Improvaganza 2015.
Rapid Fire’s new artistic director zigzagged into job
At Rapid Fire Theatre, specialists in the adrenalizing art of making it up as you go along, the magic word isn’t Please. It’s Yes! (with exclamation point).
Along with Let’s! (also with exclamation point), Yes! has launched a few zillion scenes no one saw coming. And it’s the heart of Rapid Fire’s advice to their improv comedy proteges.
This seems to be the way that Rapid Fire’s new artistic director has zigzagged through his multi-stringed career, accumulating unexpected skills, to arrive inevitably at this moment—running the company that’s the hub of Edmonton’s quick-witted and expansive improv scene. Matt Schuurman couldn’t have planned it better if he’d actually planned it.
“It started with acting in high school,” says the affably low-key Schuurman, who’s partnering with Rapid Fire’s outgoing artistic director Amy Shostak on the company’s 15th annual Improvaganza international alternative comedy festival, opening June 17. “Then I got bitten by the video and animation bug.” So Schuurman, “basically self-taught in video,” went and got a degree in animation.
When playwright Steve Pirot invited him to create animation for the Azimuth Theatre première of his live play/comic strip Su-Kat in 2008, it was a revelation of sorts. “Hey, video could be really useful for theatre!” thought Schuurman.
Which brings us to improv. Like Shostak, Schuurman started as a teenager, a rookie who catapulted up through the Theatresports ranks to the elite ranks of Chimprov. These are the improvisers who dream up amazingly ingenious contributions to the company’s long-form entertainments on Saturday nights. His latest gambit? Nightmare, an improv that uses Schuurman’s expertise as a videographer, by having performers improvise scenes to pre-recorded video.
Schuurman, who was on the Rapid Fire board for six years, grins. “When we were at the Varscona,” where Rapid Fire used to be a resident company, “we used whatever theatre set was there. Now that we’re in the Zeidler,” he says of Rapid Fire’s headquarters at the Citadel Theatre. “There’s a big honkin’ video screen ... And, well, if there’s an offer on hand, we’ll definitely use it!”
He points to the Paul Blinov/Joe Vanderhelm initiative Sneak Peek, at Improvaganza Friday, as sharing the same impulse.
“They use actual movie trailers for upcoming releases. And the audience picks their favourite.”
So Schuurman was performing; he was teaching improv to teens at the Citadel’s Foote School. And he’d drifted into graphic design, and worked for an ad agency that specialized in real estate. He’d started designing Rapid Fire’s hip original black-and-white graphics online and in programs. “I think our stuff looks ... professional,” he allows modestly. Rapid Fire’s giddy spoof of American Apparel, improv stars wearing teeny Lycra, was a Schuurman inspiration.
“When Amy told me she was giving up the (artistic director) job, and wondered if I planned to apply, it wasn’t on my radar at all,” says Schuurman. “Then I thought ‘hey, wait a minute ... I could do this.’ ” And he has the skill set to prove it.
As for Shostak, a virtuoso improviser herself, “five and a half years (as artistic director) is enough,” she says. Not that she’s leaving Rapid Fire; it’s all about the freedom to do more performing and more international improv gigs. The immediate impetus was a delay in the Artists Quarters (102A Avenue and 96th Street), the projected arts-centred development where Rapid Fire plans to relocate.
“It’s been our goal for 15 years to own our own building ... I just didn’t think I could wait.” amy shostak
“It’s been our goal for 15 years to own our own building ... I just didn’t think I could wait,” she says.
Rapid Fire has grown exponentially since Shostak’s arrival in the job. At that time, they were doing seven 11 p.m. shows a month at the Varscona — four Friday nights of Theatresports, and three of Chimprov, on Saturdays. The workshops, Rapid-Fire’s “academy,” was a grotty third-floor space over a Strathcona cycle shop. “We didn’t even have online registration.” She remembers poring over sheafs of paper in the Rapid Fire “office.”
“We were max-ed out at the Varscona,” she says of the move downtown to Zeidler Hall. After three years there, Rapid Fire has grown again, to the bursting point in its current home. These days, you and your lawyer/ teacher/ firefighter friends can book yourselves improv workshops at any level any month a year in advance, and perform with your classmates on Thursday nights.
You can see Theatresports twice on Friday nights, and Chimprov every Saturday. You can catch high school up-and-comers at Rapid Fire’s Nose bowl tourney or the Wildfire festival, or longform experiments at the Bonfire Festival. You can see Rapid Fire improvise with Opera Nuova, the Freewill Shakespeare or the Found Festival.
Next season, they’ll improvise a version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as part of the Citadel’s 50th anniversary season.
“How cool is that?!” grins Schuurman, who’s off to a Theatresports conference in Milan this month. “Collaborations! We love ’em!”
Which must be why they have their own softball team, the Dingers, who play in the community league.