Improv Marathon

This past weekend was the 11th Annual Del Close Marathon. For 54 hours, improv groups from around the country converged on three theaters in Chelsea for non-stop improving. And though I only went to a few shows on Friday and Sunday, I can tell you that there is a lot of bad improv in the world — almost all of it from Pennsylvania. There is also some very good improv, much of which comes from Chicago.

A festival such as this is not something I would normally attend. I like improv — when it doesn't suck (I'm talking to you Philadelphia) — but I don't have patience for too much of the same thing. Like, I would also never go to a Shakespeare festival or a documentary film festival, for example. But my friend Linus, who doesn't exactly live for improv, but at some point came very close and is now trying to recover, was in town from Chicago for the festival.

So the best of what I saw was:

Dummy: (As seen above) Jason Shotts and Colleen Doyle are a couple. They are also the longform improv duo named Dummy. With a combined seventeen-some-odd years improv experience and more than fifteen-aught months of roommate experience, prepare for things to get funny. And personal. And super gross. Jason Shotts has been a student/performer/teacher of improv for the last seven years. He has performed with such groups as iO’s Henrietta Pussycat, Willie Nelson Slept Here, Cougars, The Lindberg Babies 2.0, Brad Renfro and FELT. He has also performed at comedy festivals such as the Chicago Improv Festival, the Del Close Marathon, The Out of Bounds Festival, the i3 Raleigh Longform Improv Festival, the Dirty South Improv Festival, and Chicago Sketchfest with the ensembles Dummy, Sketchcore, BirdDog, OTIS and International Stinger. Colleen Doyle grew up in Cleveland, where she wrote greeting cards and performed with The Second City. Since moving to Chicago she has had the good fortune to write and co-star in Babymakers, play in Maine with ImprovAcadia, cavort on the high seas for Second City aboard the Norwegian Dawn, and make stuff up with the ensembles Chairs and Showpony. Currently she performs with Swanel at iO, as one half of Dummy, and as an understudy to The Second City National Touring Company.

iMusical: The Improvised Musical joins the unpredictable playfulness of comedic improvisation with the emotional power of musical theater. A cast of singer-improvisers creates a compelling new show with each performance, comprised of completely improvised scenes, lyrics and music, all inspired by a single audience suggestion. The Washington Post calls iMusical "spot on," and DCTheaterScene.com calls them "improv geniuses." They have performed to standing ovations at the Kennedy Center and comedy festivals from DC to NYC. Under the direction and accompaniment of Travis Ploeger, former longtime musical director of Chicago City Limits and co-creator of I Eat Pandas, iMusical explores the human condition via song and laughter... as only Washington Improv Theater can! www.iMusical.org

The worst was a duo called WhipSuit. I refuse to post their bio because they really hurt my insides with how bad they were. You can take a guess where they were from.

The last performance I saw was by Scheer-McBrayer, both of whom are on TV, making them some sort of improv royalty. But their performance was pretty flat. Their banter at the beginning was funny, but once they actually started performing, the funny seems to dry up — probably because of how unbelievably hot and stuffy the theater we were in was. This, of course, did not stop most people there from uproariously laughing at every other line. This is the benefit of being marginally famous — people laugh at you and pack the theater, no matter how bad you are. I mean, they were no WhipSuit, but then again very few are.