The London 50-hour Improvathon is nearly here!

There are only a couple of days left to get the Earlybird Season Passes for the full 50 hours, so if you fancy the challenge/experience of 50 straight hours of improvised theatre, we'd highly recommend you book them now. And we reckon you should do the full 50 hours. Here's why:

‘It's like nothing you’ve seen before. It’s made up on the spot: a hilarious 50-hour non-stop soap opera. Early morning joggers and late-night clubbers unite!’ Time Out

This year the London Improvathon sees about 50 improvisers creating a massive piece of theatre set in Cairo in 1926. The classiest tourist destination of the day filled with adventurous icons, the discovery of Tutenkhamen's tomb, shady back street dealing, the curse of the mummy... all these, I'm sure, referred to with as much historic accuracy as you should expect. It's a classic, sumptuous setting with epic possibilities.

The cast will include some of the best improvisers around; a whole bunch of brilliant UK-based performers including a handful of Showstoppers, a bucket of Austentatious, most members of ProjectTwo and more.
They will be joined by some phenomenal folk from Die-Nasty and Rapid Fire theatre companies in Canada, and more besides.

'Fearsomely able improvisers.'
Ian Shuttleworth, The Financial Times.

The 50 hour Improvathon is a brilliant experience for the audience as well as the cast. After this long without sleep or rest the mind will start playing tricks on you. Performers tap into weird and wonderful parts of their psyche, and a whole new way of improvising arrives. You will see improvisers battle their own wits, lose their minds, then regain them in glorious victory.

And you as audience experience the same. It's cathartic, it's madness, it's brilliant. Take it from me, I've watched the last two all the way through. Once as an audience member, once as the lighting technician. There's not really anything I can compare it to. You have to try it for yourself.

Audience members who are there for the full 50 hours are regarded by the cast as a massively important part of the community of the show. The Improvathon is very much a two-way process, and the insane, sleep-deprived community that emerges bleary-eyed at the end are made of heroes. Cast and audience alike.

'It’s absolutely incredible. This isn’t theatre, it’s bloodsports.'
Michael Coveney, Whatsonstage.com

So come along. Challenge yourself. It's like nothing you've experienced before. And if you're a fan of improvisation, it's definitely something you should chalk up on your list.
Hoxton Hall is an ace venue for this show. It's got a balcony which tends to be inhabited by the 50-hour audience members; a lively community of its own, with sleeping bags and caffeine-based snacks a-plenty. It's brilliant.

Tickets are available here, starting at £7 per episode.

See you there!

Longform is not long, shortform is not short

by Alexis Gallagher, of The Maydays & Silly String Theory and director of Katy & Rach. Alexis trained in New York with the New Actors Workshop and with the improv troupes Burn Manhattan and the Upright Citizens Brigade, and in Chicago with the Annoyance Theatre. At the UCB theatre he regularly performed Del Close's signature form, the Harold. He has kissed the ring of many improv popes, including Paul Sills, Mick Napier, Ian Roberts, and others. He has written plays and screenplays, and appeared in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival production of The Spanish Interludes.

This post is for improvisers who haven't had the chance to visit Chicago. Please forgive me! I am going to risk wasting a few minutes of your time by telling you something that you probably already know. Why do I do this? Only because right now, somewhere out there, is an improviser who doesn't know this yet, and because this thing is easy to miss even though it's pretty fundamental. I was once that improviser, maybe you were too.

Here's the point: longform is not about being long and shortform is not about being short.

You can have a longform show that lasts five minutes, and you can have a shortform show that lasts an hour. I've seen both. Length is not only incidental, it is completely irrelevant.

Then why is it called longform? The truth is, that's an accidental and misleading name. It is a lot like if we called Shakespeare's sonnets not "sonnets" but "ten-line poems", and the poems of ee cummings not "free verse" but "poems that are longer or shorter than ten-lines". It misses the point.

