Features Stage

Making It Up

a rise in improv from all directions has formed a true, homegrown scene in the Chippewa Valley

Eric Christenson, photos by Andrea Paulseth, Zach Oliphant |

Eau Claire’s burgeoning improv comedy scene is just that. It’s relatively young, active and starting to spark some major traction under its tires. But it exists not as one thing, but several independent ones.  

You have BareBones Improv, an independent troupe in the community, maybe the most visible element of “professional” improv in Eau Claire.

Then you have Eau Claire Memorial’s high school teams, who fill auditorium seats, breed successful alumni and garner a pretty handsome reputation because of it.

You have offshoots from BareBones, Memorial alums performing around the country, even a team of theater kids from UW-Eau Claire.

But they don’t blend, really — or they haven’t yet.

Each piece will culminate Nov. 30 and Dec. 1, for the Eau Claire Improv Festival, the brainchild of Memorial improv coach Amber Dernbach, who also performs with BareBones.

The idea is to oil the gears a little bit in the community machine and get a real, inclusive thing going. Because, you’ll find, improv isn’t about being restrictive in the slightest — it’s about coming together, being creative and making something really amazing with little more than bodies and voices.

Amber Dernbach starts each rehearsal the same way.

“I never start a rehearsal running games or just doing scene work,” Dernbach said. “We always warm up for about 30 minutes to music. (There’s) not a lot of speaking, sometimes no speaking, just literally feeling the music ‘til it’s in your core. It ends when everyone is physically connected.  Everyone knows it so I just turn down the music down and just go.”

It might seem a bit unorthodox to start an actual rehearsal like this, but Dernbach knows that it’s completely essential for her team of Eau Claire Memorial High School improv performers to not only work together, but to think together.

“My priority is creating a group mind,” she said. “The way to do that is (when) everybody truly loves each other. To me, it’s really important that there’s trust and caring for each other on stage.”

It’s not brainwashing; it’s not meditation; it’s improv.

And in order to do it properly, Dernbach said one needs a clear mind, and her rehearsal warm up is a way of obtaining one.

“It’s a way of losing yourself, because there’s so much to shed.”

What is improv?

It’s a legitimate question.

The easy answer is just to think “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”: funny people on a stage being funny and making up funny dialogue as they go along.

The more difficult (and more accurate) answer takes a lot more time.  

In fact, it takes as much time as it does to read “Truth in Comedy,” a book written by two Chicago improvisers named Del Close and Charna Halpern in 1994, which popularly goes by the fond colloquialism, “The Improv Bible”.

The term improv comedy, then, serves as somewhat of an oxymoron because it’s not about being funny. Seasoned performers like Dernbach will tell you it’s about telling a good story, working together and connecting with not only other performers, but with the audience
as well.

Containing ancient improv clichés like the “Yes, and” rule (where an effective character should ever say “no” and end the scene; instead, they should agree and offer up more) and the rule that states, “When players worry that a scene isn’t funny, they may resort to jokes. This usually guarantees the scene won’t be funny.”

The term improv comedy, then, serves as somewhat of an oxymoron because it’s not about being funny.  Seasoned performers like Dernbach will tell you it’s about telling a good story, working together and connecting with not only other performers, but with the audience as well.

It’s because of the idea of everyone making everyone else better that “Truth in Comedy” warns against trying to be funny, or funnier than everyone else.

“Many actors don’t understand the difference between a joke and a laugh,” it reads.  “A joke is only one way — and seldom the best way — to get a laugh; jokes can get laughs but, obviously, laughs don’t always result from jokes.”

And earlier: “Where do the really best laughs come from? Terrific connections made intellectually, or terrific revelations made emotionally.”

So it’s certainly not easy to jump in and make intellectual connections and emotional revelations your first time.

Memorial senior Lucas Tanner found that out instantly when he quit playing hockey to join Dernbach’s improv team — and with that came rigorous, stress-inducing tryouts.

“You really lose yourself,” Tanner said. “You lose your personality, you shut off everything, you need to be really accepting.”

