Legs Theater, for example, cast members playfully razzed a young woman who’d held an imaginary cigarette like she was flashing the peace sign.
“Did Snoop Dog roll your cigarette?” quipped one fellow performer.
“That wasn’t a cigarette, it was a CIGAR-ette,” joked another.
But Improv Chattanooga performers might just as readily turn a flash of inspiration into a moment of searing human drama. This happened during practice as well, when a cast member acted out the frustrations of a wife who couldn’t convince her dismissive husband that she was compelled to mop the kitchen floor a certain way.
“At the end of the day, improv needs to be relatable,” says Morgan. “It’s almost better if someone doesn’t think they’re the funniest person in the room. Those folks struggle in the beginning because they want to do jokes and one-liners, but improv is about building relationships between strong characters.”
Not just winging it
While the ability to summon a quick joke isn’t necessary, improv performers do need to possess one key attribute to succeed at their craft, says Morgan: a readiness to leap off a proverbial cliff without a parachute.
“You need to be willing to do anything, including things that scare the shit out of you,” she deadpans.
Performing in front of an audience without a script qualifies as a terrifying leap for newbies and weathered cast members alike. Morgan confesses to feeling like she swallowed a belly full of butterflies before each show, even after more than two decades of improv performances.
“After it’s over, I always think, ‘Cool! I did great!’” she adds. “The students at our last showcase were really nervous and freaked out, but they were awesome and, afterward, they were on cloud nine.”
David Sarton, an Improv Chattanooga cast member who spends his days doing accounts receivables for a radiology reading company, says he’s a bundle of worries before each show, despite appearing to be as cool as a cucumber behind his bushy ZZ Top beard. But then he settles down once a performance begins.
“I’ll be thinking, ‘If my scene partner says X, then I’ll need to say Y,’ and I’ll slip into an almost trance-like state. Then I’ll forget nearly everything I said as soon as the show is over.”
Despite assurances from the wizened owls of improv, many first-timers fear their minds will go blank when it’s their turn to speak, or are horrified they’ll saying something nonsensical, says Morgan. But as a veteran who’s uttered her share of regrettable lines, she’s learned to let those moments go and move forward.
“I’ve had moments onstage when I thought, ‘Idiot! You should not have said that!’ but I don’t obsess about them.”
Jason Parker, the executive director of Improv Chattanooga, says there’s actually a safety net at the bottom of the proverbial cliff that can turn a clumsy tumble into an inspired bit: the other performers.
“Usually, when we do something we think is awful, the audience doesn’t notice because our teammates are able to turn it into something great. Improv is about supporting one another and making each other look good.”
While improv leapfrogs over the conventions that define traditional theater, including scripts and stage direction, a great deal of preparation takes place before a show begins. With Improv Chattanooga, this includes not only classes for new and intermediate performers but also intense practice sessions during which participants learn various forms of improv.
The practice at Barking Legs was a master class in a style of improv called the Harold, and would have shattered the belief among unschooled observers that performers simply materialize onstage and make stuff up.
The Harold was created by a San Francisco improv group in the 1960s and was later refined by the founders of iO. It consists of an opening bit during which the performers generate ideas and three “beats,” or scenes, during which they lay the ground work for upcoming beats and later refer back to previous scenes.
At Barking Legs, Parker watched and took mental notes as his troops muscled their way through a Harold. After it was over, he offered his thoughts like a soft-spoken sage, urging cast members to listen closely to each other and to avoid trying to tie together every unrelated story point.
The performers asked questions, encouraged each other and then dove into a second Harold, a form of improv that can last from 25 to 40 minutes and requires fully charged mental batteries.
Parker appeared to be pleased with the results. “You did a good job of offering constructive notes and listening to each other,” he said as they slumped like athletes who’d just endured a grueling workout.
The idea behind improv forms like the Harold is to provide a skeletal structure for the adlibbing, Parker says.
“We do develop material on the fly, but there’s more to it than that. Improv is like football; there are rules to follow, and various roles on the team, but you make decisions during the execution of a play that changes its direction.”
Mission not so impossible
While the DNA of modern improv coils back to Spolin and her students, the history of Improv Chattanooga is less clear. Parker says the troop has existed in one form or another for about 20 years, and has had different names (Running with Scissors being the most inspired), but currently is a nonprofit.
As a not-for-profit organization, Improv Chattanooga has a mission that can be boiled down to a simple phrase: “Make a difference.” Specifically, Parker adds, the organization strives to impact the lives of the individuals who become cast members as well as the lives of people in the community.
