Cassidy Russel (on stage, left) and Dani James, members of The Second City's touring cast, answer questions at the end of their "Auditioning with Improv" workshop.
You may not have heard of The Second City, but you know its alumni: famous actors
and comedians like Ed Asner, Dan Aykroyd, Shelley Long, John Belushi, Rachel
Dratch, Steve Carell, Tina Fey, Martin Short, Catherine O’Hara, Bill Murray and
many more.
The Second City is both a comedy club and a training ground for comedic actors, specializing in revue-style shows, sketch comedy and improvisation. It has locations in Chicago, New York and Toronto, Canada. And last week, The Second City was on West Virginia University’s campus in Morgantown.
Members of The Second City Chicago’s touring group set up shop at the Canady Creative Arts Center and the Media Innovation Center for a few days to teach improv to theatre and non-theatre majors alike.
Improv, shorthand for “improvisational theatre,” is a type of performance in which actors make up characters, scenes and dialogue on the spot instead of performing based on a pre-written script, according to The University of Chicago, where modern improv first took root in the 1950s thanks to Viola Spolin. Improv shows are often comedic, and certain “games” take suggestions from the audience to develop a setting, the characters or the conflict.
Second City cast members hosted five workshops for students in the School of Theatre and Dance across several days, as well as an “Imployed” workshop open to any WVU students.
For acting majors, there were workshops on improv basics and how to use improv while auditioning, as well as classes on using improv in conjunction with music and writing. For students outside the School of Theatre and Dance, Second City hosted “Imployed,” a workshop about using the principles of improv in interviews.
“I don't want to be dramatic, but the students here rule,” said Cassidy Russell, a Second City touring cast member and one of the workshop instructors. “All of the students have been so on board, so enthusiastic and so joyful to work with. Sometimes you show up to do workshops, and you have to kind of convince people that it will be fun, and there has been none of that.”
Fellow cast member and instructor Dani James agreed wholeheartedly. “We've been having so much fun and laughing the whole time.”
Acting majors Charlie Mattingly and Xander Alvarez both had some experience with improv and were familiar with The Second City, and that made walking into workshops hosted by Second City cast members a little intimidating.
“Initially it made me nervous, but the instructors made an effort instantly to make us comfortable and introduce themselves,” said Mattingly.
“I think I had built it up in my head a lot,” said Alvarez, “but after meeting Cassidy and Dani I was quickly put at ease.”
Improv by itself can be intimidating, even before throwing in the storied Second City and its talented cast. But, Russell said, one of the things she and James teach is that “improv is inherently low stakes.”
“It feels very high stakes,” Russell said, “because people are looking at you, but at the same time, they know you're making stuff up. And also, the worst thing that can happen is that they don't laugh. The world is not going to end, right?
“But once you can remind people or convince people that it actually is an inherently low stakes operation, we can just have fun. We're just playing, right?”
“I think the thing that is magic about theater students, too,” James said, “is the imagination is already there. And so it is fun to get to create in a room where everybody is so excited to use their brains like that.”
“I think my favorite moment,” Russell added, “is when you see a student who's a little bit more reticent, or who's a little more unsure, and then they do something awesome, and you see them feel good. That's like the best feeling on the planet, I think.”
Alvarez, who is a junior in the School of Theatre and Dance, attended the “Improv 101” and "Auditioning with Improv” workshops. He described exercises where attendees had to move a chair while displaying a certain emotion and another where they had to pretend to play tennis as a given character.
“It was fun to try and make big choices and also see the choices my peers made,” he said.
Mattingly attended three workshops, including “Improv 101,” “Writing for Improv” and an additional improv with music class.
“I thought trying out new exercises and seeing what people do in the moment was super funny,” Mattingly said. “I saw people who weren’t normally very open open up and be immensely funny.”
Dwedee Kobah, a sophomore Acting student, went to the auditioning and music workshops. “It’s always nice learn from someone working in the industry full time.”
Kobah enjoyed “just being able to play,” but came away with a life lesson: “Trust your gut.”
Dani James and Cassidy Russel teach "Imployed" workshop to WVU students.
Jonah Shafer, Gorvin Wang and Olivia Nestor each attended the “Imployed” workshop.
“It was a non-traditional way of learning, and I really enjoyed the experience,” said Shafer, a Supply Chain Management major in the WVU Chambers College of Business and Economics.
Participants engaged with familiar improv techniques but with a twist. They weren’t performing for an audience—they were preparing for the professional world. In one exercise, students were paired up and told to talk about a given topic as if they were an expert in that field.
Weng, a Music Composition major, enjoyed using the simulated situations to interact with others. He learned “it’s always OK to ask a question again, pause if you’re confused or ask to take a moment.”
“It was fun to just let go,” said Nestor, a senior double majoring in Journalism and English, “not have to have everything figured out right away, and find it on the spot. There was no stress for it to be a certain way.
“One skill that I learned is when public speaking, to stay grounded, plant your feet, take a deep breath, find an eyeline for eye contact and then speak,” she said. “You are the one who is in charge.”
According to The Second City website, “There would be no Second City if it were not for the work of Viola Spolin.” Spolin invented a series of games “to teach dramatics to children and immigrants” so they could practice working collaboratively and empathetically.
Spolin went on to teach those games to actors who were working with her son, Paul Sills, at The University of Chicago, laying the foundation for modern improv. Sills used his mother’s techniques in productions at the Playwrights Theatre Club, the first improvisational theatre in America, according to The Second City website.
In 1960, Spolin started improv workshops at the fledgling The Second City theatre company, which Sills co-founded with Bernie Sahlins and Howard Alk.
Improv, said James during her visit to Morgantown, is “the ability to kind of take the power back within casting and being able to play whatever character I want to play. And no one has any questions about it because I've said it. And that is the truth of the world.”
“It's an agreement with your scene partners,” she said, “but also the audience. They just go along for the ride with you, and you never know what's going to happen.”