He learned that last part about being accepting in interacting with his teammates in a completely different way than he would with the old hockey team he’d grown up with.

“With improv, the people I was meeting were more open-minded and more compatible with what I was feeling at the time,” he said.

Ian Jacoby, who plays keyboards with BareBones and Shambles occasionally, said that that brand of acceptance is a big part of what improv is all about.

“The only way improv works is if everyone is really inclusive and you’re not delineated between what your role is,” he said.  “The whole philosophy behind it is everyone is needed the same amount.”

Improv groups can have as little as two members like Shambles (Dernbach and Shane Leonard, both BareBones performers), but some groups like UW-Eau Claire’s Backwards Thinkers Society have 10-12 members at any given show.

Backwards Thinker JT Stocks said that there are advantages to both, but he really enjoys having so many people participating.

“You have a lot of different people with a lot of different strengths and you get to play off of a lot of different people,” he said.  “Some people say you have to be smart to do improv, but some of the best people I’ve seen doing improv are dumber than a box of rocks.”

The art of improv varies a lot from group to group, from scene to scene, and person to person but that’s part of what makes it unique.  You’re never going to get the same thing twice.

Shambles at the Gilbert Garage
Shambles at the Gilbert Garage

Short Form vs. Long Form

There isn’t a succinct way to define improv — mainly because in a way, it defines itself and can vary markedly.  But there are two forms of improv: short and long.

With short form, laughs are essential.  Often you get them through taking audience suggestions and playing short, unrelated games that hopefully yield big laughs as often as possible.

But with long form, the name of the game is storytelling.  Long form involves building up characters and plot all through improvisation in longer scenes with typically more complexity.

“Whose Line Is It Anyway?” is a good example of short form improv, but is often criticized by long form die-hards for being hacky, gimmicky and easy.

“There’s nothing wrong with short form improv,” said Jacoby, who said he used to be somewhat of a longform snob. However, he does admit, “It is an art form and you’re working in this box where you have you produce right away.”

Ben Richgruber, executive director of the State Theater downtown and BareBones performer, did short form improv with a Comedy Sports group out of Madison before moving and teaching here at the Eau Claire Regional Arts Center.

He said it was important to remain completely creative and being a part of BareBones was an ideal outlet, even if it meant pushing the boundaries of the form to create something unique.

As part of BareBones, Richgruber said they incorporated a ton of different elements into the improv structure by utilizing multimedia and different ways of inspiring a scene.  

For example, they’d type words into YouTube, watch the first video that came up and use that video to make a scene around, or they would use Wikipedia’s Random Article feature to infer a scene.  From crowdsourcing songs to play in between scenes and referencing local figures and events, BareBones really tries to stay creative.

“It’s all in how you tell it. Short form is built more for entertainment, for the pay off, for the audience, for the punchline. There are enough opportunities now for people to want to get involved and we’ve sort of hit that critical mass,” Richgruber said.  “There are more options so more people are interested. You can pull all sorts of life lessons from it, but for me it’s just fun to do.”

Barebones Improv at the Stones Throw
Barebones Improv at the Stones Throw

EAU CLAIRE IMPROV AT A GLANCE

Eau Claire Memorial High School Team
Coached by Dernbach, bred many alumni that are performing improv professionally like Jacob Shuda and Jesse Wood

Shambles
Shane Leonard, Amber Dernbach, Ian Jacoby; offshoot of BareBones

Barebones Improv
Currently: Tom Giffey, Ben Richgruber, John Shenk, Shane Leonard, Amber Dernbach

The Improv Lab
The monthly BareBones gig, meant to be open for new people and experimentation

Eau Claire Improv Company
Founded by Jake Shuda, related to Illocal Comedy, centralized in Chicago

The Backwards Thinkers Society
UW-Eau Claire team of theater performers


Shambles at the Gilbert Garage
Shambles at the Gilbert Garage

But where can we do it?

Finding a home base for Eau Claire’s consistently expanding scene hasn’t been easy.

“It kind of is a problem,” Richgruber said. “There are a couple places that are pretty good, and there are a couple places that are on the verge of being awesome, but it’s hard to put all of that together.”

