Blog by Phoebe Kozinets.
This Friday (24th October 2025) is the 8th anniversary of Do The Right Scene AND also a celebration of Black History Month! We are so excited about this night! I had a chat with the wonderful Tai Campell who produces Do The Right Scene at Hoopla, and Angela Pollard Hoopla’s amazing shows producer! I loved getting to hear really cool stories from them both about the conception of DTRS and the impact it has had over the last 8 years. Read these interviews below and come check out the show on Friday!
Click Here for Do The Right Scene 8th Anniversary + Black History Month Special Tickets!
Interview with Tai Campbell:
The group started by accident. Initially it was meant to just be two-prov between me and popular comedian, writer, and children’s author Athena Kugblenu. We got our first gig, and then she was like “Hey, should we invite Shem Pennant, because he’s black?” and then Shem was like “Oh I’ll invite my friend Corey Brown because he’s black” and then Corey was like “Oh cool, I’ll invite Andrae Alexander because he’s black” and then I thought “Oh I know, I’ll invite Kemah Bob because she’s black” and then somehow we were also like ”Let’s invite Verona Rose because she’s black”! And then on our first ever gig instead of 2 of us, I think 7 of us arrived. It was such a good show that we all wanted to do it more, and then Anglea from Hoopla reached out to ask if we wanted to do a regular show.
There’s been so many favorite memories, it’s hard to pick one out and leave the others. One scene that was a standout favorite for me was “Caribbean Time Machine”. We were a bunch of Jamaican scientists but the joke wasn’t that we were Jamaican or scientists. And you can see plenty of people thinking “oh yeah, there are scientists who have Jamaican accents!” Basically they invented a time machine, and the whole scene was them thinking about what time we could go back to for a classic time travel adventure. And they were like “Oh! We’ll go back to the 1300s!” and I was like “uhhh not sure about that…” and they were like “Oh I know, we’ll go back to the 1700s!” and I was like “Ummm…. Not really…” and it kept going and the whole joke was about that time travel isn’t really always a thing for black characters.
We try to be visible in the POC world and do improv differently. We try to use less anglicized names, try to add a bit more of our own vibe and spice in improv. We are never separate from the rest of the community, we just want to show the rest of the community our thing and where we are coming from, telling our stories from our cultures, our experiences, and our families.
Our show is a big party and everyone is invited! Our anniversary always coincides with Black History Month so we always like to do something special. Once we did the red carpet where we all dressed up in suits and dresses and tuxes. We’ve done the invitation to our “dinner party” and we had special black history guests. What we are doing this year (Friday 24th October) is having fun by having a hip-hop party. The music and costumes will all be inspired by hip-hop, some old school tunes. We will also be celebrating a concept called “Black Joy”. In previous years we have celebrated people and important figures from black history. This year we are focusing on things that have brought us joy. It can be a person, a place, a memory, a thing, a food, a song- anything. We are going to be bigging up a lot of big experiences along with some banging hip-hop tracks.
I’ve always enjoyed the music of the show. It’s really evolved over the years. When we first started eight years ago, it was very much funk and soul from the 70s. Eventually we started adding tracks from the 80s, and now we have gone up to pretty much modern time. That’s been cool, always adding a bit of the culture when it comes to music and some big hits we all remember, or a few deep cuts.
Interview with Angela Pollard:
Hello! I am Angela, Hoopla’s shows producer! I book in all the acts we have running Monday-Saturday and oversee everything related to shows. I also help create the Hoopla Marathon, which is an amazing experience. I love getting to hear people’s fun ideas for their crazy marathon shows. I basically manage all the shows and help groups get stage time at Hoopla.
I started at Hoopla in August of 2017. I remember interviewing with Steve and he asked me what values I would bring to Hoopla. I told him one of my main aims was to bring more diversity to the improv and comedy scene. I had noticed that the shows, performers, and audience members I had been seeing around the comedy scene did not reflect the vast culture and diversity that we have in London. I grew up here, and wanted to see people on stage that reflect the London I know and love. Funnily enough, at the same time Hoopla had already been talking to Tai Campbell about creating more space for black performers in the improv scene. It was perfect, because Tai and Steve had already gotten that ball rolling when I came on board and so I could help keep it rolling! I was over the moon to be part of something that would bring more diversity to the improv scene.
And it’s a constant learning process, that never really stops. There are always more ways we can be working on increasing diversity and inclusion. We make sure the line of communication is always open for performers and audience members to give us feedback, this is really important to Hoopla so that we can continue to make things better and better and better and better and better.
Working with Tai and watching the success and growth of Do The Right Scene has been amazing. The word amazing doesn’t even do it justice. It’s been incredible. The show used to be on a Thursday night, and it used to be free admission. I would go along and work on the tech and front of house. It was such an amazing show from the start, because it was just so different in energy from other improv shows. It felt like a whole new side of the improv world had opened. Then on top of running a whole night at Hoopla, DTRS team decided to run their own improv workshop, called Crash Landing right before their show, to help encourage more POC players to the stage. The people who book to do the crash landing workshop are often super new or have never done improv before. They are then invited to take part in the actual show straight after the workshop! Tai jokes it’s a baptism of fire but the students are integrated in and celebrated so beautifully within the show that the audience never think about who is new to improv they just see people having fun on stage and enjoy the lols. Crash Landing is such a unique way for new improvisers to get experience and stage time straight away with really experienced performers.
DTRS team always put so much effort into every show and even more so their anniversary/Black History Month show. One year they had an Oscar theme and everyone wore red carpet outfits. They go all out, it’s always so fun with lots of costumes, and feels like a big party. Around their anniversary show in 2019, I realized that the night was so successful it needed to move from a Thursday to a Friday. The shows were getting really busy and people were excited about it, and I knew it needed a Friday night spot because then even more people can come out and see live shows on Fridays as they don’t have work in the morning. And then Covid happened, and we didn’t actually get to bring it to the Friday as quickly as we wanted to.
But finally we got to move it to a Friday and it’s been the last Friday of every month ever since. They still do the workshop beforehand which has been super successful and sells out every time. It’s just grown into such an amazing show, and Do The Right Scene has also inspired so many other things to happen. Including Comediasians which was inspired and formed as a show to celebrate Asian improvisers in 2018. In 2024 The Bazaar – Arabian Nights Live formed. And this year we had Teresa and Folusho, who are amazing improvisers, create a new show called Untold Stories which they set up to amplify black female voices. I now see new groups forming all the time and applying for shows who focus around celebrating all different types of groups and marginalised voices. It’s really nice that Hoopla feels like the place that people know they can come to and put on a show in a supportive environment. We want to support people in creating what they want on stage.
Before I go I just want to give a massive shout out of thanks to the Do The Right Scenes team and special thanks Tai Campbell! His passion to create Do The Right Scene has brought so many people together and has had such an amazing and positive effect on the UK comedy scene! Tai you are such a delight to work with. Love ya!