Serious business

Empire Comedy is a company that practices long-form improvisational comedy—inventing and performing new theatrical performances on the fly in real time every week. The company is celebrating its five-year anniversary with a series of events Feb. 28 through March 2. Founder Michael Lewis, a veteran of the Los Angeles improv scene, started the company to foster an improv scene here in Reno. In addition to presenting regular public performances, Lewis also teaches improv classes—for beginners and more advanced students. It’s part of his mission to introduce this young art form to Northern Nevadans, and to build a community for it here in Reno.

“I think that the most surprising thing has been the sheer number of students that have come through—strong students that have kept at it, even after moving on to other cities,” says Lewis.

He estimates that approximately 200 students have taken at least one class from him. Some of those students developed into experienced performers who have continued to pursue improv and related art forms in other cities. He mentions Tim Dufrisne, who has performed and studied improv in Chicago and New York; Nick Delehanty, stage performer in Chicago; and Cassady O’Neal, an improviser, comedian and filmmaker who worked in Los Angeles and now New York. Dufrisne and O’Neal will both be back in Reno to help celebrate the five-year anniversary—five years since the company’s first performance, in which Dufrisne was a performer.

“It’s exciting to have him back since he was here at the beginning,” says Lewis.

Empire has never had a theater of its own, so it has performed at a number of different venues over the years—Studio on 4th, West Street Market, Rainshadow Community Charter High School and Good Luck Macbeth Theater. The anniversary celebrations will be held at Circle of Life Hospice Foundation Theater, the back-of-a-thrift-store theater space that hosted the recent theatrical run of 6:01 a.m.: A Working Class Opera.

The celebration begins in the evening of Feb. 28 at 7 p.m., with a free drop-in class taught by Lewis focused on the basics of improv. The class will run for an hour and a half and will be followed, at 9 p.m., by an improv jam—giving anyone the chance to perform improv before a live audience. Lewis says it’s a good opportunity for beginners who’ve never performed in front of a live audience before as well as a good exercise for season improvisers because working with newbies helps keep performers on their toes.

On March 1 at 8 p.m., Empire Comedy will present an improv show featuring the house team, Like a Banshee—Lewis, longtime Empire performer Ben Craig and David Gromley—as well as appearances by guest performers like Dufrisne and Alex Marino, a former student of Lewis’ who went on to found the Magnet Theater in New York. The show will also feature a performance by Empire’s elite student squad, The George Collection.

Finally, on March 2 at 3 p.m., Marino will lead a workshop on improv techniques.

“A huge part of the appeal is just creating with a group of people,” says Lewis.

He says improv is a process of developing trust in other performers. And whereas traditional theater follows a strict sequence of writing, rehearsing and then performing—improv is all three at once. There are obvious analogies with music—especially styles of music, like jazz and bluegrass, where improvisation is an integral part—but Lewis also draws a correlation with athletics.

“You don’t know exactly what’s going to happen in a basketball game, but you still do drills,” he says.

It’s impossible to predict exactly what will happen in any given game, but the athletes need to be ready to perform, react, follow the rules, and play as a team.