Vancouver's Improv Centre launches THE HEAT—An International Improv Comedy Showcase
Los Angeles troupe Glass Clown joins ensembles from Canada, England, the U.S., and the Philippines in inaugural festival
Glass Clown.
The Improv Centre presents THE HEAT—An International Improv Comedy Showcase from January 23 to 27
CARA POPECKI USED to be a high-school English teacher, but she felt that it wasn’t the happiest job ever. To counter this, the Los Angeles resident found herself watching comedy shows and reading biographies of comedians like Tina Fey and Amy Pohler. Both artists talk about the merits of improv in their books and how it benefitted their careers. Popecki decided to give improv a go. That was about eight years ago, and she hasn’t looked back since.
“I found refuge in comedy,” Popecki says in an interview with Stir. “After I left teaching and found improv, I made it my full-time thing because I fell in love with it and was addicted.”
Popecki is a member of Los Angeles’s Glass Clown improv troupe, which will be coming to Vancouver for The Improv Centre’s inaugural THE HEAT—An International Improv Comedy Showcase. Joining them are Bristol, England’s Degrees of Error; SPIT Manila from the Philippines; Dad’s Garage from Atlanta, Georgia; and RN&Cawls from Toronto. The improv troupes will perform nightly alongside performers from TIC’s ensemble. Each show will include short-form games, a showcase of the visiting organizations’ own style of improv, and an “all-play”. Teams will mix and mingle throughout the week until closing night’s LOL-apalooza. There’s also a free international version of TIC’s “Community Jam” on January 27 from 3:30 to 5:30 pm.
While watching improv is a hoot for audiences, as an artist, there’s a lot to love, too.
“It is so many things: it’s a great community, it’s a really good outlet for expressing your feelings, it’s just a really fun pastime, and it can also become a real lifelong journey if that makes sense,” Popecki says. “It’s just really fun. There’s so much going on in the world that’s not fun, so it’s so nice to have that outlet. You’re so fully present when you’re doing it; you’re not thinking about the outside world. It is really great to have an escape.”
Having started out in Washington, DC, Popecki moved to the West Coast in April of 2020. She immersed herself as much as she could in the improv scene, with more opportunities coming once things opened up during the pandemic.
Glass Clown can perform both short form and long form improv, but specializes in the latter.
“Short form is what we see on the TV show Whose Line Is it Anyway?,” Popecki explains. “Long form is more theatrical. It’s less game-y and it’s more focused on creating a longer scene; sometimes scenes can interweave. Long form is personally the style I gravitated to in the beginning. They’re really apples and oranges and hard to compare the two, but I like long form because can be deeper and more meaningful. I’m better at being more theatrical, better at developing a character and seeing that character through, which is something you can’t do in short form.”
Other ways to describe Glass Clown’s style are “pretty goofy, pretty high energy”, Popecki says. They’re a tight-knit group, having been together since 2021. The artists have bonded on and off stage, which she feels is unique in the industry.
Also rare, she says, is the kind of global meet-up that Vancouver’s TIC has organized. There’s an international festival in Edinburgh and one in New Zealand, but as far as she knows, that’s about it. “This is very exciting, especially for my team, because it will be really cool to meet people from all over the world with different perspectives but with one thing in common, all of us doing improv,” Popecki says.
So how exactly does a team prepare for an improv show? And what happens if you come up empty when it’s your turn to jump in?
“We rehearse the skills, but we don’t rehearse the lines or characters,” Popecki says. “There’s no costumes, no props; we make it up as we go and pull things out of thin air. We have no idea what we’re going to do. We get a word from the audience and take that word and turn it into scenes. We have no idea what our set is going to be at all. We’re very dependent on our audience, which is cool.
“Everyone blanks, but it happens less and less as you have more experience,” Popecki adds. “For me, having been doing this for almost eight years, it happens very infrequently. But if it does, your teammates have your back. That’s the beauty of improv: you’re never alone; it’s not like stand-up. You’ve got a whole line of people who can come out and help with the scene and you’ve got your scene partner, so there’s usually someone who can pick up the slack. It is scary, but that’s what makes it exhilarating.”
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