The New Silliness In Improv in Los Angeles

Out of a dark age comes a delightfully stupid light

Aug 02, 2023

This week’s essay is about the improv scene in Los Angeles. Like you, I hope that writing about improv is not a trend for this newsletter. Cut to: me writing about improv every day until I die at the age of 500.

Nonetheless, let’s begin. I’m here to report that the improv scene almost died in Los Angeles. But it didn’t and instead came back smaller, more independent and sillier.

The Death Of LA Improv

Even before the 2020 pandemic (I’m including the year because I assume we’re gonna start having pandemics once a decade, fun), LA improv was in trouble. iO West closed in February 2018. Soon after that, the UCBT community entered its “everyone is angry” phase (at not paying performers, not enough diversity, not enough attention to developing new performers). Also, the place (UCBT) seemed to be going broke (show prices leaping up, CFOs quitting, a few payrolls almost not happening).

Then the pandemic started. That killed UCBT 1.0. Within a year, the owners closed the NY branch, then the Sunset Ave theatre and then sold the whole brand to the folks who owned the Dodgers. Second City closed up soon after.

When lockdowns lifted, it wasn’t improv that came back. Stand-up shows were first, followed by The Elysian Theater, which featured clowning shows ways more than iO/UCB improv. PDA in Altadena was also clowning-focused.

The Rise Of Indie Shows and Schools

But as the old-timers waited to see when UCB would re-open, and what it might be like, a few indie shows and schools started up. And to my delight, they thrived. Casey Feigh’s Holy Shit Improv started doing shows at Silverlake Lounge. It’s not a great venue for improv, but shows were PACKED. Jake Jabbour’s WE Improv, which had continued online during lockdown, moved to the Clubhouse and started doing shows to overfull houses. My own school WGIS (which I run with Jim Woods and Sarah Claspell) started a Friday night show and it quickly gained a following. James Mastraieni’s weekend drop-in classes expanded to having shows and teams.

Some veteran teams began their own shows. Convoy has been doing monthly shows at The Yard. Yeti runs one at the Elysian. Dinosaur (formerly Facebook) is at the Largo. Ben Schwartz started touring the country and then the world with small crews of UCB folks. Dan Black’s The Last Improv Show assembled super teams that wowed huge crowds at the Elysian and Dynasty Typewriter.

Improv was back.

But things were different.

The Monopolies Are Gone

Students no longer stick to one community. A fact of pre-pandemic improv was you picked a theater, and knew only that theater. Diehard UCB fans had no idea what was going on at iO West. Groundlings students were oblivious to Second City shows.

Without the big schools to anchor the scene, post-pandemic improv fans and students have to know everything. Someone at The Last Improv Show already knows that Big Grande had a show at The Yard the following week. Students in WE are very likely to have also taken a WGIS class, and be attending a James Mastraieni drop-in. There is no more one-stop-shopping. Improv nerds have to find shows on their own. And they are doing so.

The current generation of students are heartier and more independent. They don’t wait for an institution to give them a plan. They make their own plan.

Streaming Options

Students have easier access to lots of shows because of streaming. This is another way the walls are down between improv scenes. Streaming for the Last Improv Show seems to have as big or bigger audience than the in person crowds. Holy Shit Improv’s livestream is as well produced as any I’ve ever seen (Thanks to Drew Spears and his studio). The livestream of Raaaatscraps in NYC may as well be an LA show for how often my students talk about it.

Smaller and Younger

Yes, the improv scene is smaller than it was. Gone are the days of the early 2010s, when it seemed like thousands of people were taking improv. And it’s long past when improv was a “new” thing. I hear people rave about their clowning classes the way I remember people raving about UCB classes in NYC back in, say, 2002. I don’t see as many pure actors in my improv classes. I don’t see people who have been told by their manager to take a class.

But the people who DO love it are more passionate. Classes are comprised of true believers. These folks who scour Discord chat servers and YouTube channels for good improv shows. The ones who can figure out how to register for classes at a million unprofessional websites. The folks who belong to Patreons and listen to podcasts.

