Memories of London Fringe Theatre in the 1990s

Michael Brunström

The first time I went to see a real piece of 'fringe' theatre was at The Hope  Anchor on Upper Street in Islington. It was a hectic and full-blooded production of Eugene Ionesco's The Chairs, rather elaborately staged in the room downstairs. It was paired with a new play, the title of which I've forgotten, which had beautiful performances, nudity, complex sets, and eerie poetic language throughout. I was fifteen years old. It cost £2.50 to get in. During the interval I had to wait outside in the street because I wasn't allowed in the bar.

I had never before seen anything like it in the theatre. The actors were close enough to touch. You could hear their breathing, smell their sweat (it was very hot down there), and peer into the cracks in their cakey make-up. The drama was underscored by the beat of the jukebox upstairs bleeding through the ceiling. The floor was sticky. Latecomers brought the stairway light with them. I loved it all. Everything was visceral, immediate, real. There was no slickness or fakery. Before that, I had only gazed down from the hushed darkness of an Upper Circle at a distant square of light with a collection of miniature mannequins on it. It had been more like TV than theatre.

For much of the next year or so, I got into the habit of going to the theatre every week if I could, usually on my own, sometimes with a friend of mine. I travelled out to unusual venues at the far end of the Piccadilly line. On more than one occasion, I was the only member of the audience, and I'd hang out with the actors afterwards. Sometimes I'd save up to see Ken Campbell at the Almeida or some bonkers performance art at the ICA.

Very few of those pub theatres that I went to in the 1990s are still operating (The Hope & Anchor is now a music venue). Before the Internet, it was necessary for plays in London to run for a minimum of three weeks, otherwise Time Out wouldn't review them, but the listings pages – divided into 'Off West End' and 'Fringe' – were extensive. For a multitude of reasons, however, it was becoming more expensive both to put on a play and to go and watch one, and it became clear that I had been lucky enough to catch the end of a Golden Age for London Fringe Theatre. Of course, if theatre has the ruthless persistence of a weed, it will always emerge from the cracks, making new cracks as it does so.

For me, improvisation has captured most fully that sense of excitement I first felt when I was sixteen; and in London and elsewhere, the scene is now growing. It is a form of theatre that has its roots in a tradition that is much, much older than the hushed, passive, cinematic form that emerged in the eighteenth century with the introduction of footlights and a fourth wall. (That's not to say that I never enjoy darkened auditoria. The vitality of the drama depends more on the complicity of the room than on any specific lighting decision.) The drama happens right in front of us, like close-up magic. Whether the audience shouts suggestions throughout, or only once at the beginning, or even not at all, we are all co-creators, co-conspirators, in an experience which belongs to us all and which nothing will disguise. Actors and audience alike hang on each character's words and actions, because they are of enhanced importance. 'Everything is an offer': that is my definition of reality, a reality that is greater than the dull, deaf world outside.

How to Become an Awesome Improviser

by Michael Brunström

Are you an awesome improviser? Of course you are – all improvisers are awesome people. But are you an awesome improviser? Don’t lie. You’re not, are you? Well, it’s OK. There’s no need to be ashamed. I’m not an awesome improviser either. Like you, I have – on the odd rare occasion – been awesome on stage. But that might have been a fluke. Who are we kidding? You and I both know who the truly awesome improvisers are, and that compared to them we’re just a pair of schmucks.

(To be brutally frank, I sometimes have misgivings about certain improvisers who are generally acknowledged to be awesome. Likewise, I can think of one or two improvisers whom I personally consider to be awesome, but wouldn’t feature in many people’s Top Ten. I’m not going to name names. This article isn’t about who is and isn’t awesome. Buy me a couple of drinks and I’ll tell you privately.)

Awesome improvisers achieve miraculous feats of stage athleticism. Their antics transcend the usual rules of improv that our teachers attempt to drum into us – all that boring who-what-where, yes-anding and platform building. They’re awesome in an inscrutably brilliant way. They seem to read each other’s minds, float inches off the ground and travel through time. They’re lithe, clever and goddamn sexually attractive.

