Nothing scripted, everything gained
Improv vets Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood coming to Norfolk
Colin Mochrie, a 30-year improv veteran and staple of the long-running TV show “Whose Line Is It Anyway?,” will be performing with comedian Brad Sherwood tonight in Norfolk.
No bit of the show will be scripted. The show, “Asking For Trouble,” will have the duo relying on the audience to shout out words — the zanier the better — to spontaneously create dialogue and scenes.
“Ones that we haven’t heard before are great,” said Mochrie, who is considered one of the best improvisers in the world. “I mean, people constantly shout out ‘gynecologist’ or ‘proctologist,’ usually for the sound effect game. … But, that wouldn’t be pleasant for anyone.”
Mochrie recalled one show in which they asked the audience about the most unusual job someone in their family had.
A woman yelled that her cousin was the person who rescues people from trapped elevators.
An “interstellar accountant,” he said, would have worked, too. “Anything that’s weird is good.” Reflecting on his own job, Mochrie said, laughing: “I never thought that this would become a career.”
Mochrie, 56, spent most of his childhood in Montreal and was introduced to improvisational comedy after enrolling at the Studio 58 theater training school after high school. He
met Ryan Stiles, a future co-star of “Whose Line Is It Anyway?,” while both were working with the Vancouver TheatreSports League. Mochrie thought the performance genre “would be one of those little fun things I’d be doing on the weekend.”
What he loved most about it was that no two shows were ever the same, he said.
“Unlike a rock band, we don’t have to do a greatest hits every night.”
Mochrie moved to Toronto and began working at The Second City Mainstage in 1986
and soon joined its professional improv touring company. He became a part of the cast for the original incarnation of “Whose Line Is it Anyway?” on British TV in 1988 and stayed on the show for seven seasons. After the show ended, he became a cast member of the U.S.-based “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” hosted by Drew Carey for nine consecutive years before it wrapped in 2007.
“The thing with this show is it’s like the walking dead,” he said. “We can’t kill it. It just keeps coming back.”
The show was rebooted in 2013 and Mochrie was cast. He starred in its 20th season last year.
He and Sherwood, a fellow Second City alumnus and former “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” performer, have worked together for over two decades and performed in nearly every state in the union. (Condolences to Montana and both Dakotas.)
While Mochrie incorporates more physical comedy into his performance style, Sherwood is more verbal, enjoys wordplay and “has a large vocabulary that he likes to show off.”
But despite a few $10 words thrown into the mix, showgoers should expect an atmosphere that’s opposite a grave university lecture.
“They’re not going to learn anything. They’re not going to get smarter,” Mochrie joked. “It’s just going to be a fun, goofy time. Two hours of, just, goofiness.”
IF YOU GO
When: 7:30 tonight
Where: Chrysler Hall, 215 St. Paul’s Blvd., Norfolk
Tickets: Start at $37
Details: sevenvenues.com