Longform is not narrative, shortform is not non-narrative

Here is another thing it's not about: narrative. Longform does not mean "all my scenes add up to make a long story".

Let's say you're in a shortform troupe. Let's say your troupe is great at improvising funny scenes that fit various shortform games.

Now you get bored and want to do a show where you spend an hour telling a story (perhaps in a genre, perhaps showcasing your special skills with singing, or acrobatics, or puppets, or whatever). So you sit down and think about how every story has parts X, Y, Z, etc. (maybe: hero, villain, love interest, etc.). Then you outline a loose sequence of scenes that will use all those parts.

And you perform your show, and it's awesome. Congratulations! You've just made a one hour shortform show, with a narrative. I have also done this. It can be great fun!

And when I did this, my troupe and I all thought it was "longform". Why? Basically, because we didn't know any better. Because we were in Boston, where there was no longform for any of us to see. Because what we were doing had a "long" story and that's what the word sounded like. Because -- although we didn't know what longform was -- we had the vague idea that it was something ambitious and a bit pretentious (which appealed to some of us and annoyed others) and it must be longer, so this must be it, right?

Longform is not the absence of games, shortform is not the presence of games

Here's the thing about my old college troupe's attempt at longform.

Although we weren't playing our old shortform games, our "longform" show ended up having exactly same feel as our shortform show. The scenes had a lot of random, whacky elements. They had a lot of quick thinking to make all the elements fit. They were spirited and fun. They were fast. They communicated a vague undercurrent of "Oh my God can you believe we're doing this tricky thing!", which was fun for that kind of show and for that kind of audience. The scenes were not especially subtle, strong on naturalistic characters, or emotionally resonant, but that's no crime.

Still, this was puzzling. Although none of us had seen much longform, we had seen one show in New York (Burn Manhattan), and those performances were palpably more rich, varied, subtle, intelligent, and funny. We noticed they didn't use shortform games so we made a show without shortform games. But our show was nothing like theirs, because we didn't realize that the difference was much more radical -- that longform is not the absence of games. In fact, they were playing games at a deeper level that we did not even know how to recognize.

I have since realized that our "longform show" was not unusual. It is exactly the show you get whenever a group of shortform improvisers try to do longform, based only on their knowledge of the definition of the English word "long". Since then, I have seen this show over and over again.

Open-form vs closed-form

What is longform? Longform is a tradition of performance improv, originating and most deeply rooted in Chicago, USA, defined mostly under Del Close, which is now also practiced in other cities as well (e.g., New York, Los Angeles).

What is it like? How does it work? Really, it's a loose word that covers a multitude of sins, but if I could go back in time and save my earlier self some confusion I would say that it should really be called open-form and shortform should be called closed-form.

In shortform (closed-form), you know before a scene begins something about its structure. In longform (open-form), you are improvising the essential structure of the scene while in the scene. You are also improvising the structure of the show itself. Notice there are two points here -- improvising the scene (in-the-scene), and improvising the show (between-the-scenes).

It is obvious that longformers improvise the show itself, often using a well-known format like the Harold, or an Armando, or whatever. Because it is obvious, people fixate on this. This is a shame. The format is the easy part. It takes five minutes and a pint of beer to invent a decent format. (Here's seven for free: improvise a movie! no, a tv channel! no, a musical! no, something where time goes backwards! no, something where every character has a second character who speaks their inner thoughts! no, something where everyone's trapped in a room! no, something where no one can step in the same room twice! etc. etc.) Formats are superficial, and a good format does not redeem bad scenes.

What more usefully distinguishes great longform from other traditions of improv -- and as an art-form in general, for my money -- is the improvising in-the-scene. Among other things, longform teaches a discipline of deep listening and identifying and developing implicit patterns in scenes, a discipline which allow you to create deep, funny, and interesting work that (as far as I know) cannot be improvised with other methods.

