Just under a year ago I was at the Edinburgh Fringe, in a youth hostel, not performing but phoning up loads of impro groups I knew to book them in to The Black Horse. I\u2019d just got to the point where I\u2019d booked them all in, and put all the details on the website, when I phoned up The Black Horse only to be told…<\/p>\n
\u201cSorry mate, we\u2019ve gone bankrupt, we\u2019re closing down next week\u201d.
\n\u201cOh, were you going to tell me?\u201d
\n\u201cNo, forgot\u201d.<\/p>\n
So I was momentarily in panic. Everything was booked but it had nowhere to go. So I put together a list of all the other alternative London venues and started to phone them up one by one. The first one went like this…<\/p>\n
\u201cHello The Miller. I\u2019ve got a different impro group every Tuesday booked in advance for the next four months, do you want them?\u201d
\n\u201cYes please. Who are you again?\u201d<\/p>\n
And with that the deed was done, and panic had turned to the best move ever.<\/p>\n
Over the year I then found putting two groups together helped improvisers to mix, the audience to grow, and the scene to develop.<\/p>\n
I then found that loads more groups had popped up, from different backgrounds and with different audiences, so it was a relatively easy jump to having impro there 2 nights a week.
\nHowever after while of that I found running and trying to get an audience twice a week meant all my time was taken up with admin and I was spending less time actually directing my own shows, what is what I wanted to do.<\/p>\n
At the exact point I was wondering what to do Jon Monkhouse phoned up and said him and some other groups (8bit, Marbles) would like to run some monthly shows and were thinking of starting another night, did I know of a space. I immediately jumped at the chance and suggest they take over running Mondays with me helping more informally, which they went for immediately.<\/p>\n
I was keen that it still had the spirit of different groups with different venues working together. Jon massively yes anded this and created a great website that lists all shows on all days.
\nAs we go on we\u2019ve been chatting about whether London Improv will grow into a listings website for all London improv shows, just Miller shows, or be for a london improv venue. A lot of this obviously depends on Jon and his time! We\u2019ll be chatting about it once Edinburgh is over.<\/p>\n
Thank You!<\/p>\n
Thank you to everyone involved in making\u00a0 The Miller such a massive success over the year. Jon for teaming up with me, George (girlfriend) for listening, Secret Mark for his helpful feedback, everyone at The Miller for supporting it, The RH experience for making me and Jon feel young, everyone who has put together shows and acted in shows, everyone who has been coming to see stuff, the lovely audience, everyone who has helped out with front of house and everything there. Basically, there are loads of people there in fact I can’t even imagine how many people have been involved. It’s amazing, so thank you. My bedroom wall is covered in poster slips!<\/p>\n
I\u2019m aiming to build up some core shows with monthly followings, and I\u2019m going to try and bring impro to a mainstream audience with various wider advertising and marketing in collaboration with The Miller. I’m also expanding into stand up nights, simply cos I enjoy it.<\/p>\n
The main changes are a new monthly stand up night, monthly cabaret night, and new shows produced by Hoopla. This has left less space for guest groups than last season, although there are quite a lot of them and I\u2019m still working with Jon from LondonImprov.co.uk to help put them on Wednesday, or with The Miller\u2019s sister venue The Horse. Also as always I\u2019m open to chatting to people about shows and venues and can help out in various ways.<\/p>\n
Stand Up For The First Time<\/strong> (Tues 13th Sep, Tues 4th Oct, Tues 1st Nov, Tues 6th Dec)<\/p>\n This is a major change. This started up as an adhoc thing roughly once a season. Improvisers who had never done stand up did stand up for the first time. I really enjoyed and it seemed to go down really well with the audience too. I put a facebook shout out up about the next ones and had so much response from great people wanting to do it that I decided to take the plunge and make it once a month. I\u2019m also inviting experienced stand ups to do it with new material. The new material rule is to encourage stand up to be braver and take bold leaps into the future and find something new, similar to the impro community spirit. The Music Box Cabaret<\/strong> (Tues 20th Sept, Tues 18th Oct, Tues 15th Nov, Tues 20th Dec) The Adventures of Stefan Helgarberry<\/strong> (Tues 11th Oct, Tues 22nd Nov) Ninja Badgers<\/strong> (Tues 27th Nov, Tues 25th Oct, Tues 8th November, Tues 13th December) There were a few guest groups booked in that had to be moved or replace once I changed to doing stand up and cabaret once a month. As you can see with the new shows, stand up, and cabaret, there weren’t all that many slots free for guest groups.<\/p>\n If anything I wish I had more slots to book. It\u2019s a shame that not all shows can happen in the same place, rather than being split across The Miller, Horse, Wheatsheaf etc. We did ask The Miller if they’d be up for more regular impro nights but they’re keen to keep the mix of stand-up, impro and live music, which is understandable and I’d probably do the same if I ran the place. If anything it\u2019s renewed my interesting in starting one big venue for everything, as it\u2019s so close to being feasible. More about that later.<\/p>\n
\nAlthough we\u2019re mainly an impro company I\u2019ve always enjoyed and admired stand up, and after doing it a couple of times I really enjoyed it and wanted to do more. I\u2019m personally aiming to do a different 5 minute set every month for the challenge.
