Stretching Out in Improv

Eight actors and some chairs on a bare stage are not exactly what you’d expect from a show titled “The Armando Diaz Theatrical Experience and Hootenanny.” But neither the eponymous host nor a hootenanny are anywhere in evidence at the first offering from Chicago-based Improv Olympic’s new Los Angeles troupe.

On Friday and Saturday nights at the Stella Adler Theatre in Hollywood, the performers do deliver the promised theatrical experience, though, drawing on the sparest of material: two words provided by the audience. It’s enough fodder for a sometimes inspired, sometimes banal comical journey that on one recent night began with a monologue on boogers and ended 90 minutes later with a slightly twisted Marx Brothers routine featuring Zeppo with a finger up his nose.

This might seem like quite a stretch, but Improv Olympic is clearly a group that thrives on challenges. Renowned in its hometown for popularizing the technique of long-form improvisation, it has now also set up shop in L.A., a city that once sent the nationally celebrated Second City ensemble packing back to Chicago. Moreover, it has done so with a determination to resist the Randian ethos of Hollywood and remain true to its collectivist art form.

“We don’t want to sound too smug, but if your primary intention in doing the show is to serve yourself, then it’s not going to work,” says Dave Koechner, artistic director of Improv Olympic’s L.A. branch. “It works best when you serve the group as a whole.”

Koechner is one of the dozens of Improv Olympic veterans who have migrated to Los Angeles from Chicago to pursue a career in film and TV (he spent last year on “Saturday Night Live”). This talent pool became the impetus for establishing a West Coast base.

“I had a good bunch of people out in L.A. who really missed improvising, and missed doing it our way,” explains Charna Halpern, producer and co-director of Improv Olympic. “They can sit in at other places, but it’s not fulfilling to them, because it’s short games and people who don’t play our way. They’re just out for themselves.”

Back in 1983, Halpern and her fledgling troupe were humoring audiences with typical improv fare. Then she met Del Close, a legendary figure in comedy circles for his pioneering political cabaret in the 1960s and his later stewardship of Second City.

Close--who over the years has mentored such comic icons as Bill Murray, Martin Short and the late John Candy--had invented a new kind of improvisational form known as the harold, which eschews short games in favor of a sustained, thematically linked show.

“My idea of an evening of improvisational comedy is you send a dozen actors on stage, you get one suggestion from the audience, and you stay out there and deal with it for an hour,” Close says.

This structure was coupled with a philosophy he refers to as truth in comedy. “As most authors will tell you, truth is not only stranger than fiction, it’s funnier,” Close asserts. “We were trying to rescue our performers from second-hand cliches, and the only place to go is your personal life.”

Working together, Close and Halpern conceived Improv Olympic with the harold as its centerpiece, and an institution was born. The group, which runs a school in addition to two theaters, has acted as an incubator for the likes of Murray, Jim Belushi, Mike Myers, Chris Farley, Harold Ramis, Andy Dick, John Favreau, Andy Richter, Pat Finn and many others.

Most of these alumni have maintained close ties to Improv Olympic, which Halpern describes as being “almost like a cult, only in a positive way.” When Farley returns to Chicago, he often performs with the company and teaches classes, while Richter has helped several former Improv Olympic colleagues land jobs on “Late Night With Conan O’Brien.”

Myers, currently starring in “Austin Powers,” credits Close with helping him overcome stage fright, and speaks in almost reverent tones about the leaders of his old troupe. “There’s a nobility, a sanctity,” Myers says. “They created a place in the theater that’s kind of like a temple. You get a sense that you’re tied by rope at the hip to the other improvisers. It’s something bigger than any one performer.”

But can such high-minded altruism survive in the often unholy belly of the entertainment beast? Paul Vaillencourt, a member of Improv Olympic L.A. and the director of its training school, acknowledges the difficulty of their undertaking. “The tricky part out here is trying to keep that purity alive and not make it into a showcase,” says Vaillencourt, who’s part of an Improv Olympic subset called Bitter Noah, which recently sold a pilot to MTV.

Koechner believes that the ensemble’s all-for-one, one-for-all ethic is strong enough to fend off Hollywood’s individualist zeitgeist. The question, he says, is whether L.A. audiences will make the pilgrimage to see Improv Olympic’s brand of comedy. So far, the show has been averaging only 25-30 people a night.

The experience of Second City and its abbreviated L.A. run might serve as a cautionary tale. But Halpern points out that while her Chicago colleagues came in with big plans and an overhead to match, her ambitions are more modest. She hopes to start building improv teams from the graduates of Vaillencourt’s classes, then gradually add new shows. (Beginning June 13, “Armando Diaz” will rotate with a production by the members of Bitter Noah.)

The idea, Halpern says, is to do more with less--Improv Olympic’s stock in trade. “We want to do what we’re doing in Chicago--creating really good improvisers, helping them get work, trying to get that feeling of camaraderie. It sounds kind of corny, but we saved our corner of the world here. Maybe we can create that in L.A.”

* “The Armando Diaz Theatrical Experience,” Stella Adler Theatre, 6773 Hollywood Blvd., Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Indefinitely. $10. (213) 694-2935.