I had the pleasure of chatting with Steve Roe and Melissa Parker about their first ever experiences of improv! I was so inspired hearing their stories! Below are stories from Steve, Melissa, and from me (Phoebe Kozinets) about our earliest improv memories. We thought this would be helpful for people starting on our beginners improv courses.
Words from Hoopla Steve:
There’s loads of life you just don’t remember. But there’s certain events that just stick out and you have a very clear memory of. Especially moments that then change your life a little bit or send you in a new direction. And for me, my first improv class is one of those moments.
I was living in Brighton, it was around 2004 or 2005. I had been trying to write sketch comedy but I was taking it very seriously and not having any fun with it. My girlfriend at the time booked a random show for us and it turned out to be an improv show. At the time I didn’t know what improv was, I hadn’t heard of it at all. I remember we were eating takeaway pizza from the box outside before the show, and I was a little embarrassed eating pizza out of the box in the street outside the theatre. Then I saw the curtain open on a window above and someone looked down at me, and I felt a bit embarrassed but thought it was fine because it was just a random stranger I would never see again. But that person happened to be John Cremer who ended up being my first ever improv teacher.
I watched the show, it was a group called the MayDays. John Cremer was hosting, and Katy Shutte was in the show. The theatre was packed, and I remember laughing the whole way through. I was thinking: oh my god, this is all so much funnier and so much more natural and more fun than all these sketches that I’m trying really hard to make funny. At the end, John Cremer mentioned that they run classes. I felt that I wanted to learn from these people, that they had a vibe I needed and was missing from my life. Looking back, what I was missing was the ability to play and have fun as an adult.
I kid you not, it took me at least 3 months, not even just to go to the class, but to pluck up the courage to go to the pub to find out the details about the class. I finally went and was feeling really shy and nervous about the concept that improv could be a thing I don’t just watch, but that I actually do. I finally went to the pub, and got John Cremer’s number. And it then took me a whole additional month just to get the courage to phone him up. For some reason I felt it needed to be a cinematic movie moment- so I walked to the end of the sea wall in Brighton Marina. I had built it up in my head so much, thinking “this guy is so funny so I am going to have to be really funny on the phone”. I phoned him and kept making loads of jokes. And he was very matter of fact and told me where and when the class would be.
It then took me another month to actually show up to the class. The day I was going to attend, I spent all fucking day building up jokes in my head. I even read the newspaper in case there were going to be topical jokes in class. Because I was used to writing scripted comedy, I was thinking it was going to be like writing sketches but even quicker. I was basically the most pre-planning improviser. I got there early, and I remember really clearly that when I got there John Cremer was just sat there eating fish and chips. I remember thinking, “how could this guy be so relaxed and normal?!” I did the first class and I loved it. A big thing I got from it was- stop trying so hard all the time. You don’t have to be clever or funny. Just be there, be natural, and let it happen. Allow yourself to just be. I remember walking home and thinking- whatever happens in life, I’m definitely going to do improv at least once a week for the rest of my life. It was the first commitment I made to improv.
Improv helped me to not feel trapped in my head, and say out loud stuff you don’t usually get to say. I realized that in improv whatever you are thinking and feeling you just get to say it and let it out, and rather than get penalized for it you get applauded and people laugh. I just thought- oh my god, this is unbelievable. I get to explore all these different sides of myself on stage. Ultimately, it just was nice to have a couple of hours a week where I don’t have to worry about the wider bit of life and I can be in a place that I trust with people that I trust and have some fun as an adult. As it went on, bit by bit I found people started going out after the class. I remember so well the first time going to the pub after an improv class and thinking that I didn’t know adults could be fun.
In terms of doing a first improv class, what I would pass on is that the toughest thing is just turning up. It took so much willpower to just show up for the first time for me, so I think turning up is really a thing to be celebrated. Some people have to conquer so much to be there in class, but once you’re there doing it regularly it feels normal. It’s amazing how something can go from feeling unachievable to being normal so quickly.
