The Corporate Gig

For those that don't know, improv is a form of Theatre where the actors make up a scene or play as it goes along. It's kind of like a rap battle, but with less dissing and more pantomimed shoveling. Usually, one of the performers will ask the audience for a suggestion of what the scene could be about. This shows that a) the scene is new and based completely upon impulsive swear words from the audience, and b) the actors were too lazy to write and rehearse a proper scene.

Learning improv is a lot like learning to juggle, but the juggling pins are constantly betraying embarrassing gaps in knowledge and shouting Freudian slips. I received the first of my improv training in high school Theatre classes, but many others got their start in backyards, playing cops and robbers or Dairy Queen drive-thru. Improv education ends when a performer has learned to embrace the zen idea of "now" or, failing that, when the streetlights come on and it's time for dinner.

I've gotten a lot of joy from watching and performing improv over the years, but I'm hardly a proper spokesperson. In terms of terrible theater-going experiences, I would place bad improv up there with exploding cellphones and "a sandbag fell on my date". The cruel thing is that it's so easy for improv to go bad. All it takes is one mistimed genitalia joke or accidentally racist caricature and the audience will turn on the performers, never to be won back.

In the early 2000's, I regularly performed with a comedy improv troupe called Torrential Downplay. (I'd love to go into the group's history and roster of performers, but I'm not qualified and this isn't the place.) Suffice it to say, we were a solid crew of individual opinions with a strong group spirit. I joined up when T.D. was young and idealistic, a society of clever actors, writers, and directors that wanted to see smart comedy thrive in Birmingham, Alabama. I'm biased, but I'd say that we actually achieved that for a few years, for hundreds of people that saw us perform. However, getting up in front of drunken crowds week after week, we quickly learned that "smart" comedy could sometimes include "yo mama" jokes and the occasional Austin Powers impression.

A typical Torrential Downplay show was around two hours of short-form improv games, such as the type of stuff you'd see on Whose Line Is It Anyway? ("World's Worst", "Party Quirks", etc. - though we'd usually do our own spin and title them something different). Most shows consisted of four performers and a "mediator" who would host the show, choose/introduce the games, and get suggestions from the audience. I was never very good at hosting shows; the only reason I initially wanted to do it was to pick the song that would kick off the show, after which I would have nothing more to add creatively. The 10-12 standing T.D. members were rotated to perform in these weekly shows at various Birmingham bars and coffee shops, usually on Sunday nights.

The first few months involved a good bit of aimless flailing onstage, cursing at our collective stupidity while literally cursing at audiences. But we eventually got comfortable and - dare I say - good in the weekly shows. And after we had established ourselves around town, Torrential Downplay became popular enough to warrant additional gigs on the side. Most of these turned out to be for family-friendly audiences, the kind that caused us to sweat over the possibility we might accidentally use words like "crap" or "hell".

I was lucky enough to perform at a few private parties, several citywide events, and one Bat Mitzvah. These gigs paid better than a typical Sunday night show, and usually ran much shorter than the two hour marathons of wacky character voices and forced puns that we were accustomed to. The flip side, however, was that random Alabama audiences rarely knew who we were or what the word "improv" meant, usually leaving all involved with that classic cocktail of frustration and embarrassment, always served over confused, distrusting ice.

Which finally brings me to the corporate gig that this story is named for.

I'm not supposed to talk about this corporate gig. The five of us who were selected to perform at the corporate gig north of Birmingham decided after the show, during a long, mostly quiet drive home, if anybody from the rest of the group ever asked us what happened at the corporate gig, we'd respond with "It went well." I think that enough time has passed that I can finally reveal what happened, though I won't name the company that hired us to perform (let's call them BlunderCo), nor the names of the other performers who were present that fateful night.

All of Torrential Downplay's corporate engagements had similar set ups. The person that contacted our booking agent would be the company's representative as far as we were concerned. They would give us directions to the gig, any special instructions about the performance, and (most importantly) pay us after we were finished. Sometimes there was free food involved, which would leave absent T.D. members steeped in jealousy for days. However, the BlunderCo rep (we'll call her "Angel") did something unexpected. About a week before the gig, she emailed us a list of employees that we should target during the show.

It's not uncommon for improv troupes to be given "funny" info about employees before performances, the expectation being that these little threads of insider comedy would be weaved into the show, a parade of the company's own "party quirks" as it were. Angel's list included such eccentric foibles as "Millie Wurther is afraid of clowns" and "Jeremy Purvis always works late" - you know, real heavy-hitting stuff.

What was unusual about this, at least to us at Torrential Downplay around this time, was the implication that the BlunderCo people actually understood what improv was (albeit in kind of a hokey, party game kind of way). Most side gigs were painful when it came to teaching new audiences what our regular audiences already knew, but this actually got our hopes up. We prepared ourselves for what would surely be a fun show, and we memorized Angel's list accordingly.

The drive up the BlunderCo's large office complex was uneventful, except for a few last-minute pop quizzes on what type of cologne does Dottie Hingleman hate and what alma mater does Harvey Lankdover constantly bring up? ("Belmont!") We arrived and Angel met us in the lobby. She seemed a little nervous, but we were still in high spirits. Torrential Downplay's show uniform was a nice white shirt over black pants in those days, so it's not like we looked like the Deltas from Animal House. She asked us if we'd mind waiting a bit and disappeared back into the recesses of the cavernous BlunderCo facility.

