the Montreal Improv blog

Epic Adventure at the Boston Improv Festival

Montreal Improv @ Del Close Marathon 12

What are we doing?

Friday @9pm : Epic Adventure at the Hudson Guild Theater

Saturday @3pm: Musical Improv Workshop with Eliza Skinner at UCB Training Center

Saturday @12:30am (ok, technically Sunday): 2013 Gathering of the Tribes (It’s a jam show; Francois is on Team North) at the HGT

All other hours: watch a sackton of improv and meet people.

Boston: Sell Tix

Marc and I are back from our visit to ImprovBoston and their Geek Week Festival. We drove down Friday night, played two shows Saturday night and drove back Sunday. The Geek Week festival was filled with references to wizards, Science Fiction of all sorts, Batman and dinosaurs. There were even Dungeons & Dragons sessions scheduled for Sunday but we had to drive back. It was a perfect match for Epic Adventure, our improvised fantasy show.

We did a show at 7:30 pm and another at 10:00 pm. Our suggestions were a village name and a profession. The first show took place in the town of “Creepy Trellis” and our hero was a butterfly collector. We had been rushing around getting ourselves in order for the first show and even though it was pretty good, we dropped a couple offers and ideas that looked promising. Tiny mistakes will happen in improv, and even doing a good show doesn’t get you out of looking for ways to improve. Fortunately, the second show went very smoothly (in the town of “Gnarly Spoon” with a ditch-digger). We were both really happy with it. There is video of both shows and I’ll try to get some of the footage online sometime this week.

ImprovBoston has a really nice venue. They’ve been in this new space for 3 years and the company itself is 27 years old. As Montreal Improv grows, I like to hear the stories of how these places grow and evolve. It’s pretty easy to get inspired by other successes in other towns. Our first show was on the Mainstage which is quite wide with a large gap between audience and stage. I think I preferred the intimacy of the Studio for our second show (and the bigger crowd). The front row in the Studio is an arm’s length away. If you can get the whole crowd to stay less than 6-8 feet from you during the show, that’s great.

Geek Week was smoothly run with a few friendly and well-placed volunteers amongst the organizers. I love volunteers and these guys and gals did a great job for little more than a few thank-yous. Kudos to the volunteers and the organizers. If you’re at all geeky at heart, I can recommend the fest without hesitation. I’d love to go back and do it all again next year.

-fv