Richgruber said BareBones performed at Sammy’s Pizza on London Road and worked pretty well, but Sammy’s has since scrapped their stage, so there’s been a rotating cast of venues trying to fit the mold like The Stone’s Throw and the House of Rock.

“The fact that we’ve been changing venues a lot has been indicative of us trying to grow the scene and trying to find the best place to have it. It’s a positive struggle.” – Shane Leonard  Shambles and BareBones

“When we were doing shows at The Stone’s Throw, it was a pretty decent venue for it, but sound was an issue,” he said, for example.  “For long form, the audience has to pay attention, so you need a smaller room.”

Shambles performed at the House of Rock in October, which Dernbach said worked well enough by pulling tables over near the stage for cabaret-style seating, but it’s still a large room to fill and improv is generally markedly different than some of the metal bands the venue occasionally hosts.

Shane Leonard performs with BareBones and Shambles and also teaches improv along with Richgruber for the Eau Claire Regional Arts Center.  He said he definitely sees a venue issue in Eau Claire.

“I don’t think there’s any one venue in Eau Claire that’s perfect for anything,” he said, but he said that actually means good things for the scene.  “The fact that we’ve been changing venues a lot has been indicative of us trying to grow the scene and trying to find the best place to have it.  It’s a positive struggle.”

But Leonard has essentially taken things into his own hands, when he transformed his garage on Gilbert street into an intimate venue appropriately called the Gilbert Garage.

“I wanted to have an all-ages, down-home venue that has the atmosphere of a house show, but it was more professional and more organized than a crummy college house,” Leonard said.

Leonard created the space earlier this year to be a sort of catch-all for improv, music and even art and has seen a lot of positives from it.  It’s a very inclusive space: all-ages without drinking restrictions for of-agers, intimacy without being cramped and a variety of types of performances.

For the winter, though, the cold will shut the doors of the Garage, but Dernbach said they’ll still have shows in her basement.

Music and Improv

Ian Jacoby of Laarks was a fan of improv on a local level as well as widely renowned improvisers like Bill Murray and the Upright Citizen’s Brigade before he started playing music with the Memorial team as well as BareBones and Shambles here in Eau Claire.

But he has to be careful when he plays keyboards for improv, because adding a layer of music adds a wrinkle to the whole performance and can drastically change a scene, intentional or not.

Barebones Improv at the Stones Throw
Barebones Improv at the Stones Throw

“I lay back a lot. I have the luxury of waiting and picking my spots,” Jacoby said.  “One of my strengths from being in bands and stuff is I listen to other peoples ideas and that translated really well.”

But music isn’t always directly involved in improv performances; it also acts as its own thing, apart from it.  Jacoby has been proactive about having performances of both with the Memorial team or Shambles playing on the same bill with Laarks.

Not to mention many improv folks are also music folks, and vice versa.  

Jacoby switch-hits playing keyboards for several improv groups while captaining Laarks. Shane Leonard is an improv lynchpin, but also heads up Kalispell. Even Josh Ingersoll and Matt Haapala of The Heart Pills are former Memorial improv-ers (says Dernbach, “only improv kids would think to read Craigslist Missed Connections on stage”).

So it’s not like the two scenes are mutually exclusive, but Leonard said there are advantages to both.

“When you play a music show, a lot of the people there are also local musicians or significant others of musicians or buddies of musicians.  So it’s great and there’s an awesome scene, but it starts to feel claustrophobic to perform to the same people over and over again,” he said.  “I like improv because it seems to be drawing a crowd that I never see at The Mousetrap.”

Jesse Johnson was on Memorial’s improv team for three years and now coaches the B-team.  A fan of both, he said actively combining the two is somewhat of a no-brainer.

“If you have improv that’s good and music that’s good, you have something really special,” he said.  “Improv shows have always been kind of a niche thing for people that really, really like it, in the way music is a very open niche. The reason the Eau Claire music scene is so good is you have a bunch of friends that want to have fun.  (You can) treat the improv scene the same way.”