\nI\u2019ve still got spaces so let me know if you\u2019re interested in performing.
\nAlso I\u2019m keeping it free to the audience. I was orginally tempted to book some mainstream headline risks, but cant afford the risk and decided to keep it free and friendly and all about new stuff.<\/p>\n
\nMusic Box have been playing The Miller loads recently. I\u2019ve taken it down to once a month though so we can put all efforts into just one Miller show a month and make it more brilliant. We\u2019re going to be pulling out all the stops and I\u2019ve booked in a range of mixed cabarat acts. These include some improv from groups that can do super short sets, and some really cool cabaret like East End Cabaret and Rayguns Look Real Enough.
\nThis has also happened because Music Box are getting booked into various other venues, which is great.<\/p>\n
\nThis is a new show I\u2019ll be directing, it\u2019s an improvised adventure told entirely in verse. All year I\u2019ve been directing loads of Saturday workshops where lots of exciting new things have been coming up, but I havent been directing any shows so I had no where to put these things. The result is that this is the show with everything in it – verse, hero\u2019s journey narrative, commedia characters, physical comedy etc. It\u2019s one long tale rather than lots of isolate scenes. Slightly over ambitious, but it floats me boat.<\/p>\n
\nAnother new show I\u2019ll be directing. It\u2019s going to be new short form with brand new games every show.
\nI\u2019ve never understood why improvisers feel the need to choose between longform or shortform – what\u2019s wrong with doing the both? One helps the other, and both are helpful for different audiences and venues.
\nIf anything though I think a lot of short form we do has got a bit stale, with the same safe games.
\nSo rather than abandon short-form I\u2019m going to try and bring in and invent new games and really keep it exciting.<\/p>\nGuest Groups<\/h3>\n
\nGirl Band (Tuesday 15th Nov) and RH (Tuesday 20th Sept) are getting involved in cabaret cos I think they\u2019re really suitable for being shorter slots surrounded by other acts.
\nFat Kitten, Inflatables (Tues 11th October)\u00a0 and David Shore shows (December) are there too as I think it\u2019s good to stay connected to groups from different backgrounds. It\u2019s very rewarding to me to read on facebook that \u201cso and so met so and so following an event\u201d, and I think these constant new connections is what keeps things alive longer.
\nAustenatious (Tuesday 27th September) – I haven\u2019t actually seen this but I\u2019ve heard great things about it. Sometimes I find myself in the weird position of having to book shows in order to see them. Also it also features improvisers from different backgrounds that I think it\u2019s good to connect to others.
\nThe Maydays (Tuesday 25th October) – I\u2019m keen to keep our brighton connection going, especially as it\u2019s where I started improvising and also Music Box are going down there to perform a few times.
\nDo Not Adjust Your Stage (29th Nov) and The Faux Pas take up the remaining guest slots.<\/p>\nThe Future<\/h3>\n