The group mind

Keeping up with Improv Jones

by Bill Rodrgiguez

Popcorn, someone in the audience suggests. And the members of Improv Jones launch forth into a story, a kind of collective actor's nightmare where nobody knows what line comes next -- so they wing it.

Alex Dressler starts out, beginning a tale of a boy in a circus. Christa Crewdson grabs the verbal baton, introducing an erotic elephant. Soon Jed Arkley and Luis Astudillo have pacified the beast with well-placed kisses and, oh, yes -- popcorn.

When the audience detects the slightest hesitation in the storytelling, anyone can shout "Die!" and the accused improviser has to kill him- or herself with a specified household weapon. The audience is more bloodthirsty than critical this evening. So performers are dispatched right and left, via corkscrew and shoehorn and such, before the game is over.

The applause ripples forth enthusiastically at Veterans Memorial Auditorium. Improv Jones is doing their death-defying riffs between acts at Scene '99, the recent performance and culinary showcase.

Combining crafted practice with spontaneity, as a kind of performing arts Push-Me-Pull-You beast, Improv Jones has been at it for the past five years. And the audiences have grown, flocking to AS220 and Perishable Theatre on Thursdays and Saturdays, respectively.

"When we first began, if we had 12 people in the audience we were like ecstatically happy. Twenty was like amazing," says Astudillo, one of the group's founders. Nowadays, it's usually standing room only.

What's really amazing is that laughter instead of groans follows their shenanigans more often than not. One night I saw an audience grow around them on Empire Street, when Perishable had something else going on and the ensemble was relegated to a patch of sidewalk in front of two park benches across the street. Passersby didn't pass them by but stayed for the duration, captivated by this antic troupe that would take arbitrary topics from the audience -- liposuction, Ninja training, butterfly collectors, smut -- and incorporate random places or things -- a boiler room, snake pit, Gatling gun, inflatable Tipper Gore.

The scenes and skits that burble up from this brew of topicality and creativity can be hilarious. "A lot of people come up to us afterwards and don't really believe it's improv," says Christa Crewdson, 30. She came on board just weeks after Astudillo, 32, and Mauro Hantman, 30, formed the group in 1994.

There are now nine members, with nearly twice as many alums. Lillian Frances and Cordell Pace now perform at Chicago's Improv Olympic, the birthplace of this entertainment genre, which grew out of acting workshop exercises. Another alumnus, Nathan Phillips, can be seen in Boston at the Improv Theatre League.

Well, is it as hard as it looks? After all, if you take the average person, stick him in front of an audience, and tell him he's in a clown college audition in an Ingmar Bergman movie, he couldn't be funny with a gun to his head. "It's hard at first because it's terrifying, you know," says Hantman, as the troupe talks backstage at Vets between performances. "It's really just a question of learning to put yourself out there on the line. A damn-the-torpedoes-full-speed-ahead kind of thing."

Astudillo notes that they've been performing long enough to be reliable, but he distinguishes being good from being really good. When does that happen? Hantman says it has to do with accepting what each of them throws out there and building on it.

"And working as a group," Crewdson observes. "A lot of times we do sort of click as a group, when everybody's thinking along the same lines and going to the same places."

"We call it the group mind," Hantman adds.

Day jobs for members are wide-ranging: computer expert, coffeehouse worker, teacher. But several are actors -- Hantman is graduating from Trinity Rep Conservatory soon -- and a common malady with that occupation is the look-at-me-Mom syndrome. Did Improv Jones ever sign on somebody who hogs the limelight?

"Yep. We got rid of them. They're no longer living. Check the river," Crewdson replies. Then she makes a mental tally and adds, "Three people we took in the group we thought could grow with us but they just couldn't do it. So we had to ask them to leave."

The group as a whole has had to grow, not just individual members. They've learned how some routines, unfortunately, can be performed on autopilot rather than pushing them to be constantly inventive. Playing games like "Movie and Theater Styles," in which skits shift into the style, say, of Kabuki and then Woody Allen, is still a challenge. On the other hand there was "Boris," in which a criminal is interrogated by two police officers. The brutal one is invisible. That got old fast, as variations on thrashing around and going "Oof!" were limited.

In the interests of stirring up their creative juices, and to find out if there's an earlier audience out there for them, they will conduct "Primetime With the Joneses" for a week-plus run at Perishable Theatre. Saturday will be "Games On Request Night," with audiences specifying their routines. Fridays will be "Pick-a-Theme Night." Thursdays will be the most challenging: "Improv Play Night."

They started improvising short plays a couple of years ago at Perishable's Blink Festival. Now they usually conclude each performance by making up a 10- or 15-minute play. At "Primetime," they're going to try for a record. As usual, the audience will shout out the theme and place, and in the interests of not growing stale, Improv Jones will devise and develop a play that lasts an entire hour.

"I'm going to be one frightened person," confesses Astudillo.

Improv Jones will perform April 8-10 and 15-17 at 8 p.m. at Perishable Theatre, 95 Empire Street, Providence. On April 16, Everett Dance Theatre will also appear. The Joneses then resume their normal schedule on Thursdays at AS220 and on Saturdays at Perishable at 10 p.m. Admission to all performances is $5.