It’s August 2014 and The Improvisers are on stage at the Canvas Laugh Factory in the city. The energy is at an all-time high as comedians Kaneez Surka, Abish Mathew, Kenneth Sebastian and Kanan Gill take suggestions from the audience and act out improvised scenes.
Feeding off each other’s energy, the four are in their element, improvising hilarious dialogues in their roles as snobbish cows at a farm and the audience howls along. The show is an hour-long laugh-fest despite the format not being familiar with to the audience. Except, perhaps, those who had seen the cult TV show, Whose Line is it Anyway?
Harbingers of change
In Improv — improvisational comedy — the performers create entire plots, characters and dialogues on the spot, often from prompts from the audience. The group of players work as a team, helping each other along uninhibitedly to create hilarious situations.
Despite the boom in the comedy scene in India over the past five years, improv troupes are hard to come by. But The Improvisers are changing that.
Surka, known for her show-stealing gig in the parody show The Week That Wasn’t and her cameos in comedy troupe All India Bakchod’s videos, is an improv comedian at heart. One look at her portfolio and you’d be amazed at the cred she’s stacked up. Starting in 2005, shehas worked with Improv Comedy Mumbai, one of the first improv groups in the city, taken classes at the Magnet Theatre, New York, and hosted workshops for Vir Das’s Pajama festival. In November 2013, she started Under Construction, a group that experimented with long-form improve. Members of the group created scenes that interrelate with a common element: either a theme or a character. As she describes it, “One scene may be about a bank robbery, another about Spiderman and his apprentice, and in the third, Spiderman decides to save the bank.”
Under Construction eventually dissolved, but it had given her the chance to work with Mathew; the two realised they had great comedic chemistry. The next year, Sebastian and Gill asked the duo to help them out with their sketch show. Then just for kicks, the quartet decided to do a bit of improv at the end. “The crowd loved it and the four of us loved doing it even more, so we decided to do it for the next show as well,” says Surka. Thus, The Improvisers was born.
Soon, using a cartoon that Gill sketched as a logo, The Improvisers began shows across cities.
“Doing improv became a hobby for us, a getaway with zero pressure, we just have a good time doing it,” Surka says. Their chemistry translated wonderfully on stage, with each show selling out within a day.
The styles of the four comedians come together in an oddly cohesive way on stage. “I’m good at building the relationships in the scene,” says Surkha. “Abish [Mathew] does wonderful character work, Kanan [Gill] pays attention to the story arc and environment, while Kenny [Sebastian] is really just an all-rounder.” The group is focused on looking like one entity, with everyone helping the other look good. You can see self-consciousness is left at the door as the four buddy-up, shimmying through scenes where they play ditzy women or games where they throw self-depreciating quips about their sex appeal.
Adding new techniques
After a two-month stint in 2015 at the Upright Citizens Brigade in Chicago, which is popular for churning out comedians like Amy Poehler, the group’s improv skills have vastly improved, adding new techniques to their natural comedic skill. Initially, the success of the shows could be attributed to their individual star power, but over the two years, the group has started seeing an audience that comes for their love for improv. “We also love that we’re getting an audience that wouldn’t otherwise be exposed to improv comedy,” says Surka. “Worldwide, the appeal of improv doesn’t match up to that of stand-up.”
They have no plans of scaling up as they want to preserve the light-heartedness of their project. “We want to keep it separate from the rat race. Since there is no pressure to do a picture perfect show, we push ourselves harder.”
The Improvisers will be performing at The Cuckoo Club on July 2. Tickets are priced at Rs. 750. Visit Insider.in
The author is a freelance writer
We want to keep it separate from the rat race. Since there is no pressure to do a picture perfect show, we push ourselves harder
Kaneez Surka,
Comedian
