-Brenda Hillegas
photo by Jill Petracek
The globally renowned Improvised Shakespeare Co. comes to the Perelman Theater on January 25th. Witness the improv troupe as they create a completely new Shakespearean story using a suggestion from the audience- no show is ever the same!
The Improvised Shakespeare Co. was created in Chicago in 2005 by Blaine Swen who also serves as the show’s director. Swen, an award-winning writer/actor, has been travelling with the ISC since its creation. Below, he talks more about the process of the show, his background in improv, and why Shakespeare really does go hand in hand with this form of comedy!
Q: Tell us a bit about your background in improv.
A: I started improvising in high school and immediately loved it. I caught the bug. I continued doing improv as a hobby through college. When I was in grad school in Chicago, I began studying comedy at the Second City Conservatory and in 2005 I started The Improvised Shakespeare Company.
Q: What do you love the most about improv comedy?
A: One thing I love is the camaraderie that you experience with the people that you’re playing with. When you are really supporting each other moment to moment, I think there’s a very cool connection that happens in that. I also love that improv makes you live in the moment. You can’t waste time worrying about the past or about what happens next. The best improv happens when you are completely present and listening and there is a real freedom that can be experienced there.
Q: What inspired you to form the Improvised Shakespeare Co. and why do you think Shakespeare inspired stories work so well for the format?
A: One reason Shakespeare and improv go so well together is that Shakespeare gives us a long list of passionate archetypes to play with. Improvisation is great when performers play characters who have strong points of view and passionate desires, and Shakespearean characters are big, bold, and rich. They are hungry for power or desperate for love. Some would die for money. Some would die for honor. Others would kill for revenge…or for any reason. On top of that, Shakespeare affords us not just the opportunity to be comedians, but poets as well. You can have goofy bits and characters played right alongside a genuine and heartbreaking love story. The kind of depth and variety that Shakespeare allows is really fun for us and fun for the audience.
Q: For anyone who hasn’t seen an improv show before, can you explain what the audiences can expect and how it works?
A: We ask the audience to make up a title for a play that has never been written. We then work together to create that play on the spot. All of the dialogues is said for the first time, the characters are created while the audience watches, and the story is developed spontaneously. We don’t plan anything that we’re going to do in advance and nothing has been written. We are living out the “actor’s nightmare” while the audience watches. And on top of all of that, we create our play using the styles, themes, and language of Shakespeare.
Q: Many legendary actors have joined Improvised Shakespeare Co. on stage. Do you have a recent favorite guest appearance? What made that person stand out?
A: Every one of our guests has been truly amazing and an absolute thrill to work with. We’ve gotten to play with Jason Alexander, Helen Hunt, Bradley Whitford, Patrick Stewart. Patrick Stewart was our very first guest. He joined us for the first time in 2013. One of the things that stood out to me about his play was the pure bravery. He had never done a fully improvised play before and even though he might’ve been wondering what he’d gotten himself into, he was willing to just dive in and go for it. And that made it so much more fun. That was amazing to me, and inspiring. He’s since played with us for more than 10 years and in four different cities.
Q: Why will fans of Shakespeare want to come see this show?
A: I think one reason fans of Shakespeare love our show is because there is a sort of fun cultural alchemy that happens in our plays. Shakespeare drew heavily on cultural touchstones of his day. So, we do the same. Where he would reference Greek mythology or the Bible, we might, in the same breath, reference Disney mythology or Beatles lyrics. In that way you get to have an experience more like a true Shakespearean groundling had. Shakespeare’s audiences didn’t have to go to grad school to get his references and winks. They picked up on them immediately because he was tapping into their pop culture, politics, and daily life. Likewise our audience gets to be immediately in on the joke, much in the way Shakespeare’s audience was. And that also makes it so that even if you know nothing about Shakespeare’s plays, you’re still going to get a ton of the references in the play and have a great time.
Q: Do you have a favorite Shakespeare play?
A: Oh yes, I love Cymbeline. I think that if Shakespeare had a troupe of improvisers creating plays on the spot, this is the one they’d create. I like to imagine that in writing this play he was working through the night under a morning deadline and getting progressively drunk or loopy. The play gets wilder and wilder and at the end, Shakespeare gets all of the characters into one room to wrap up plotlines about a war, mixed-up potions, a person in disguise, kidnapped princes, a malicious deception, the mistaken identity of a headless corpse, and the literal god Jupiter. It. Is. Beautiful.
More info and tickets can be found on the Ensemble Arts website here.
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