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CHRIS GRIGGS

A few years ago, Kelsey Grammer produced a television show called World Cup Comedy, and I was selected to represent New York. That was cool because it was a series of actual shows, and I was picked from around 250 improvisers in the city. It was exciting, but challenging, since all the auditions were in front of a live audience.

Performing improv feeds into other outlets of mine such as stand-up and acting. I've been able to meet and get to know amazing people. Improvisers are usually very cool, quick-minded, and fun to be around. They also usually more team-oriented than some performance artists so that's fun as well. Improv has helped me learn to be in the present more and learn to say yes to life and people more. I've also, I think, learned to be more accepting of others. You learn to embrace what's special and interesting about people when you improvise and I like to think that has had an influence with my regular life.

I was born in Memphis and grew up on a farm just outside the city. I worked in advertising and got into improv originally just because it looked fun and would help me at work. You have to think on your feet a lot in the advertising industry.  Then it evolved as I actively started acting and working as a stand-up.

Actingwise, I've always been a fan of Mickey Rourke, Russel Crowe, and the usuals (De Niro, Pacino, Nicholson).  From a pure comedic acting standpoint, I love to watch Paul Rudd, that guy can do it all in terms of playing a straight man or knocking it out of the park. 

Todd Cowdery

I was born in Whittier, California. When? A few hours after the contractions started. I grew up in Durham, North Carolina, however.

I wanted to be an actor sometime in elementary school and continued pursuing it through high school, college, and after college. In the midst of my acting education were various improv workshops, acting classes with improv games, and two- to three-person scenes along the way. Then in my mid-twenties I left acting, and pursued other interests. Around 1999 or 2000, I rediscovered improv and just got caught by the transfomational power of it. I've been doing a lot of improv ever since.

My role models?  Oh man, there are a several. I'm grateful to have worked with some really great improvisers over the past 10 years that have influenced me a ton.  My biggest media influences for comedy were Danny Kaye, Sid Caesar, and the Sid Caesar Comedy Hour cast, Bob and Ray, and Ernie Kovacs. I also used to listen to Firesign Theatre, the Goon Show and Beyond the Fringe.

Rosemary Hyziak

 

"Money in the Bank." That's what improviser Matthew Ostrom of the Chainsaw Boys dubbed Rosemary Hyziak after she had, in his words, "saved my ass" in countless scenes. Others have had the same experience. "She's the most reliable improviser I know," says Tom Soter, the producer and emcee of Sunday Night Improv. "She takes her time helping to create a scene and builds on what you give her. "She is remarkable."

Who is Rosemary Hyziak? Here, in her own words, is her story:

I was born in Buffalo, NY. I remember one of my first creative performance impulses was to insist I be a Spanish Senorita for Halloween.  I wanted to do a flamenco dance in a flouncy dress.  I was enrolled in dancing school, but when I went to visit the dance studio with my grandmother, I saw the teacher correcting the student's posture with a long white stick.  The teacher would tap the student's legs.  For some reason I thought the teacher would beat me with the stick, so I refused to go to my first class.  A creative avenue closed.

Kurt Fitzpatrick

 

I was born in Philadelphia sometime in the 1970s. I grew up in South Jersey. I first got involved in improv when I started taking classes at HB Studios. I had a teacher there named Rasa Allen Kazlas, who was pretty strict, and I needed that at the time. I was very broad and silly as a performer, and she hammered some skills into me. She was also supportive as a teacher, and enjoyed seeing people's work, including my own. My influences were people who took control of their work, like Woody Allen, although I don't think I have much in common with Woody Allen. I was very much influenced by watching SCTV and Saturday Night Live as a kid, and always enjoyed creating my own characters.

Christopher Hoyle

 

NO JUDGMENTS

By BEN CARTWRIGHT

Christopher Hoyle seems measured and in control on stage – yet he can be remarkably impulsive. Like the time he got six people to jump off a metaphorical cliff with him. It was 1985 and the New York Improv Squad had just lost its performing gig. Standing on the street after hearing the news, Hoyle, a founding member of the troupe, said, “Why don’t we just perform right here?”

