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Other CIF Interviews:

Susan Gaspar of The Free Associates

Don Hall of WNEP

Yuri Kinugawa of Yellow Man Group

Stan Morse of Liquid Radio Players

Dan O'Connor of TNN's Lifegame

Joey Slotnik, Lauren Katz & John Lehr of Slotnik, Katz & Lehr

Mick Napier of Annoyance Productions

Interview by Jeff Catanese

Mick Napier has the reputation of an eccentric in improv circles, but it seems more of an over-confidence that he has in his daily lifestyle. When you get him to talk improv, that confidence spills onto the page and into the tape recorder as the man tells it like it is, without his usual social irony.   -JC

[Click here for a review of The Annoyance Theater's CIF show.]

How long have you been in the field of improv in either a performance or directorial capacity?

I have been doing improv for about twenty years, ever since I was eighteen at Indiana University.  I ran a troupe there called Double Take.  We wrote some sketch and played improv games.  I had never seen improvisation before that but I decided I wanted to do it, so I put up some audition notices to cast people, then we learned together.

Who were your early influences?

I did seek out Del Close because I had read Something Wonderful Right Away and knew he was still here in Chicago.  Once I was here Martin De Maat became very influential for me, and he and I became friends.  I picked up a lot from his teaching, and I began to find my own style and incorporate his philosophy about improvisation also.

Any philosophy in particular?

The philosophy of acceptance, and the way he was able to create a context of acceptance in improvisation to allow people the freedom to improvise.

The annoyance, in your words, is kind of a subversive alternative to Improv Olympic and Second City.  Did you start it with that idea in mind?

Yeah, only because my own mind is like that and I enjoy thing like that.  At the time the annoyance started I was really into Herschel Gordon Lewis [horror movie auteur] and a lot of blood and gore stuff.  I was twenty-four years old and I wanted to create Splatter Theater, which is all about blood, and it was a comedy, kind of a parody of slasher films.  After that I was kind of into prison stuff so I did Coed Prison Sluts.  The shows started and the Annoyance came after, and it became known for that kind of stuff, and I already had and found a bunch of other people who were into that stuff.

You have a unique improvisational style.  Can you sum it up for us?

Not particularly.  It is all about the individual and what an individual actually can do when improvising versus a lot of information about what not to do which is what I experienced when I was learning improvisation.  So I don’t really teach many rules or say, “You don’t want to do this…”  It’s all about giving each individual power on stage as an individual, and how to help him.

Most improvisors are taught over and over to be selfless.  Justify selfishness.

If I want to help my partner onstage then I need to take care of myself first and take care of my own power first, otherwise all I’m supporting my own insecurity and my own fear, which is not very supportive.

What do you believe to be the most important element of improvisation?

Fuck it.  I.e., just play.  No matter what you’re taught you have to dispense with all that information while you’re improvising and put it in the back of you mind.  Whatever Q equals just fuck it, just do it.

Do you feel that’s a process that comes about after you learn the rules by rote, and then you can throw them away, or do you think a person can come up learning “Just fuck it?”

I do think that coming up you can learn that and you can learn to be proactive as an individual without even hearing about rules existing.  The reason I feel that way is that I’ve had enough of a sample space of people I’ve taught not involved with any organization that teaches rules to find that they can get there easier.  That’s my opinion.

Therefore, do you believe that trust is a decision or something that has to be nurtured over time?

I think it’s a decision.

How would you categorize your directing style?

One thing that’s important to me, especially at Second City, is that I hold dear to the fact that Second City is the actor’s theater.  Whenever you see an actor onstage, they wrote it, and they’re performing it.  So I hold that sacred and try to protect that the best I can.

Talk a little bit about your production company.

I’m creating a production company that includes a theater, soundstage, editing suites, training program, a bar hopefully.  And I’d like to do that here in Chicago and create all kinds of comedy in all kinds of ways: film, television, digital media, broadband, short handheld content, all of that, and be able to distribute it and market it from Chicago.

Do you think that the technology available today, and certainly tomorrow, is a way to get improvisation recognized by mainstream audiences?

I guess it would be.  I not sure if I’m going to be able to help that even if I succeed with this production company, because I’m not really an improv queen.  I use improvisation mostly as a tool to get to the written comedy and then distribute the product of comedy that was developed through improvisation.  I guess by default it would probably help spread the word about improvisation.

Do you find validity in improv for improv’s sake?

I do if there’s a market to support it.

You seem to revere comedy, do you find validity in dramatic improvisation, or improvisation that takes a more dramatic turn?

Yeah.  Ironically that’s the most refreshing thing.  When I teach a class I have one day where the students do scenes where they are not allowed to get a laugh, and I usually try to encourage higher stakes.  So a scene might start with, “I’m sorry your father passed away.”  And then I encourage them to play the reality of that.  Those are the most refreshing scenes for me, the most real scenes, and the most substantive scenes.  And then the laughs are more organic and more genuine, and even sometimes funnier, when they do come.  I really do enjoy that.  I’m thirty-eight years old now and I think that as I get older my tastes change.  Fifteen years ago I might have looked at a game show parody and put it onstage, but certainly not today.  My sense of comedy and my sense of drama have become more sophisticated as I get older.  I’m a little more sentimental as I get older.