Arts & Letters

The Gift of Gab

Local improv troupe mixes dialogue and action to create authentic storytelling

by Christa Martin

Improvisation—it seems so easy. Just get on a stage and blab away for a few minutes. Not quite. Having such training on a resume typically gains attention from most casting directors, because it usually means that an actor is smart, creative, a quick thinker, and has some chutzpah. But an even riskier style of improv is the long form stuff—successfully yakking away for sometimes up to 45 minutes. Such are the labors and specialties of Freefall Improvisational Theater, a collection of local thespians. On Saturday, July 5 the ably long-winded group will perform at the Broadway Playhouse and present two 45-minute improv plays. (Don’t be fooled, it’s hard work.)

“It took us a long time to come up with our name,” says Rebecca Sunderland. “Why not ‘Freefall’? That’s exactly what we do.”

Freefall’s shows work like this—the actors quite simply go for it and “fall” into each scene, spontaneously. At the beginning of a performance, some random music pipes on, one person tackles the stage and starts to dance. A few others join the movement and someone’s specific dance form is transformed into an activity, like vacuuming or washing a window. And then dialogue starts to unravel and a scene is developed. More scenes emerge, some are put on hold or shut down, but they’re all interconnected and tell an overall story, which ends 45 minutes later at the intermission. After a respite the whole thing starts up again for another 45-minute segment.

Freefall’s performers desperately try to stay away from the talking head syndrome—where all the audience experiences is chatter, accompanied by nothing. An ideal improv situation is to mix dialogue and physical action onstage. To avoid the over-talkative plight, the group practices together three hours a week. In fact, before Freefall launched its debut show, the team practiced its craft as an ensemble for a full year before introducing themselves to Santa Cruz in 2001. Why the preparation when after all, everything they do is unscripted?

“We don’t go for the gags,” Sunderland says. “It’s not game oriented. We go for authentic storytelling. [Performances] may be comedic, may be dramatic. We want them (the audience) to feel moved in some way, uplifted or impacted. People who go to the theater want to see some kind of contact with their souls and have a connection.”

This sort of soul connection and desire to produce seemingly deeper, more challenging improvisational works is what bonded together the members of Freefall. Most of them are alums from other local improv groups, and at the time when they got together they wanted something different out of their improv experiences.

“I wanted something that explored relationships and connection with someone else onstage,” Sunderland says. “And, not having to go for the laugh. It seemed like a natural progression.”

The switchover to long form was already occurring to Sunderland and another Freefaller, Bob Giges. Sara Lovelady (co-founder of Scrip Tease) introduced the pair and together, the trio entered discussions about how to piece together a long form improv group; a collection of improvers emerged.

Giges is said by Sunderland to be probably the most daring of the bunch. “He goes out [on stage] with not a clue,” she says. “He makes it work. Sometimes it’s a feeling he works off of.”

These are flattering words that Giges shrugs off. For him, improv is something he’s tapped into since college. (He’s now 48, you do the math, but he’s been at this for a while.) The New York native wrapped up college at UC Santa Cruz, then enrolled in an improv class at Cabrillo College taught by revered local teacher and director, Wilma Marcus Chandler.

“I felt like it (improv) was a license to be completely imaginative and free and not get caught up in any worries about scripts,” Giges says. “You can do anything at any point.”

Giges went on to join local improv group Loose Cannon Theater, and worked with them for a year and a half. But he found that he wanted to push the boundaries of the short skit experience.

“I felt like we never got to develop relationships on stage and were always locked into comedy,” Giges says. “It was the next level of expanding our craft. Doing it [short improv sketches] got a little stale for me.”

He and Sunderland were clearly echoing each other’s thoughts and aspirations for the potential of doing a different style of improv. But was this move into a new form of improv for themselves, for the audience, or both? And, how could they make it successful? Would the audience still chuckle after the initial 10 minutes clicked by?

“When we first did it, experienced comedy improvers came up [and asked], ‘What part is scripted?’” Giges says, clearly amused because nothing in their productions is scripted. “The mysteriousness of the whole process, it’s so exciting, you don’t know what’s going to happen. It is a blend of comedy and drama. We’re never shooting to be funny. … This is the hardest improv form I’ve ever done. It’s so complex.”

But he says long form improv is also fun, exciting and even affects his own personal life with a sense of aliveness. “If you can get up on stage in front of 100 people, it makes you kind of fearless in groups of people.”

Freefall Improvisational Theater will perform a show at 8 p.m. on Saturday, July 5 at the Broadway Playhouse, 526 Broadway, Santa Cruz. Tickets are $10. For more info, call 688-6882.