How did they get to be so awesome? How? What is it that they do that makes run-of-the-mill improvisers like us think “Well, I might as well give up. They’ve cracked it. There is no way on God’s sweet earth that I will ever be as awesome as them.”?

The answer you don’t want to hear is . . . they’ve worked incredibly hard. They’ve performed in acres of duff shows, handed over pots of money to dubious self-styled improv gurus, rehearsed week-in-week-out in cold, damp meat warehouses, emerged from greasy pits of self-doubt, built and maintained a productive ensemble, sacrificed their egos on the altar of improv and gained oodles of toughly won experience over years and years and years and years.

There is another way, however. And I’m about to tell you what it is – a way of becoming an awesome improviser without going to all that time and trouble. And it’s so simple, I can sum it up in a pithy two-word slogan: “Just pretend.” That’s right – just pretend to be an awesome improviser. After all, every improviser is in the pretence business. If you’re on stage pretending to be a cow, you might as well pretend to be a witty cow. Half the battle of improv is in jumping up on stage in the style of someone who already knows a brilliant thing they’re going to say. Bullshit it.

I much prefer it when improvisers embrace what they do, even if they’re in a haphazard show full of directionless headbound scenes in the location of nowhere. I’ll give you an example. The other day I saw an improv show. It was neither tediously good nor gloriously bad. But from about a third of the way through the actors were clearly looking unhappy and tentative about it, and at the end they gave the audience nothing but apologetic nods before scuttling off the stage like cockroaches disturbed by a sanitary inspector’s torch. What a shame, I thought. If only they’d saved the diffidence, humility, regrets and recriminations for their post-show postmortem, and just pretended it was going brilliantly, I might’ve bought it.

But – and here comes the big but (I cannot lie) – how far will pretending alone take us? How many shows that are full of joyful rubbish will an audience put up with before they think “These guys have a charming, breezy self-confidence, but where can I see the awesome improvisers perform?” In other words, how long can improvisers survive on a diet of sheer hype?

This perhaps isn’t an entirely fatuous question. Improv in the UK is undergoing a pubescent growth spurt at the moment, and an increasing number of young groups are hungry for recognition. Many of these have an enthusiasm that, pound-for-pound, outweighs their audience numbers by a factor of ten. They’ll do anything to achieve that tipping-point of popularity that will see the work they’ve put in begin to pay off, and they're in a hurry. In my years, I’ve seen more than one group fade and expire, simply because they were unable to sustain the bubble of their own pretend awesomeness. All their promotional material boldly declared them to be the next big thing in the world of stuff, and they bounced about on stage in a chaotic expulsion of raw energy. The more their audiences dwindled, the more extravagant their claims to awesomeness became. At this delicate age in improv’s adolescence, there is a danger that we will start believing our own hype and forget to live up to it.

There’s clearly a finely balanced bridge to be built between the patience, humility and self-awareness of rehearsal and the cock-out, in-yer-face ebullience of performance. To be as awesome as the awesome improvisers requires an intelligent mix of discipline and bravura, patience and balls, talent and pretend talent. But it’s worth remembering, the next time you’re watching them do their effortlessly awesome thing on stage, that these guys aren’t getting hung up on any of this. They’re not trying to be awesome. Trying to be awesome is worse than pretending to be awesome – and it’s one of the most common mistakes improvisers make. If you're worried about how awesome you are, you've already fluffed it. Awesome improvisers just get on with it, performing in and for the moment, supporting their fellow improvisers and having fun.

The Return of the Improvised Greek Tragedy

Is it possible to improvise Greek tragedy? Come and learn how.

In this now-famous workshop led by Michael Brunström, a wide range of improvisation techniques are rallied to allow the spontaneous extemporization of Sophoclean drama. Based on the work of poetic geniuses from Aristotle to Zorba, and from Heraclitus to Ken Campbell, this is a dizzying romp through language, stagecraft, narrative, archetypes and high emotions.

At the end of the afternoon we will improvise a complete Greek tragedy.

Expect choral chanting, masks, incest, flutes, divine punishment, trochaic tetrameters, catharsis and a singing goat.

Numbers are limited, so book early to ensure a place on an improvabout that is guaranteed to be quite unlike anything else you’ve ever done before.