Describing how it works takes a lot more than a paragraph, so I'll save that for another day. But the point is, it's your technique within the scene that determines if what you are doing is longform. Of course, if someone is really good, you might not even recognise that they have a technique…

Longform conquers the world?

Why define longform based on its roots in Chicago? Because that's just the fact of the matter. That's where it started, that's where they do it best. Or maybe it would be better to say, "longform" is just the name for this thing that came out of Chicago.

Can you do longform outside of Chicago? Well, can you play Jazz outside of New Orleans? Yes, obviously! Duh!

But at the same time, you may be swimming upstream. For instance, Keith Johnstone has written brilliant books about improvisation. His work has shaped the tradition of improv in England and Europe. That is a different tradition. Does he use the word "longform" anywhere in his landmark book Impro? If not, why would you think that tradition has anything to do with longform?

Can you play Jazz outside of New Orleans? Yes. But what if the year is 1935, and you're living in Moscow, and you're the only Jazz musician in the city? It would be hard. This is despite the fact that Moscow surely had some amazing musicians in 1935. Jazz is not just what you get when a musician looks up the word "jazz" in the dictionary and reads that it probably comes from the word "jasm" and meant something like "spirit" or "vigor" and therefore all he needs to do is play with spirit. No. It's a specific artistic tradition, coming from a specific place, with a non-trivial depth and history to it, and to learn it you need to work closely with people who know it.


Original article found on The Maydays weblog.

Old and New: This Week at the London Improv Comedy Club

Tuesday 31st January

ARTHUR
and THE MAYDAYS

Deep in Hoopla's secret underground bunker, a team of improvisers have been working on dangerous new short-form games, with the help of director Steve Roe.

These games are now ready for public viewing. New games, re-invented games, long lost forgotten games, new short-form.

Then the multiple award winning Brighton group The Maydays bring their vast experience to our wee stage. Mmm.. yum yum. (Yum).

Tuesday 31st January
Time: Doors 7:45pm, Show 8pm - 10pm with interval.
Cost: £5 on the door
Where: The Miller, 96 Snowsfields Road, London, SE1 3SS.

Wednesday 1st February
8BIT IMPROV
and AUSTENTATIOUS

8Bit do their improvised thing to welcome in February, the grumpiest month - and this year, there's Valentine's AND loads of women proposing! How annoying. Don't fret though, we'll set you up all right, preparing you for this month of 'love' (pleurf), 'special someones' (gargh) and 'buy this, it's got a heart on it' (fnar) by creating some amusing memories to last you through until March.

Then Austentatious will unearth another of Jane Austen's lost novels (how do you lose a novel? Bad filing, that's how) for your delight. Austentatious have been selling out shows at The Compass in Angel, made merry with New Year revellers at the Royal Festival Hall and now return to The Miller to do their costumed thing. Do come, they have fans.

Wednesday 1st February
Time: Doors 7:45pm, Show 8pm - 10pm with interval.
Cost: £5 on the door, FREE to NUS/NHS card holders
Where: The Miller, 96 Snowsfields Road, London, SE1 3SS.


LONDONIMPROV: A REVOLUTION IN COMEDY & THEATRE

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Doctor Who helps us help people who help people with cancer. And their helpers.

Well the psychic dust has settled after our phenomenal Doctor Who show last week. The TARDIS has been put in storage and the myrka returned to his stable in the Cotswolds.

Thanks to the ticket pre-sales and the tremendous generosity of the audience making additional donations on the night; London Improv are delighted to announce that the princely sum of £460 will be given to Dimbleby Cancer Care who look after people with cancer and their supportive families. We would like extend a massive thank you to the audience for the extra donations and really hope you all had as much fun as we did. Also huge thanks to the cast and front-of-house folk who mucked in and made the show the amazing success it was.

If you were one of the lucky ones who got to see the show, wasn't it amazing?! For those who didn't, just to let you know - it really was fantastic. You missed out.