The students are tougher and self-motivated.

The Comedy Bang Bang Effect

Also, people are sillier in their improv. I think the freewheeling style of improv on Comedy Bang Bang and Big Grande’s Teacher’s Lounge and the super-meta-inside-baseball tone of Hollywood Handbook has inspired people. Improv classes tell you to commit emotionally and be serious. But those shows I mentioned above have a joy and speed that you can only get by being loose, and letting the audience know that YOU know you’re doing improv. Students want to tag, to give insane gifts, to play multiple genres, to call stuff out — way earlier than I remember.

The people who show up want to play they way they are hearing it in their earbuds.

It sometimes bothers the teacher in me, but I’m also so glad to see people having fun doing improv. I think on balance it’s worth it and the sign of something new.

A few months ago, one of the improv teams I coach, Toretto, was doing a Harold. Their first group game started as private detectives following a suspect to a grocery store. But it devolved into Alex Maystrik doing insane “grocery story object work” for no reason. Trying fruit, cutting meat, killing pigs, resurrecting said pigs — all silently as the private detectives commented. Big hit. Then, later in the Harold, when it came time for the second group game, the team could not think of any idea, and Alex slowly came out and just started doing the exact same object work. As the rest of the team took their spots as documentarians, Eli Lloyd said out loud “I mean, this can’t work again, right?” And it was to my mind, even funnier.

There was something raw about it, and joyful, and irreverent, and really really fun.

The Past Is Dead

With some exceptions, I don’t think the current crop of students has a huge knowledge of the history of improv. They know the current shows and the current podcasts. But they don’t know the Harold teams of UCBLA from 2019, nor the tentpole shows of UCBNY in the 2010s. They’re passionate, but they’re not stuck in the past.

And thank God! I came up in NYC in the early 2000s and looking back I’m surprised how little we knew about the scene in Chicago. We had heard of some teams and teachers, but we were not focused on it. We wanted to please each other and our teachers, not some people from hundreds of miles away. We figured stuff out on our own, for ourselves.

The current scene reminds me of that.

It’s smaller, independent, silly, passionate and good. And different from what was. Clowning is affecting people’s improv. There’s way more audience interaction, and focus on being present and physical. I think the Harold is on its way out and some newer, faster form is going to evolve. A hybrid of emotional commitment with self-aware silliness is going to dominate.

But perhaps most encouraging: improv is alive! It’s still growing and changing!

Pretty cool!

Plugs, Fresh

Now for some plugs as to what I’m doing with my dumb life!

Beta Beta - Jim Woods and I do characters and sketches and improv. 9pm Satutday Aug 5 @ Public Displays of Altadena

The Smokes - UCB LA improv team - 8:30pm Friday August 4 at UCB LA Franklin Ave. Paired with The Big Team

College Town - A podcast behind the paywall of Comedy Bang Bang World. Myself and Hannah Pilkes guest on this improvised show hosted by Seth Morris and Erin Whitehead as a townie and professor in a fictional composite college town! I play a professor of comic books; it’s a stretch.

Sober Show - Improv from people who quit drinking, based on embarrassing stories from ours and others’ drinking pasts. Wednesday Aug 9 10pm at UCB LA.

Plugs, Ongoing

Screw It, We’re Just Gonna Talk About Comics - Comic book podcast! Co-host/brother Kevin and I read mail and review an old John Byrne FF comic.

Clubhouse Fridays - Fridays 7pm at The Clubhouse. Suggested donation $10. 2 student teams from WGIS (Improv school) and then the teachers (including me, Jim Woods and Sarah Claspell) perform.

Elevator Pitches

Possible future essays.

Gibberish Songs That Somehow Feel Deep - Come Together, Subterranean Homesick Blues, Maybellene, etc
Being A Centrist Fuck - What it’s like to never have a take.
How Much Goddamn Coffee I Have - It’s stunning to me how unhealthy towards me I am
A List Of My Current Imaginary Friends Beginning With Ringo Starr