First, a big congratulations to my friend Jen Murphy who appeared on Last Comic Standing last week. I met Jen several years ago during my actress-ing days. We were the co-founders and members of an all-girl improv group called the Mobichicks (along with Marla Mervis and Lani Ford). Our tag was all-girl-improv, bare naked scripts.
Our talented director,Karen Herr, taught us how to do long-form improv. We called ourselves the Mobichicks because our show structure was inspired by a mobius strip; the show started at the ending, went back to the beginning, and then went all the way back to the end. We would improvise an entire play (30 minutes long) by improvising the ending scene, go back to the "beginning," and then go all the way to the original improvised "end." The fun of it was that we had to get to the exact same "ending" that we had improvised at the beginning--same lines, and same places on the stage--but in a totally justified manner. Most of the time we didn't remember and the audience was allowed to stop us and we'd have to rewind the story a little bit to try to get to the right end. It was an incredibly freeing and fun enterprise. After a year of performing throughout New York, we disbanded. But I still miss those shows. All of this is on my mind, because of Jen's great triumph, but also because of the death this week of Paul Sills, the founder of Second City, and story theatre, a really great man and teacher of improvisation. Paul was the son of Viola Spolin who wrote the bible of theatre games -- games that often translate for writing as well. He was a ferocious teacher and dedicated to creating the magic that only improv can on stage. I had the wonderful opportunity to attend his intensive improv workshops in Wisconsin two different summers. He will be greatly missed.