After an unsettling forty-five minute wait, Angel returned and led us to a large banquet room. 95% of the floor space was taken up by thirty large circular tables, where 300 very loud people shouted at each other as frantic caterers navigated between them. Dinner had obviously been served some time earlier and everybody seemed to be on their fourth or fifth cocktail round. Off to the side, we saw a 5x5 platform with a makeshift backdrop, our illustrious stage. Angel faced the crowd and verrry slowwwly got their attention. She quieted one table, which then quieted the next, and so on for several minutes until all thirty tables realized that Angel had something to say.

Torrential Downplay had seen more than a few rowdy audiences by that point and we knew a little bit about crowd control. My experience put the room's patience at about fifteen seconds, the time everybody assumed it would take Angel to announce that BlunderCo was awesome. Instead, she meekly welcomed us performers to the stage and the crowd became very concerned that us kids in the bad waiter costumes were going to take longer than fifteen seconds to do some kind of little skit.

Introducing a new crowd to the concept of improv is tedious, mostly because it's not very funny. When you're paid to be funny, the last thing an audience wants is a plea for proper conditions and an explanation of why something is eventually going to hopefully be very funny(!!!). The BlunderCo crowd was about as impatient with this part of the show as a four-year-old child on speed would be at a city counsel meeting.

It was looking more and more like, no, this crowd didn't know what improv was - and they did not care to find out. Our mediator took the understandable route of "Who better to explain improv than improv itself?" and we launched into the first game of the evening. It was greeted by some light chuckles and, I have to believe, conspiratorial murmurs of a rising coup from the far away tables. Luckily, we knew that we had aces up our sleeves: Angel's list of famous office quirks!

I'll pause here to say that Angel's magic list still amazes me. I have a ton of improv stories, but I'm telling this one because of that list. My memory is that it had about 20 people on it, 25 tops. BlunderCo had 300+ employees, so we knew that Angel couldn't have provided funny facts for everyone. But we assumed it was a cross section of the most beloved and popular BlunderCo employees. Do I need to tell you that this wasn't the case?

We began to unleash our veritable knowledge of the BlunderCo corporate family through sloppy, not-great-for-improv character assassinations:

"Don't mind me, circus clowns. It's just me, Rusty Frecklin, and my extensive collection of Beanie Babies!"

"You're the world's biggest Dallas Cowboys fan, huh? Well, I wouldn't mention that to Sandy Reynolds?"

It didn't take long for us to notice that these odd inclusions were only getting reactions from 1 of the 30 large tables. And they weren't good reactions; they were "oh no, okay fine, please move on" reactions. It dawned on us that Angel had only provided information about her own department, and the lack of reactions from the room signaled that her coworkers were apparently not very notable among the other 29 tables at the banquet.

What made this part worse was that, even after we realized what was happening, we didn't stop including Angel's group - not at all. I can't speak for the other T.D. performers, but I thought maybe I'd hit on a name that was a general manager or somebody that everybody from BlunderCo would have heard of. Surely, I thought, Angel would had thrown us their version of a Steve Jobs or a Ted Turner.

But this was not the case. Her department's embarrassment only deepened as we continued to expose their odd fears and habits without any proper context. We watched that embarrassment turn into absolute humiliation as Angel's team proved to be the unfunny comedy group's only target. It was as if Angel's team had ordered a crappy moon bounce filled with putrid air and told the rest of BlunderCo that they were the only department allowed inside.

Okay, so nobody died. Nobody got punched in the neck and threw up all over a baby. In the grand scheme of things, the BlunderCo Job was less of a fiasco as it was an unfortunate miscommunication. But the show went on for nearly an hour, every minute of which felt like drowning in molasses. The only thing that got any semblance of a laugh was when our mediator jumped into one of the games to mix the company's name with...I'll just say a "well known product" to make it sound like...I'll just say a "part on a lady". And then another performer did it and it got another laugh. And then I did it too, because it was the only thing that they seemed to like and being liked was what we got paid for.

Hands scrubbed and a hundred miles later, the road home quietly hummed beneath us. Angel had paid us, had even thanked us, but we couldn't help but wonder what the folks over at BlunderCo would have to save the next time somebody mentioned "improv" in their presence. They might just turn and walk away. Our mediator, inventive as always, gave us the "It went well," response to any questions we'd be asked later, and we all agreed it was the only thing that we could say.

And we stuck with that line that for a long time. The other folks at T.D. might have learned tidbits here and there, but it wasn't that big a deal, not really. We had other bad shows, some of which I fought tooth and nail to see produced. Some failures you just can't outrun. But there were a lot of great shows and many terrific audiences that stayed with us, even when we accidentally said "crap" in front of their kids.

I'll leave it with a theory I have: the problem with improv is that it wants to lead to something greater: a stronger premise, a better acting gig, doesn't matter - just greater. Improv in and of itself is never enough; its value is only instrumental. Once our group felt that the normal shows were about as good as we could get them, Torrential Downplay tried its hand at long-form shows (one scene per show, high concept premises), sketch comedy, and all sorts of other experiments to keep us moving forward. Some did pretty well and turned a few bucks, but our bread was always buttered by the normal Sunday shows.

Through it all, we'd have these long, two-hour meetings where we'd sit around a big table to discuss our future: opening up a theater, offering classes, maybe making a feature film. I have to admit that I found these meetings awkward, because each of us would offer a different idea and none of them sounded all that likely.

I guess that's easy to say now, some 15 years later. (Stick around and I'll tell you why the Bears lost Super Bowl XLI back in 2007.) Still, I've realized over the years that hindsight was always the best method for looking at Torrential Downplay. Between the dozen or so of us hanging around in its ranks at any given time, we'd each of us have a unique vision for how something should be, something we'd be willing to fight for because we cared so damn much about it. But after the dust had settled and the shouting died down, we would usually agree when we were asked how something went.

And how did it go? What can I say? It went well.