Some of the best improvisers in London were joined on stage by a real-life Sontaran, a martyr for the struggle against the Daleks, and one of the greatest companions The Doctor has ever had. It was nothing less than marvellous and loads of people have said they want us to do it again. So we are going to. If that's okay.

We're not sure when, but follow us on Twitter (@London_Improv) or sign up to the mailing list (who@londonimprov.co.uk) and we'll let you know as soon as we do. We guarantee an amazing cast, at least as good as the one below. And we'll be working on getting even more special guests.

Now, has anyone got Pertwee's phone number?

CAST - DOCTOR WHO'S LINE IS IT ANYWAY?
Jana Carpenter (Spontaneity Shop, BBC's Doctor Who)
Dylan Emery (Grand Theft Impro, Showstoppers)
Paul Foxcroft (Horse Aquarium, Catch 23)
Michael Legge (BBC 6 Music, London Comedy Improv)
Adam Meggido (School of Night, Showstoppers)
Briony Redman (Horse Aquarium)
David Reed (The Penny Dreadfuls, Shamblehouse)
Tom Salinsky (Spontaneity Shop, TheatreSports)
Dan Starkey (Commander Strax - BBC's Doctor Who)
and
brilliantly
Sophie Aldred (Ace - BBC's Doctor Who)

CAST - THE OOD CAST LIVE
Andrew Candish
Chris Fosten
Chris Mead
Laura Mead
and Jonathan Funkhouse Monkhouse

SPECIAL THANKS TO: Jinni Lyons, Rhiannon Vivian, Adrian Simpson, Rob Grundel, Chrus Werren, Sarah Fletcher.

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!

One-Man Improv!

Second City Alumnus and two-time Canadian Comedy Award winner, David Shore, remounts his hit one-person show, The One-Man Harold. The Harold was developed to be performed by a team of five to ten improvisers. David Shore will perform it alone! Don’t miss this completely improvised, mind-blowing, one-person show.

Tuesday 5 July (7:30pm) & Monday 18 July (9:30pm)
The Hen & Chickens Theatre £7 plus £1.50 membership fee
Directed by Rich Fulcher
Music by Christopher Ash & Dylan Emery

The Hen & Chickens Theatre
109 St. Pauls Road, London, N1 2NA
For advanced tickets go to www.unrestrictedview.co.uk

This week at The London Improv Comedy Club

A very exciting line-up this Tuesday and Wednesday night, as - quite literally - a sack-load of improvisers take to our stage, including some new faces that you might not recognise. Oop, I just had a joygasm.

Tuesday 3rd May
Fat Kitten go head-to-head with The Inflatables in an improvised Smackdown to end all arguments. This is a preview of Fat Kitten Improv's Edinburgh Fringe Show: "Fat Kitten vs. The World" where they take on all the other impro groups they can lay their sweaty little paws on, in a battle of wit, charm and joke-fighting. This week they deal with The Inflatables, a high-speed all-stars group of Hoopla alumni.

They will be followed by the mighty Music Box in their snazzy new outfits. So snazzy and new, they haven't even made it to the website yet. Music Box take a few suggestions from the audience and use them to create an entire musical before you; with no script, no director and no safety nets. It has to be seen to be believed. With eyes.

Wednesday May the 4th be with you
Totally new group Your Girlfriend jump in front of you like a confident bunny and take you on a lady-ride. Five ladies from as diverse locations as Canada, America, Surrey and wherever Briony is from, spin quick-fire scenes and use them as fuel for tales of adventure and whimsy, with the audience guiding their character’s decisions every step of the way.

Fast-paced, high-octane... fragrant.
Directed by the inimitable Paul Foxcroft.
Then 8bit bring you Chicago-style longform impro in a teacup with a Union Jack on it; creating an intricate weave of stories from your ideas and taking you on a journey the likes of which has never been seen before or since. Or now.
Or before.

