Where did these improvathons start, and why?
The first improvathon began as a one-off charity event to save a theatre from becoming a restaurant.
What would become the Varscona Theatre in Edmonton Canada had been jointly run by the Chinook Children’s Theatre and the Edmonton International Fringe Festival until 1993.
That year, Chinook moved across town to a new space. It was up to the remaining fringe theatre companies to convince the City of Edmonton not to put a restaurant in its place but to keep the theatre for the fringe.
Three theatre groups: Teatro la Quindicina, Shadow Theatre and the improvisational theatre group, Die-Nasty, promised the city that not only could they fill the seats, they required no subsidised aid to run it.
The city agreed. Then, the fundraising began.
“It was a real struggle and hasn’t been easy financially from then to now. We needed those first soap-a-thons, which raised not only funds but brought together a community of great actors,” says Patti Stiles the former artistic director of Rapid Fire Theatre and a founding member of the Die-Nasty weekly soap-a-thon.
Little did they all know, this set the wheels of a franchise in motion.
London-bound
Carrying on its tradition, the London 50-Hour Improvathon 2024 from 7pm on 8th March to 9pm on 10th March at Wilton’s Music Hall will host more than 50 of the world’s top comedy improvisers will perform a show lasting an entire weekend.
This year, it’s wedding season at Everafter Manor – the UK’s hottest spot to tie the knot. Loved-up couples arrive with friends and family, but will they falter before the altar? The weekend will be split into 25 episodes, each 2 hours long, and audiences can drop in at any point to catch a stand-alone episode, or binge-watch everything back-to-back.
Everafter Manor will see actors traversing the entire 50 hours, but at the first improvathon in 1993, no one was allowed.
“They thought, oh, no human can do that,” says Mark Meer who was there as a guest player. Meer will be a core actor going the distance in this year’s improvathon. He is also a main cast member of Rapid Theatre and a long time participant of the weekly as well as the 50+ hour Die-Nasty soap-a-thons.
Getting started
Stiles said that this first improvathon drew actors like Meer, who were not yet core players with Die-Nasty. Those first late night sessions allowed them to guest and test out what it was like to improvise a live soap and see if they enjoyed it.
Meer remembers his shift started at Saturday night at 2am a bit more like a baptism of fire.
Everyone had gone home at this point, he says, leaving he and Jacob Banigan and a couple of others to carry on the story by themsleves from 2am to 8am.
Banigan, who took over from Stiles as the artistic director of Rapid Fire theatre from 1995 to 2004, will also join the London improvathon.
They all recall the sole audience member. “It was my girlfriend,” says Banigan.
For their story-line, they formed a band, followed its journey and sang improvised songs for six hours, says Meer.
He was hooked from the start. The next year he was invited to return and by the third year, he was the first improviser to act through the entire 50-hour show.
“He did it with a bad back, playing Susanna Patchouli,” remembers Stiles adding that she can still see him with heels on, but needing to lean against a wall for support.
Going global
Across an ocean, other artists began to hear about the improvised soaps.
Ken Campbell, the renowned English actor, writer and director known for his work in experimental theatre stopped in to see a Die-Nasty show while he was on tour.
Meer had already been getting emails from “Ken’s people” while Campbell was in Canada performing his one-man show about the history of ventriloquism. Campbell came to see Die-Nasty and the two got talking in the bar.
In 2005, Londoners, starting with Sean McCann and other group members from UK improvised shows Showstopper! and The School of Night began travelling to Canada to take part in the soap-a-thons.
Three years later the first London improvathon, ‘Casino Oui Oui’ ran for a 50-hour weekend at the Peoples’ Show Studios in Bethnal Green. The setting was a 1960s French riviera casino directed by Die-Nasty theatre member, Dana Andersen.
Meer remembers being the head of a shadowy organisation called Geist (German for ghost) as Baron Struker during his first London improvathon with co-actors who will appear at Wilton this year, Belinda Cornish and Jamie Cavanagh.
He also remembers that at some point, there were chimney sweeps.