TSC’s Sunday Night Improv
Weekly Experiments in Imagination
This feature is part of Forget The Box’s MTL Event Series.
The atmosphere was reminiscent of a high school play, or at least that’s what my date leaned over to whisper into my ear as the lights dimmed. With its knots of young people huddled in their respective corners and coats hung up on wooden pegs near the stage, in a way I did feel transported back to high school, the fun part where I joked around with my friends in the stage wings before a production. However, when the show began, it was unlike any amateur production I had ever been a part of. Homicides happened in Lego factories, a young salmon found his way in the world, and a Backstreet Boy bonded with his detective doppelganger in an end-of-the-world drama. The venue, a cozy and welcoming theatre with a casual bar in the front, invites this type of creative energy, forming a space where actors and audience alike can kick back, relax, and have a good time. Welcome to Sunday Night Improv, Montreal’s longest-running improv show, at Theatre Sainte-Catherine.
Beginning in the early 2000’s, Sunday Night Improv was born out of a love of improv paired with the desire to build a welcoming community around that love. They offer a free improvisation workshop to anyone interested, from beginner to professional, every Sunday from 4 to 6pm. The “free” element of the whole event is one of the main reasons behind its longevity and the welcoming atmosphere it cultivates as it allows it to be more inclusive. “Because of the free nature of it all, the people have come and gone but the essence of the night has stayed the same,” states Sandi Armstrong, an improv teacher, in an interview with Forget the Box. Armstrong is also one of the founding members of Le Nouveau International, the not-for-profit company that Sunday Night Improv and their sister francophone show, les Lundis d’impro!, falls under. For going so long though, some changes have come with that. Kristina Guevarra, a producer and player at Sunday Night Improv, commented on how she believes it changes according to the community that shifts around it. “As our theatre has honed its aesthetic and artistic mandates, Sunday Night Improv has followed with it. Like most improv, it’s always shifting and adapting to keep things interesting and fresh,” she continued.
Sunday Night Improv is mainly based on a format called “survivor” where 10 to 14 participants are paired off and given a scene at random to act out. The audience can then judge how much they liked the scenes from 1-5. The other main SNI programme is the team format, one variation of which is “Catch 23,” the show I saw on the night in question. Improvisers split into groups and are given a collective 23 minutes to perform a scene. The groups asked for prompts from the audience or a beat from the sound technician to set the tone of their act. Working off of these threads, the teams then started pulling from their imaginations to create wildly varying sketches. For having such tenuous beginnings, the impromptu storylines quickly gain traction and speed over the following minutes. Think of Reddit threads that get really weird, really fast, but yet somehow are still relevant to the original question. Additionally, while the survivor platform is more “competitive”, per se, this format allows improvisers to build off of group dynamics and build on their ideas. “The competition is for the audience only though,” emphasized Armstrong, “The improv is secondary. It’s the reason we’re there, but why we stay is because of the family aspect.”
“Improv itself attracts a certain kind of person, and we really value making people feel welcome and making people feel like they’ve got a place. For me, the warmth of the community is number one,” Armstrong continued. She explained that the community took a while to build but that now it seems to sustain itself. While improv can be dangerous in various ways, as one is on stage without a net, it’s that same level of vulnerability that builds trust. Armstrong finished by saying that when people have trust in a community, there is a place for everybody.
“The improv and comedy we do is genuinely unique and unlike anything I’ve seen even in my years doing comedy in Winnipeg,” Guevarra concluded, “Sunday Night Improv is a special place that pushes improvisers to try new things and uplift each other.” When at last the applause died down after the show, as if to emphasize the community focus, both actors and audience sang a “Happy Birthday” for Marty, an improviser that night, and then huddled around the bar for drinks and a chat.
Sunday Improv Theatre offers a free improv workshop every Sunday from 4 to 6 pm for improvisers of every level. To learn more, check out their Instagram at (@sundaynightsc or @theatrestecatherine) or their website.