The rest of the group scoffed at the idea – it was dark, it was cold, it was dangerous – but Hoyle began anyway. Strumming on his guitar, he began taking suggestions from passersby. “We should back him up,” said Tom Soter, another squad member. They did – and to everyone’s great amazement, except, perhaps, Hoyle’s – a small crowd had formed. By evening’s end, the group had collected over $100 in contributions from passersby. “That’s what I love about improvisation,” says Hoyle, a regular performer at the Sunday Night Improv comedy jam at 236 West 78th Street. “You can do anything if you try.”

Brooke, Hevner & Laybourne

 

On April 25th, three of the members of the all-women's improv group, The Heartless Floozies, will reunite for an evening of fun at the SUNDAY NIGHT IMPROV jam. They all used to be regulars at SNI, and here are their stories, as reprinted from vintage issues of The WINGNUT GAZETTE:

SUZANNE HEVNER 

            Suzanne Hevner loves when things go awry. She remembers her senior year in college, when she was doing the showHow the Other Half Loves. The gimmick in the play was that two people used the same set simultaneously, pretending that they were in two completely separate apartments. They would walk around the space performing their scenes, never acknowledging that the other person was there. An unscripted accident occurred during one performance when Hevner’s co-star knocked over a pitcher of water in Hevner’s area, resulting in a pool of water.

Larry Bell

 

A PIECE OF
CAKE

By SINJIN SMYTHE

It was a dramatic moment. With only a few minutes left in the second night of the 1994 New York Improv Festival, the annual improv competition, out strode Larry Bell, captain of the second-place team improvisation group Bright Lights Big Witty. They had been neck-and-neck with two other troupes, and the question was, Could they win? A bold choice was needed. After taking a suggestion from the audience, Bell, announced with gusto, “Ladies and gentlemen, we now present, The Three-Minute Musical!” And then, in a flash, the four members of Bright Lights – Bell, Allison Castillo, Beth Littleford, and Denny Siegel - presented an entire musical, with a beginning, middle, and end, a romance, a couple of songs, and plot complications – in just three minutes. The crowd went wild.

Karl Tiedemann

 “JERRY MADE ME DO IT”

By JOHN DRAKE

He is the debonair debater in a talk show discussing the pros and cons of spaghetti. He is the pratfalling nerd, blithely drinking a concoction by the hunchbacked doorman Brad in the creeky old castle. He is also a stern husband, frantic guest, and tap-dancing villain. But above all else, he is Karl Tiedemann. And he is funny.

Tom Carrozza

 

FROM CHICAGO WITH LAUGHS
 By ED FLICKINGER

He’s the man with the big eyes and the slightly off-the-wall characters. He’s the co-host of the talk show (I'm Tom, I'm Tom, and it's) Tom for Movies, plays the doctor called Flickinger, and appeared as the sorcerer who rode a Macy’s escalator in the middle of what purported to be a Shakespeare play.

He is Tom Carrozza, an improv veteran well-known to audiences at the Sunday Night Improv Comedy Jam. “There are a million different ways to do improv,” he said recently. “Everyone has his own slant on it and I think mine is unique. I like to emphasize emotions and psychology over logic and predictability.”

Carrozza came to New York City in 1978 from the city where modern improv was created, Chicago. He had studied at the Second City improv company when he was 17, appearing in a children’s show, and then decided to come to the Big Apple when he failed to be accepted at the colleges of his choice.

Carole Bugge

“I’D RATHER BE
WRITING...”

By JOHN DRAKE

Carole Bugge would rather scratch an itch than live with it. “People become improvisers because they have an itch that has not been scratched as an actor,” she says. “What’s great about improv is that it’s the perfect marriage of performing and writing.”