The Return of the Improvised Greek Tragedy
Sunday 29th January, 2–5pm
The Bookshop Theatre
51 The Cut
London SE1 8LF
Nearest Tubes: Waterloo and Southwark

Cost: £10, or £5 if you book in advance

Contact: michaelbrunstrom@hotmail.com or 07757 756119

Michael Brunström is a seasoned improviser who has worked with some of the biggest names on the London scene. The creator of Frogspawn, The Spouting Club, The Human Loire and The Curt Hatred Trilogy, he is also known for his original and unconventional improvabouts.

We've been to Michael's Greek Tragedy workshop before and it is brilliant. We recommend it!

Keeping it Real

Michael Brunström is very experienced in the ways of British Impro. He was originally introduced to it completely by chance when he bumped into his hero, the late, great Ken Campbell in the street. Since then he has worked on a multitude of projects, pushing the boundaries of what improvisation can achieve; from the often surreal "My Show, My Rules" to an improvised Greek Tragedy in a day. Most recently he has created the Curt Hatred shows and co-created Fingers On Buzzards, an Impro/pub quiz hybrid.

Some thoughts on improvisation and 'reality'.

UK improvisation, although small in scale and performed mainly by (over)enthusiastic young amateurs, is nonetheless rooted in hefty long-worn traditions. Put (over)simplistically, these are a) The Keith Johnstone 'shortform games' tradition, b) the Joseph Campbell arc-plot longform tradition and c) the North American Harold tradition. Yes, I know: there are plenty of others.

Every improviser has their preference. Arc-plot longform impro is thought by some to be too proscriptive and formulaic. Likewise, some longform improvisers tend to dismiss shortform impro as tending towards silly gags, or consider the physical and verbal restrictions imposed by some impro games as either pointlessly limiting or empty displays of virtuosity. (I once heard of a Canadian improviser complaining that Keith Johnstone had 'instituted the tyranny of games', which is a magnificent phrase, and if I were Keith Johnstone I would be proud of it.) In spite of the strong feelings that practitioners of each tradition have, there is far more common ground between them than they usually admit. Indeed, each of these approaches owes much to the other two, and they are ultimately inseparable. Yet without this diversity, the impro scene in the UK would stagnate and become uniform.

It is noticeable, however, that until recently the North American Harold has not gained much of a footing in the UK. I've seen several troupes try it out, but often without great enthusiasm or success. The one element of the Harold that UK improvisers find particularly difficult is the opening monologue. Both performers and audience members alike have told me they are uncomfortable with its 'confessional' feel.

We British are too anally retentive, too don't-make-eye-contact-on-the-bus, too cynical. We don't like to think of stage performers as normal people. We like glamour, artifice, character comedy and masks. We like our shows to begin with a fast-paced game or a big song-and-dance number. When performers get up to speak in their own voices, we get nervous. I've heard people complain that when improvisers talk about themselves it smacks of vanity, of navel-gazing, and that they're performing 'more for their benefit than for ours'. I've even heard it said that to use real-life experiences as the basis for scenes, rather than making it all up from nothing, is somehow 'cheating'.

This is wrong. Scenes that are rooted in reality work better. Not just sometimes, but all the time. That is why, when performing a Harold, the monologues have to be real and cannot be fictitious. The opening monologues aren't something that can be edited out of a Harold – they're absolutely crucial to it. There is an indefinable quality that comes from material that has been derived from specific real-life. Genuine experiences transformed through a lighthearted playful approach obey the formula 'Serious + silly = funny.'
Yet UK impro tends to shy away from this aspect of the Harold. I've seen 8-Bit perform their Harold monologues in a mixture of voices, partly their own and partly as characters. There seemed to be a reluctance to divulge anything too personal or revealing in them. When GTI did their 'Harold' in the second half of their show, they based their scenes on a collection of ideas thrown out from the audience rather than on their own experiences. When Harolds skimp on reality, no matter how skilled the improvisers are, there is a tendency towards 'Silly + silly = stupid.'