“I liked it when the animals talked.”
Katy Schutte, News Revue

A Long Time in the Works

Nathan Keates is a playful character and creator of Ludus Ludius in Cardiff. Pretty much every week he will cover the full width of the country to attend a workshop or show in London. That's enthusiasm you can't buy (or it is about the price of a return ticket to Wales).

"British improvisation has been developing for many years but it seems quite recent that more people are getting really excited about long-form. By watching the increasing list on the Crunchy Frog Collective site we can constantly see more groups, but predominantly these are short-form. We have had many short-form groups appear and develop and this will always be the case, and it seems like long-form is more of an American thing.

In my discussion with people from all over the world, from Mexico to Italy, I can be sure to say that there are wonderful formats being played – from one man with his suggestions stuck over him playing out the scenes on his own, to teams of hockey-style players playing Match Impro. There are varying competitive formats, from Scared Scriptless in Australia to TheatreSports in Canada (these are not solely played in these locations, but merely examples). The intended audience makes styles vary hugely, as we look at The Noise Next Door touring the UK comedy club circuit with their quick-fire short-form, and those that perform family shows like Crayons in Tulsa, America.

But what long-form is available to watch on our damp little island? There is a lot around. I recall coming back from Edinburgh Fringe ’10 and speaking to a friend who saw the same long-form show as I did. I loved it and he didn’t. The great differences in opinion is perhaps what drives the massive contrast in what this country has. In the UK we have seen only short-form on our television screens. However, over the last few years on the radio we have had some lovely long-form, including the recent Showstopper Improvised Musical on BBC Radio.

Variety can also be seen in the festivals we have had. The one-off Shifti, produced by Fluxx’s Chris Johnston, was probably the most diverse, collecting all sorts of improvised shows from around the world. We have had festivals in Bristol, Bristol Jam that’s now heading for it's third year. This year we saw the fourth 50-hour Improvathon by The Sticking Place, and Animo by Improbable. These were both long-form productions that were both fantastic. Even with our London festival, Slapdash [returning this year], we saw a large amount of long-form showing; like Music Box – musical stars who are residents at the London Improv Comedy Club.

The love of long-form has no doubt always been around. The growth of this style of the improv artform is therefore completely diverse. Formats that have sprung up like 'La Ronde', 'Beast', 'Harold', 'Henry', 'Rupert' and even 'Sybil' (that I have had a few attempts at) have each got their structures that make them different.

In America I noted that there are a lot of genre-based long-form productions, for example David Shore’s Monkey Toast talk-show. There have been looks at long-forming independent movies and now the UK has a murder mystery. Improbable’s Animo was in fact their first production, originally performed in 1996. The interest has been around for quite some time. Also, we have a lot of interest in musical improvisation, which can be seen by various groups performing it within shows, and some that only do music. We've already mentioned two groups that are devoted to musicals.

The influx of practitioners coming to the UK has always been useful and productive. Outside influence brings and creates new styles, and approaches that push and further the art form. Alan Marriott lived in London for a while and his mark is still frequently spotted. Each of his returns to the country signals some form of metaphorical parade. I have a massive personal investment in his current activities, as my aspirations to actively do applied improvisation for autism is an event that he is involved with in Canada at the moment. With visits from Montreal Improv and Jen Goodhue, amongst others, we have gained a lot of fantastic insight from their vast experience. Now we have the acclaimed David Shore from the Canadian lands regularly producing Harold shows with Hoopla!. And he is coaching regular groups in a traditional American long-form way. The are only a few of the practitioners we've met. These are indeed exciting times for long-form to emerge. Even British players have traveled for training and returned to share the wisdom and alternative focuses that give that marvelous new approach.

The fact is that we improvisers all have our different interests in the art of improvisation, be it long-form, short-form, contact improv or even the more dance or physical improvisation styles. However, long-form is one that I do really enjoy and wish to see and do more of. So with a huge impression from the outside influence, be it possible for it to settle and stay. With that - and those who are traveling for the training and bringing that joy back - we can be excited and happy about the possibility of more long-form."

Nathan Keates