Jacoby said Dernbach has been really good about both getting the music scene involved with improv, but also involving the two scenes, side by side.

Dernbach said the two are comparable in a way.

“The music scene around here is so rich and if you’ve been a part of it in any way, you feel like you’re missing out if you’re not here,” Dernbach said.  “And now the improv scene has just been growing (that way).”

But for Johnson, it’s less about the acts themselves and more about the community that supports it.

“The things that are amazing about improv and the things that I love about Eau Claire are really similar: The openness of the people around here, (they are) non-exclusive, ambitious, exciting and fun, but supportive,” he said.  “It’s what defines Eau Claire in general.”

Eau Claire Improv Festival

All of this will culminate in the first weekend of December for the Eau Claire Improv Festival: venues, improv teams, styles, members, independent groups, alumni, friends, workshops — all of it.

In her nine years at Memorial, Dernbach has seen plenty of improv kids come and go, but something she finds especially rewarding are the ones that continue to do improv after high school.

“Some of them I’ve known since they were 14.  They still love it. That’s amazing. I love that,” she said.

So she’s not short on connections.

This was part of the inspiration for Dernbach to start planning the festival in the first place.  She’s kept good correspondence with some improv alumni and will hold a 2-day festival at different venues all over Eau Claire that will feature groups from out of town and in.

For example, her former student, Jacob Shuda is now working for Second City out of Chicago as a music director and is returning to Eau Claire for the festival, bringing along with him two groups from Chicago, Chaos Lifegaurd and Puppies for Dummies.

Even though Shuda is, by all means, a professional, he said he’s excited to come back and be a part of the growing scene.

“The growth of improv in Eau Claire is wonderful,” Shuda said. “To see the scene that fostered my skills and drive expand is a great feeling.”

Shuda’s found success doing improv professionally, but in his time here, the spirit of the festival was beating in the Eau Claire Improv Company, a group he founded last year along with 4 other improvisers from 4 other cities to focus on bringing more professional improv acts to Eau Claire.

Not only is it about performing, Shuda said, but a huge part of what makes improv so special — and what will make returning for the festival so exciting — but reigniting some of the friendships fostered by improv.

“Improv is amazing in that the root of the work is listening, accepting, and supporting,” Shuda said. “Participants are actively focused on supporting one another, and that leads not only to incredible feats on stage, but generous and exciting friendships.”

Dernbach said one of the planned events she’s most excited for is an alumni show, where lots of different Memorial improv alums will shake off the rust and perform together.

“There are such tight bonds. There’s such a rich history with improv alumni from Memorial,” she said.  “Of course we’ll have some rehearsing to do, but the vision is that there’s so much hang-out time built in. There’ll be so much energy and excitement from the alumni seeing each other, that will, in itself, will create energy.”

Johnson said Dernbach has curated a culture of improv alumni that isn’t easily — or even possibly — replicable.

“She’s connected so many people and so many have gone on to do really great improv.  It’s not like that other places,” Johnson said.  “She’s tapped into something that couldn’t be tapped into everywhere, here.”

Dernbach said this was the perfect time to organize something like this, now that the improv scene is gaining some serious traction. This is an opportune time for some seriously good improv to hit Eau Claire.

“I feel like I have to seize this time. There are so many people that I have the good fortune of being connected with who are still doing improv. I can’t express how much that means to me.”

Eau Claire Memorial High School Team
Eau Claire Memorial High School Team

15 rules for doing improv from
“Truth in Comedy”

The world of improv can be extremely wide,
but that doesn’t mean there aren’t rules or guidelines.
So here are some things to keep in mind:

~

be honest

don’t go for jokes

there’s nothing funnier than the truth

let humor arise out of the situation

take the scene seriously

respect choices made by others

there are no bad ideas

there are no mistakes – everything is justified

the best way to make yourself look good is
to make your fellow players look good

"yes, and" – accept and build

make assumptions – don’t ask questions

listen and remember

avoid preconceived notions

keep it simple – less is more

reveal yourself through your character

~

It’s not easy, but with these rules you’ll avoid flat jokes, disenfranchised audiences, and annoyed teammates.