Not all UK troupes are afraid to use real experiences as a source of material. The Maydays have been particularly successful in adapting the Harold format to British sensibilities. Multistory used a multi-stranded longform format very similar to a Harold. Rather than narrate monologues, they got stories from the audience. Kevin Tomlinson does this too. The Couch use a similar approach for their shortform show, though with far less serious or reverent intent. Playback Theatre was popular here a few years back, too, though their shows were often criticized for being too like a therapy session. On the whole, though, we Brits don't like 'the Real'. In nearly every case, basing scenes explicitly on the personal experiences of the improvisers themselves has been seen as a step too far.
How, then, are UK improvisers to square this circle? How can they keep scenes vivid and real, without the off-puttingly confessional monologues? What does a 'British Harold' look like?

In the show I direct, 'Curt Hatred', I use traditional shortform games, rather than monologues, to generate the material that will be reincorporated in subsequent scenes. As a result, every show appears highly divorced from reality, with utterly absurd content. In order to counteract the accumulation of bonkers notions that have no basis in experience, I instruct the improvisers to treat everything with the utmost seriousness. By concentrating on the characters rather than the content, showing what's at stake for them, and setting them on an arc-plot journey, I encourage the audience to identify on an emotional level with the action on stage and making the action seem relevant and vital. By imbuing daft material with gravitas and importance, the aim is to recapture the formula 'Silly + serious = funny.' Employing elements from arc-plot longform – exploring internal conflicts, identifying archetypes, finding the 'bother' on which each scene hinges – could be one way, albeit an imperfect one, to ground an impro scene in reality. (Yet I should emphasize that my particular show has been largely a failure, as audience numbers have shrunk down to nothing.)

However, I want to draw attention to another approach, a completely different kind of 'reality' which I don't think has been adequately explored by improvisers: the reality of the show itself.

Communicating directly with the audience, literally making eye-contact with as many individuals as possible – without 'dipping', 'skipping', 'arcing' or 'glazing' – and sharing the scene with them, accentuates the reality of the show. It is a style of performance that gradually fell into redundancy with the introduction of footlights to theatres at the end of the eighteenth century, eventually leading to audiences sitting silently and reverently in near-total darkness, peering through an invisible fourth wall. (The invention of 'cinema' could be said to predate that of celluloid by at least a hundred years.)

Whereas some improvisers I've spoken to say they enjoy the theatricality of having an audience in darkness, creating an atmosphere of hushed expectation like you find at standup shows or music gigs, I always prefer shows where the audience are more involved with the performers – not necessarily by yelling stuff out throughout the evening, but by feeling close enough to the action to register its subtlest signals, establish a direct personal connection and build a shared experience. It makes the occasion more lively and vivid. And it encourages a style of performing that celebrates the challenge of spontaneity itself – the deeper game.

I can think of several improvisers – the majority of them women, incidentally – who are masters of connecting with an audience, moving effortlessly between the reality of the scene and the reality of the room, without blocking either. It's not about 'gagging', 'commentating' or 'popping out of the scene'; it's about sharing the scene with the back row. These performers have the miraculous skill of combining fearless honesty with irony and wit – and that's a very British approach. It's a skill that is central to clowning, but it is not often taught in an impro context. I would like to see more of this style of performance in impro. In addition to everything else that's going on.

Alan Marriott says that there are two ways of being, both on stage and in life. He calls these 'downward/inward' and 'upward/outward' intentions. As improvisers we need to cultivate our upward/outward intention in order to be receptive and responsive to the many offers we receive during a scene. These intentions can be found in audiences as well. British audiences are notoriously 'downward/inward', especially when they're when they're being lectured to and when they're watching standup comedy. They slouch and squint in their chairs, as prickly and antagonistic as urchins, with their arm crossed and their fists clenched. If improvisation has any social purpose it is to reach out to the cynical Brit. If improvisation can coax him towards the edge of his seat, make him feel relaxed and open him up to experience child-like playfulness and joy – by Harolds based on true-life experiences, by epic and engaging narratives, or by the sheer excitement of suddenly being aware of the here and now – then it has done a good job.

Fingers on Buzzards, the improvised pub-quiz is on at the Edinburgh Fringe.
When: 7:50pm, 6-27th August
Venue: Dragonfly
Cost: Totally free!