Felicia Whitaker found friendship and a new passion when she joined Improv Chattanooga in 2017. A data analyst for North American Credit Services by day and a devoted wife and mother by night, she attended an Improv Chattanooga Open House (an event during which members of the public are invited to perform with the cast) after her husband told her to make some friends.
“We have a lot of mutual friends, but he said he needed me to also have friends of my own. I thought that was a good idea, so when I read about the Open House, I decided to try it out. While I was playing with the cast, something clicked in me, and I knew I needed to become a part of it.”
Improv was a departure for the domestic Whitaker, but as she took the classes Improv Chattanooga offers and began to perform live, she grew to love it.
“My first performance in front of an audience sealed the deal,” Whitaker remembers. “Everyone who was in the class had invited family and friends to watch us. We were automatically set up with a win because we had all of these people who loved us sitting in the room and cheering us on.”
Whitaker says improv has done more than expand her social circle; it’s given her greater confidence in her daily interactions with other people.
“I’m one of the most naturally nervous people you’ll meet, but improv has helped me to be less anxious and not worry about every word that comes out of my mouth. Now I just worry about every third word that comes out of my mouth.”
As Whitaker became more adept at improv, she had an easier time talking with co-workers and speaking with family members, she says. This has turned improv into a form of therapy that has improved her life.
“This isn’t just play time, it’s a safe place where we can establish who we are with people who are safe to be with.”
Like Whitaker, improv gave Sarton a group of friends when he had none.
“I started doing improv after I transferred from a community college to the University of Southern Mississippi,” he begins. “Since I was new on campus, I didn’t have any friends, but that changed when I joined the improv group at the college.”
In the 21 years since Sarton first tried improv, the friends he forged in the trenches have become his family. He’s been in their weddings, become a god parent, and found a purpose outside the walls of his workplace.
“These are some of my favorite people on Earth,” Sarton continues. “The experiences I’ve had performing with them has given me a deep love for improv.”
Sarton became a part of Improv Chattanooga in classic sink-or-swim fashion. After connecting with the group at an open house, he began taking the classes, but he thought he wasn’t ready to perform in front of an audience. So, he was caught unawares when the host of a show asked him to join the cast on the stage.
“I bought a ticket and sat down with the audience. When the show started, the host said, ‘There’s one person missing; David, get your ass up here.’ So I crawled out of my seat and performed in a show I’d paid to see. There was no time for me to become nervous.”
Improv is for everyone
For a community-minded nonprofit to fulfill its mission, it must serve the full spectrum of people within its footprint. To that end, Improv Chattanooga’s shows are accessible to people at every level of income. Many are free to attend or cost between $5 and $15, giving cash-strapped residents a shot at an affordable night out.
On Saturday, Oct. 5, Improv Chattanooga will present “Let’s Get Haunted” at Barking Legs at 8 p.m. The Halloween-themed show will cost $15 at the door. Improv Hour at Pax Breu Ruin Saturday, Oct. 12, will be free, as will another seasonal performance, Scary Stories, Wednesday, Oct. 26 at 7 p.m. at the downtown branch of the Chattanooga Public Library.
For anyone interested in learning the basics of improv, or in gaining useful life skills, Improv Chattanooga will host an introductory class at The Chattery Downtown Tuesday, Oct. 29, 6-8 p.m. Registration will cost $15.
Morgan, who teaches an improv class, encourages participation.
“Very few of the people who take our classes want to become a cast member. Usually, they want to learn how to talk with others at work, or to relax when they give presentations. Improv can help them overcome the things that frighten them.”
Improv Chattanooga also appeals to all ages, says Fran Randall, who at age 73 has the most years of life experience among the cast.
Randall drew from her accumulated wisdom when she taught improv to teens at a nonprofit youth center in Ringgold, and will soon be teaching the same material to individuals with dementia. While these students likely won’t become performers, Randall will attempt to help them apply what they learn to their everyday life.
“All the things that apply to good improv also apply to a healthy life. When someone says something to you, instead of rejecting it, you should receive it and then reason with them. You should say, ‘I understand your point of view, and here’s mine.’ If everyone knew a little improv, the world would be a better place.”
Ultimately, improv is as exhilarating for the audience as it is for the performers. As the cast steps up to the edge of the cliff, the audience is there with them, nervous about the long drop but excited to see the participants jump. Whether the performers go for laughs, or reach for the heart of what it means to be human, the world will indeed be a better place at the end of the evening.
And a crazier place.
“I love my job; it pays my bills,” says Morgan. “But improv is my creative outlet. It’s my chance to be imaginative, playful and silly with a bunch of weird adults who also want to be imaginative, playful and silly.”
Read more about Improv Chattanooga at improvchattanooga.com.