Words from Melissa Parker:
I used to go to a drama club after school once a week from the ages of 11 to 15. I just went because my friends were going, but then I really loved it. One of the things we used to do was get a scenario and then go into pairs or groups and get 10 minutes to devise a scene for the scenario. We’d go away and then spend most of our time just chatting. So when it came time to perform, we were accidentally just improvising. Improv now as an adult feels exactly like what that used to feel like. I remember one specific time that was really fun, like the most fun ever. My friend and I got this prompt about an alien being in the wardrobe. We had planned it together, but in the moment I said something else on the fly. It got a big laugh from the room. I was just like….. WOAH… oh my god. I think I was probably blushing with joy. I realized making people laugh by just thinking something and then saying it is an amazing feeling. That was quite a core memory. Now looking back I see that I was improvising, and discovering that I was good at it and could make people laugh, which was new information for me as a young person.
The first time I did improv “officially” was at drama school. We had improv as a class on the curriculum. It was definitely the class everyone would get really nervous for. Although I found it nerve wracking too, I thought it was so much fun. Everything else at drama school was quite a lot of effort and work, but improv was a space that felt so natural to me. It felt really right to be improvising. Our teacher who was Adam Meggido had us do a 24 hour show. It was one of the best experiences of my life.
By the time I left drama school, I felt like those were some great memories, but now it was time to get on with the hustle of acting. Two years later, I went to help out backstage at the 52 hour improvathon so that I could watch it for free. I remember sitting in the audience and watching one bit where they did an improvised song in the style of Chicago the musical but about Blackpool, and it just blew my mind. I didn’t realize you could even get that good at it. A little voice inside me felt that was what I was meant to be doing. I’m meant to be up there doing that weird Chicago thing.
After that show, I booked onto an improv course and went for it properly as a thing. That was in 2018. I remember having to do a who what where exercise on stage for the first time, and that my suggestion was Puffin.
Words from Phoebe Kozinets (me):
My first ever memories of doing improv I think are playing the game “party quirks” during musical theatre day camp at a theatre called Desert Stages in Scottsdale, Arizona. Scottsdale is in the Sonoran Desert, and a lot of things include desert-ajacent words in the titles of them which I think is pretty funny. My middle school was called Desert Canyon and my high school was called Desert Mountain.
The first time I joined anything officially called improv, was again at camp, but this time at an overnight camp I went to for a month every year in California. We had two chugs (Hebrew for activity I think) that we could choose from. Each year, we would have a big assembly where the counselors who led each chug would come out and do little skits to try and convince you to join their chug. I remember watching the improv chug leaders do their skit and thinking it was so much more silly and playful and fun then all the others (which in retrospect- duh!). I signed up for improv chug and teva (that one was the ropes course). I loved them both.
I have just asked my mom to remind me more of the timeline of what happened next, and this is what she said:
“ A photo comes to mind of you from camp in the light purple shirt with a design on it. You looked so happy and filled with love, your palms open to the sky and you are smiling with your mouth and eyes, and there is literally a ray of sun beaming on you and into you! I loved that photo so much when I first saw it online, and I later found out when you got home – you explained that was your first improv class which you sought out and came home ecstatic about! The highlight of camp! So we went to see an improv show when you got home, and you wanted to sign up for classes right away to get to it!”
I started taking classes at a theatre called Jesterz, run by a man who had named all of his children after presidents. For some reason I remember always being really shocked when he would greet “Rosevelt” and then this 4 year old blond little girl would walk in. I had a teacher named Mandy, and I thought Mandy was the coolest person I had ever met.
When I was around 12, I started taking classes at a theatre I would continue to train and perform with until I was 18 and moved to Chicago. They had a “teen troupe” and we had shows every Friday. My mom (who is the best person in the world and I am so grateful and blessed for this) would pick up my friends and I from school, drive us to the theatre, drop me off for rehearsal, bring my friends to dinner, and then bring them all back to watch the show. Is she not the absolute best?! I became obsessed with improv, I loved watching the adult team perform and was blown away by how good they were. My teacher was named John-Luke and I thought he was a genius. I have memories of playing really intense games of pass the clap for long periods of time. I loved improv as a place to be really silly but also to express myself and experience different feelings then I got to have every day. I loved when we got to do really serious and dramatic scenes. And I loved playing games, and feeling like we were doing silly things but that we all cared a lot about the thing we were there to learn. From that point forward I basically just never stopped doing as much improv as I possibly could for the rest of teenagehood and now life, and I still feel that it lights me up the same way it did back then.
Hoopla’s beginners improv courses start next month!