| Subject: Here's the article I e-mailed you about Mel. Here It Is. |
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Lynda Thams
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Date Posted: 15:34:55 06/01/03 Sun
This article is from the Spokane Paper "The Spokesman Review" about 'A Night Of Improv.' Here's the Article.
A Whose' Who
Ryan Stiles heads a list of familiar faces in 'A Night Of Improv' By Jim Kershner.
Anyone who has seen ABC's "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" knows roughly what to expect from "A Night Of Improv," which rolls into the Opera House On Wednesday.
This all-star cast of comedy improvisers features familiar names from the show, including Ryan Stiles, Colin Mochrie, Greg Proops, Brad Sherwood, Chip Esten, Julie Larson, Sean Masterson and Jeff Davis.
'A Night Of Improv':Live Show hits Spokane for the first time.
It also includes Kathy Kinney, familiar from another ABC show: "The Drew Carey Show." on which Stiles also appears. Carey, who emcees "Whose Line," is not listed on the live bill. But that doesn't mean he won't show up.
"Drew never tells me if he's coming or not." says Stiles, by phone from his home in Bellingham. "Last year, he drove all the way to Bellingham and got there a half-hour before the show started."
Stiles and his pals do a live tour every summer, usually in the Pacific Northwest. This is the first time the tour will stop in Spokane. Stiles said this live show will have some important differences from "Whose Line."
"This allows us to do things we can't do on the TV show, because of time constraints, or because it's too theatrical," he said. "For instance, we have a mousetrap game that takes too long to set up on TV. We set out about 100 mousetraps, real mousetraps, and the improvisers are blindfolded, and they have no shoes and socks on."
Barefoot? Mousetraps? Don't people get, you know, snapped?
"Oh yeah," said Stiles. "The crowd loves it. They love to see how close people get. The key for the performer is to try to carry on with the scene while all of this is going on. When Drew (Carey) does it, once he gets snapped, he loses total contact with how the scene is going."
How does Stiles himself manage?
"Oh, I don't do that game," he said. "Id be getting snapped every two minutes."
Stiles grew up in Seattle and Vancouver, B.C. He and Colin Mochrie started doing improvisational comedy with a group in Vancouver in 1979 and 1980.
"They still claim us there, even though they kicked us out once because we had a scotch before we went on stage," Said Stiles. He and Mochrie later went on to Second City in Toronto, where they honed their improvisational skills. Many of the people in this live troupe started with one of the Second City casts, either in Toronto or Chicago. The techniques they learned there-how to build a scene, how to feed off the other characters, how to finish a scene-are the same techniques they use in these live tours.
Stiles describes this show as more free-flowing and with far more variety than the TV show.
"It also has more music, because we have so many good singers in the show," said Stiles. "Jeff, Chip, and Brad do a parody of a boy bands, and they'll do that on stage."
Stiles said the live version is not necessarily more risque than the TV show. He called it a "fairly clean show." "It tends to be clean because these performers work that way anyway." said Stiles.
Improv appears to be the riskiest of the performing arts, since there is no script and no prepared material. Yet Stiles said it is nearly the opposite.
"We have a real advantage over stand-up, for instance," said Stiles. "There, the audience attitude is, 'Make me laugh.' With this, the audience is already with you because they're the ones who suggested a scene about a penguin and a nun. They know you're working and making things up. The audiences are more forgiving."
In fact, he said, improv is more exhilarating than terrifying.
"Everybody in the group can't wait to get on stage," said Stiles. "It's a drug. It's really addicting. We sometimes do two shows a night, and we're still pumped up and still want to go on."
Stiles spends part of the year in Los Angeles shooting "The Drew Carey Show" and "Whose Line." The rest of the time, he lives on the shores of Lake Samish.
"I'm not an L.A. person," said Stiles. "It works out that I'm here for about seven or eight months of the year." He even teaches a few classes for the lucky theater students at Western Washington University. Not only that, but he once showed up at a Bellingham improv workshop-which completly flustered the teacher, who offered to let him teach the class. Stiles had to explain: No, he really was there to learn. He wanted to sharpen his technique. Just because he's one of the best in the world, it doesn't mean he can't learn more.
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