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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

Mick Napier of Annoyance Productions

Dan O'Connor of TNN's Lifegame

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

Interview by Jeff Catanese

These three improv veterans performed to a receptive and grateful audience at the Festival.  Offstage they all seemed varying degrees of shy and gregarious.  This reporter couldn't help but notice the eye contact they constantly made in share answers to questions, and it was apparent that they enjoyed their friendship as much as they did their onstage time.  -JC

IMPROV REVIEW:            How long have you been performing together?

KATZ: John [Lehr] and I have been performing together since ’91.

LEHR:  And I guess we started in ’94?

SLOTNICK:            Yeah ’94.  The three of us in ’94.

IMPROV REVIEW:            What was the impetus for you to get together?

KATZ: The three of us?

IMPROV REVIEW:            Or even the two of you.

KATZ: John and I were both founding members of a group, “Ed,” which was an improvisational group here in Chicago, and we performed with them for a very long time.  Then Joey [Slotnick] saw the work and auditioned for one of those shows.  We got to work with Joey on that show and we said why don’t the three of us work together?

IMPROV REVIEW:            What were your early influences?  Did you come up through Improv Olympic or Second City?

LEHR:  No.  We were sort of an offshoot of all that, really.  Ed was about doing a show that was…  It was four women, three men so it had a more feminine tone to it.  It was more about what you saw tonight, more about scenes and characters.  Not so much going for the satire.

SLOTNICK:            Not the quick joke. 

LEHR:  Yeah.

SLOTNICK:            Creating a world with the work instead of a sketch or something like that.

LEHR:  People call it longform now, and really the Harold was the original longform, but were not, obviously not similar to the Harold at all.

SLOTNICK:            Right.

LEHR:  But we are big fans of Del Close’s, in fact I hung out with him a lot in the early years.

SLOTNICK:            Oh, definitely.

KATZ:             We’re hoping to get close to his skull while we’re here.

LEHR:  We want to go down to the Goodman [Theater] and see it.

IMPROV REVIEW:            You are all based in LA, what are you seeing out there as far as improv?

KATZ: I’ve seen a little bit.  I saw a group that I guess performed here [the Chicago Improv Festival], but I never saw them here.

IMPROV REVIEW:            LA TheatreSports?

KATZ: No, no, no.  They did a movie.

IMPROV REVIEW:            Feature Feature?

KATZ: No, no, no.

LEHR:  Oh, um…  No it was…  Bitter Noah [of IO West]

KATZ: Bitter Noah!  They were great.  But I don’t see a lot in LA.

IMPROV REVIEW:            You don’t get a lot in LA?

LEHR:  No.  There’s the Improv Olympic, but as far as different styles, not really.  There’s not much out there because anyone who’s doing theater in LA is trying to get on a TV show.  And improv they don’t know what to do with.

IMPROV REVIEW:            You’ve all been on TV, so how do you guys consider yourselves different?  What are your goals?  What are you reaching for?

KATZ: That’s what we’ve been pondering recently.  We’d love to get paid for doing what we do.  However we can.

LEHR:  We’d love to think that that might be possible.

KATZ:            Onstage or in front of a camera.  But it’s hard to capture.  When we’ve seen tapes of our live performances, it doesn’t translate so well.  So we’re trying to see if there’s a way.

IMPROV REVIEW:            There has been a push, what with the possibility of a writer’s strike and the success of Whose Line is it Anyway, to get improv to TV in one form of another.  Would you want to be a part of that in terms of what you do, or would you even fashion something more “TV friendly?”

SLOTNICK:            If we could do what we do…

LEHR:  Or something really far from what we do.  As long as it’s not “You can do that part, or that part.”  That’s the thing that worries us.

KATZ:            Personally, I could never do something like Whose Line is it Anyway.  I watch and applaud and I am blown away.

IMPROV REVIEW:            You don’t do shortform?

KATZ: I wouldn’t be good for it.  It would be embarrassing.

LEHR:  Ours comes from character and environment so much, and that is so much more cerebral and verbal.

SLOTNICK:            I think our work is so much more about patience.

KATZ: They’re much faster.

SLOTNICK:            Trusting that the audience is going to be patient with us, and trusting that when we go onstage that we don’t know what we’re going to do, and that we don’t have to know anything because the three of us have worked for so long, and we work so well together that it’s just the joy of not having to know anything and just it happening, just it being created.

IMPROV REVIEW:            Are you staying for the whole festival?

KATZ: We wish.

SLOTNICK:            We’re leaving tomorrow.

LEHR:  We wish.

IMPROV REVIEW:            What have you seen while you’ve been here?

ALL:    We saw Yellow Man Group.

LEHR:            Improvising in English.

SLOTNICK:            They were awesome.

IMPROV REVIEW:            I’m a big fan myself.

LEHR:  We are too.

SLOTNICK:            Like John was saying, to improvise in… not your language is just amazing.

LEHR:  And the fact that they’re so bold about it. 

KATZ: Yes.

LEHR:  Brazen even.

IMPROV REVIEW:            What is the most important element of improv?

SLOTNICK:            Trust.

LEHR:  Being present.

KATZ:            (Laughs) Courage.  I don’t know.

(Everyone laughs.)

IMPROV REVIEW:            I like it.  Good answer.

SLOTNICK:            You could have said trust again.

KATZ:            Kindness.

IMPROV REVIEW:            You guys have been great, thank you very much.

KATZ:            Kindness.

SLOTNICK:            Listening.

IMPROV REVIEW:            No, I’m sorry it’s too late.

KATZ: God dammit!  Listening!  Listening!