Improv fest brings back the laughs for first time in five years
Connecticut’s preeminent improvisational comedy troupe, Sea Tea Improv, is hosting its first Hartford Improv Festival in five years. The festival runs Thursday through Sunday at the Sea Tea Comedy Theater in Hartford.
A big deal improv event that ran for six years in a row starting in 2014, the Hartford Improv Festival has not happened since the COVID-19 shutdown. The 2020 edition had to be canceled at short notice due to the pandemic.
The schedule includes 19 separate performances — most of them featuring three different improv troupes — plus a dozen comedy workshops and a couple of after-show parties. Nearly 50 improv teams are participating in this year’s festival.
Norm Moghtaderi attended the 2019 festival and it inspired him to get involved with Sea Tea. He is now a member of the group’s touring company, leads improv classes and is on the festival planning committee.
“It was really the Hartford Improv Fest, when it last happened, that pushed me over the edge,” Moghtaderi said.
All the festival performances are being held in the Sea Tea Comedy Theater at 15 Asylum St., while the workshops are held at the company’s studio space upstairs in the same building. Previous festivals used multiple venues, primarily a cinema space on Front Street that changed hands in recent years and is currently closed.
“We’re committed to doing it in our theater,” Moghtaderi said. “The whole thing will take place there or in the studios above the theater.”
Improv troupes throughout the country were invited to apply to perform at the festival.
There were applicants from the midwest, Canada and even California, though they could not ultimately meet the schedule or make the long trip. Still, there are improv troupes visiting from as far away as Baltimore, Maryland and from New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Rhode Island.
Just the range of the New York City troupes in the festival is remarkable. H.R. Shovin Stuff, part of the lineup on Saturday at 6:15 p.m., creates full-length improv musicals with puppets. Improvised Dungeons & Dragons (Saturday at 5 p.m., alongside Hartford’s Magical Boy Transformation and Vermont’s Kingdom Kids) is exactly what it sounds like. Raaaatscraps, who has its own hour-long set 9 p.m. on Saturday night, features veterans of the celebrated United Citizens Brigade team ASSSSCAT. Also coming is Michael Hartney, co-artistic director of the newly rejuvenated New York City branch of United Citizens Brigade, who will lead a sketch comedy workshop.
Of the many Connecticut-based teams taking part, some come from outside the Sea Tea orbit. Yale University’s The Purple Crayon, one of the oldest collegiate improv troupes in the country, is performing Saturday at 1 p.m.
The dozen workshops, all happening on Saturday or Sunday, include such titles as “Get Out of Your Head in Longform,” “Crashganics,” “The Improv Expansion Pack,” “Keeping It Simple,” “Positivity in Improv” and “Arguing is Allowed.” Most of the instructors are seasoned professional comedy writers or performers.
While the Sea Tea troupe wishes it could have gotten the festival back up sooner, it also knows it is more fortunate than a lot of small companies, some of whom never recovered by pandemic closures and slowdowns.
“We have a wonderful theater and a wonderful community,” Moghtaderi said. “COVID hit small performing arts spaces very hard. We were very lucky to not close.”
The Sea Tea troupe and Sea Tea Comedy Theater has fully bounced back, with multiple performances every weekend plus special weekday shows most weeks. Sea Tea also runs improv classes, tours and has had partnerships with local organizations like the Mark Twain House and the recently closed City Steam. Several founding members of the Sea Tea group are still involved with running it. The company celebrated its 15th anniversary this week on April Fool’s Day.
“Improv is such a valuable art,” Moghtaderi said. “It’s so positive, so collaborative. At Sea Tea our number one rule is ‘Make your partner look good.’ When I first went to the Hartford Improv Festival I saw team after team after team. Before that, I had done comedy from the standpoint of wanting to make jokes. When I came to Sea Tea I realized that, working together, you can make something funnier than any other person could.”
Asked if he could recall a moment when a combination of performers brought a routine to unforeseen comic heights, Moghtaderi said, “It happens all the time. Often it comes from mistakes. We have a motto written on our studio wall: ‘Every mistake is a gift.’ Something happens by accident, someone in the scene knows what to do with it and it can be funnier that if the accident hadn’t happened.”
Sometimes performers challenge each other with unexpected and unusual concepts. “We honor each other’s bold choices,” Moghtaderi said.