It could be a set from West Side Story: a long alley-like performance space with 25-foot brick walls looming over a black velvet-curtained stage. The hipster chic of this newly renovated comedy theatre makes you quickly forget you're in a part of town known best for a very different kind of performing.
Tonight the city has seen its first snowfall and the rest of St. Catherine's historic red-light district is empty. Still, in the moments before host and local stand-up Nick Brazao takes the mike and explains the rules of the evening's improvised entertainment, there is an all but full house at Theatre Ste. Catherine's Sunday Night Improv show. A kid with a green Mohawk sits beside three guys in their late thirties drinking king cans of Stella Artois purchased at the depanneur across the street. The only thing uniting the crowd's demographic is the fact that the majority seem to be anglophone, judging by the excited pre-show chatter.
The night's performers or "contestants" as director and creator Eric Amber calls them, line the side of the stage in folding chairs wearing numbers pinned to their shirts. From numbers one to 11, they include some of the city's best and brightest comedic stars: Paul Spence and Dave Lawrence of the recent indie improv film FUBAR, Christine Ghawi of Sex and La Cité, Marc Rowland and Imanuella van der Jagt of the Comedy Nest's Without Annette, and Dan Beirne, Joe McLean, Etan Muskat and Brent Skagford of the comedy troupe ManBoy, recently featured on a CBC comedy special along side The Kids in the Hall's Kevin McDonald.
They bound onto the stage, fearless and fresh, and engage in an array of improv games that can only be described as high-speed verbal hot potato. The tempo is dizzying and hardly leaves time for the audience to holler out suggestions. Amber is in the corner, ready to toss another 'tater if the pace slows. "Now smash something!" he yells out when a doctor's office skit threatens to go cold. Before he's finished his sentence, a chair flies across the stage.
You'd be hard-pressed to find a higher-octane show in town, and here's the kicker: Not one of the performers is making a penny from the ticket sales. Everything goes towards keeping the doors open for the next week's performance.
Amber, 33 and Calgary native, views the entire show, from when the lights go up to when the last contestant has left the theatre, as equal parts entertainment and education. Beginning at 5 pm each Sunday, Amber holds open-invitation improv classes. That night's performers show up three hours early, along with anyone else that cares to sit in, to run a series of storytelling and performance games to hone their skills before taking to the stage at 8 pm with what Amber's taught them.
"I think everyone could get something out of improv. It's a philosophy for life. It teaches people to be honest and normal and always points out the positives in a situation. Improv doesn't have the dark, cynical side that stand-up sometimes has."
Three years ago, a 99-cent pizza shop occupied the building that now houses the Theatre Ste. Catherine. Doing the majority of the renovations himself, Amber is a seasoned improv and stand-up comedian who picked up his craft at Calgary's Loose Moose comedy club under the direction of improv expert Keith Johnstone. He cites Johnstone's Theatresports program as the main inspiration for his own work at Theatre Ste. Catherine.
Judging by the caliber of the nights' skits, it's obvious that the students have been paying close attention to their lessons. The laughter rolls continuously, even drowning out some of the jokes.
Between two sketches, Franz Ferdinand's explosive indie rock anthem "This Fire" blares over the theaters sophisticated sound and light system, and in keeping with the lyrics "This fire is out of control," the performers spontaneously stage a fire-fighting scene, taking hold of a wildly erratic imaginary fire hose. Ghawi climbs a ladder backstage and bawls hysterically authentic tears from the balcony, wailing to be saved. The crowd is instantly set into a gasoline-soaked uproar.
"It's like brain yoga," Amber says of the art of improvisation. "I think everyone could get something out of improv. It's a philosophy for life. It teaches people to be honest and normal and always points out the positives in a situation. Improv doesn't have the dark, cynical side that stand-up sometimes has." Certainly, the show is remarkably clean of expletives and cheap shocker sex gags despite what you might expect from the theatre's address.
When the show is finally over and the crowd has dispersed, class begins again. Amber and the performers circle up on stage and go over the high and low points of the night, obsessing over details as though investigating a crime scene. They engage one another with the same team spirit they had on stage, but they are all now suddenly serious, and there is no skit from the evening's performance that is saved from a thorough and at times scathing critique, regardless of how funny, or unfunny, the audience seemed to find it. Everything is viewed as "an exercise," and everything is improvable.
They are hardest perhaps on a sketch performed by Anders Yates and Brent Skagford. The scene had evolved from a Styrofoam swimming pool noodle thrown to the performers as a prop, into a Dr. Evil-esque exposé of the complicated relationship between a mad scientist, his high-strung man servant, and a roaming horde of flesh eating mountain monkeys. "You should have let the monkeys into the lair a little earlier," one performer suggests.
Pushing through the heavy glass doors and wrapping your coat tight against the Montreal cold, you find yourself still laughing at the physical comedy of Joe McLean's ping-pong related death rattles, or Marc Rowland's take on a lonely, lovesick art gallery owner. With talent like this taking the stage every Sunday night, you're certain that if the currently luke-warm cast of Saturday Night Live got wind of what was going down at Theatre Ste. Catherine, they'd be more than a little worried about holding onto their jobs.
Theatre Sainte Catherine is located at 264, Ste. Catherine Est, near the Berri-UQAM metro station. Free improv classes start at 5 pm every Sunday. The show begins at 8 pm sharp. $5. |
