Improv Avenue
A couple of nights ago I was standing with my work colleagues in the basement of the Oldtimers Cabin on 99th St., listening to Donovan Workun, Graham Neil and the Atomic Improv troupe explain we were standing on a beach. Or in France. Or on a tightrope over a gorge. Donovan and Neiler It was a team-building experience, and the lesson was brilliantly simple: if improv comedians can't agree between themselves that the wooden floor is really a sandy strand, then there is no common space, imagined or not, and if there is no common space, there is no improv. That's the fact on which the performance is built. The stage isn't as real as that fiction. Compare for power of spell cast, or not, an actor suggesting to his partner that "the sand on this beach is gorgeous" and being greeted with a delay and silence, or a shrug, or only a tentative nod of consent -- or, then, an enthusiastic, positive tag-taking and a comeback that "the tide is due to roll in in a...