Connor Doyle leads an improv class at Coalition Theater.
Upstairs in the dimly lit playhouse, attendees trickle in for Coalition Theater’s First Thursday improv show, while downstairs in a modest room, improvisational comedy students huddle in a circle for The Shakedown.
“Does anyone need a refresher?” asks instructor Connor Doyle, the new dean of students at Coalition. Doyle cut his teeth in improv with the University of Virginia’s oldest improv group, The Whethermen, before performing with Second City and The Annoyance in Chicago.
No one does, and what follows is a spirited group countdown, starting at eight, with copious eye contact and synchronized shakes of each extremity. The energy is high, and voices are loud. Where else in the city could this happen on a Thursday night?
Coalition Theater was the brainchild of the Richmond Comedy Coalition, whose members saw a need for a training and performance center in the city and opened the theater space in the Arts District in 2013. The nonprofit offers eight-week classes in improv, standup and sketch writing. Doyle says the courses aren’t meant to launch students into comedy careers — although it’s wonderful if they do — rather to foster a creative community where all feel welcome. “The beauty of improv [is] that anybody can do it,” he says. “It can span ages and cultures and interests and perspectives and careers.”
(From left) Improv students Jonas Benz, Julia Smith and Jalyn Wheatley feed off their classmates’ ideas before a public performance.
Tonight is the first class meeting of Improv 401: Long Form, one of the theater’s most advanced improvisation courses. To keep the group moving, Doyle introduces a game with three phrases nearly impossible to say without stumbling: whiskey mixer, mister whiskers and mystic vista. Students botch the phrases without penalty; it’s only when they break, or laugh, that they must jog a lap around the circle. Improv games are meant to encourage play, collaboration and stronger synergy within a group — although this group is already well connected.
Most of the students have been in classes together for a year, starting with Improv 101 last summer, also taught by Doyle. Timothy Cantrell was drawn to the world of comedy. Julia Smith enrolled on a dare with an out-of-state friend, hoping to find a new hobby and a cure for her post-pandemic social anxiety. Charlottesville native Matt Jorge had worked as a living-history instructor in San Francisco, inhabiting the persona of sailor Squidy Jones for audiences of local fourth and fifth graders. “I just loved all the improv that came with that,” he says. When he moved back to his hometown, he began commuting to the theater for weekly classes.
At Doyle’s encouragement, students spent time together outside of class. Now, Jorge says, “This is the first time I've felt like I’ve had a real, in-person, honest community since, like, pre-pandemic.”
“Outside of the Coalition, I don't think we all organically would have become friends — from all walks of life and all representations,” Smith adds.
After a few more games, Cantrell, Smith and Jorge join students from last semester’s Improv 301: Patterns and Games in the wings upstairs. Together, they are tonight’s opening act, and as always, the performance is entirely unrehearsed. “The most magical thing about improv is that when you go up onto that stage … by definition, you have nothing prepared,” Doyle says. “So, whatever you say, whatever you do, is a moment of you being vulnerable.”
(From left) Benz, Bruce Wiljanen, Matt Jorge, Smith and Wheatley onstage at Coalition Theater
The group takes the stage, and after the audience calls out an activity — fishing — and two emotions — anger and boredom — the set is a mishmash of bizarre characters and eccentric patterns. The group is reeling in invisible fishing lines when the lights go dark.
Back downstairs, after a short debrief of the performance, Doyle moves to a whiteboard to chart out a long-form comedy structure called The Harold. He encourages the students to leave behind 301’s theatrics and wacky patterns to experiment with more honest reactions and true-to-life relationship dynamics. As the students move through a series of new exercises, they look uncertain for the first time this evening. “When there’s a group of people being vulnerable with each other, it’s the absolute best environment to make friends in the world, because it’s like the lightest possible form of trauma bonding,” Doyle says.
One year after their first class, improv has changed this group. “I saw a lot of people blossom throughout the classes … myself included,” Smith says. “You’re a better listener, you’re a better person with it. It’s weird how many different facets that improv bleeds into [in] the rest of my life.”
“Going through a whole day of work and then coming here, I feel like a different person from 10 hours ago,” Jorge says. “I feel alive when I’m here.”
“You find your funny,” Cantrell adds.
At the end of class, students circle up to discuss what they’ve learned and their classmates’ favorite lines. Then, they pack up and head out for a drink — together.
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