Awe And Awesome

Three awesome moments from this week which I will somehow apply to improv more generally.

Today’s newsletter is about three awesome things that I have encountered this week. A feeling of awe has been in the air. This will be an uneven and not altogether coherent journey through it.

Awe moment one - Funding

It’s been the most intense and baffling week. After two unsuccessful attempts at getting funding from Arts Council England, the Robin Hood International Improv Festival has gained a significant sum of money to both run our festival, and to help develop more improvisers and teachers in Nottingham. Just over a week ago, we got the email through telling us we’d been successful and with tears in my eyes, I called my co-director Liam to tell him. We created the festival to help bring that same awe, the awe we felt watching incredible international shows on our travels, into our city of Nottingham.

The money will fund marketing, more free tickets for local artists, a course to help people learn how to teach improv and promote shows, and a twice monthly free workshop and jam for the local community. Through the festival and our year round activities as Little John Improv, we are about to make the sort of positive difference for Nottingham’s improv community that we could have only previously dreamed of.

The amount of awe and, frankly, disbelief I have felt about all this is huge. How can this be happening? Funding is something other people get. I’m in awe that we got the funding, in awe of the task ahead and excited about the prospect of creating something awesome in the city I call home.

Robin Hood International Improv Festival celebrates funding

Awe moment two - The excitement of seeing a show

I am in the middle of helping to produce a touring show of a kids science podcast. Fun Kids Science Quest is a hugely popular podcast that brings science alive for kids aged 7 - 11 years old. Fun Kids Studios is the largest producer of kids audio in the UK (and quite possibly in Europe too), and I run the content department, working with the producers, hosts and creative team. For the second year in a row we have created a one hour science-based stage show to tour venues in the UK, with experiments and silly games. It’s a really fun show.

One thing I learned from last year was to always check out the line of people waiting before they open the doors to the theatre. At every show you see kids jumping up and down with excitement. They are going to see a show with a presenter they have heard on a podcast - a podcast they clearly really love. They are asking questions of their parents about what it might be like, not least as some of them won’t have ever been in a theatre before. That sense of anticipation and awe fills the lobby of every theatre. The front of house staff talk about it with us at every show.

Every time I witness it, I just think about how that sense of awe and anticipation is something I want to hang onto as an improviser. I know I get excited before I see a show I’ve heard a lot about. I remember feeling it before I first saw TJ and Dave, Assscat, and PGraph.

We talk a lot about laughter in improvised comedy (understandably) but awe is so powerful. For improv shows, that sometimes sets in for an audience after the show happens. Many new people come in a little skeptical but leave with words like “how do you do that” and “I could never be so brave”. When they file in to see our shows, I long to have an audience leave with the same sense of awe that an audience of 7 - 11 year olds feels at a touring science show.

Awe moment three - Self discovery

I’ve learned a lot about myself through being an improviser and I’m always in awe of the journeys and discoveries others make while on theirs. Journalist Neil Heath has been taking improv classes for a couple of terms at Nottingham Playhouse with my colleague and all-round talented improviser Naomi Murden. Neil has a wonderful way with words and he has just written about the end of term class show from last Friday, where he played to an audience of around 70 and did an awesome job. Not only am I in awe of his words, I am in awe of his journey. Read it here

So here is my really awkward way of tying all this together. All of the awe I have described comes through some form of anticipation of the unknown or moment of discovery. Improv thrives in that space, so surely our capacity to create a feeling of awe is at our fingertips during every show, and if we apply it elsewhere, in our improv communities at large too.

Other things…

The next Secret Show in Nottingham is on Saturday 18th July and our guests that night are The Newlyweds who are coming all the way from Australia to do their two person show in Nottingham. We’ve spent a fortune on flights (they’re definitely not in town for any other reason!). Come see the show if you’re nearby. The Secret Show plus The Newlyweds at Fisher Gate Point, Nottingham. Tickets here

The Robin Hood International Improv Festival is just eight weeks away. Festival passes are selling faster this year than ever before so if you want to see a bunch of shows, now is definitely the time to get your eyes across the schedule and decide what you want to see. All the details are here

Have a great week,

Lloydie