Tane Danger (left) founded the improv troupe "LineUs" at Gustavus Adolphus College a few years ago. Today, the group is very popular with about 250 people attending their first show of the year several weeks ago. At right is Brandon Boat, one of the newes
By Robb Murray
Free Press Staff Writer
When Tane Danger was growing up in Hollywood, Fla., improv troupes were as common as palm trees.
“But when I got to Gustavus, and they had such a strong theater program, I was perplexed why they didn’t have an improv troupe,” he said.
So Danger — and, yes, that is his real name — decided to get one going himself. The troupe, called LineUs, began slowly a few years ago with an audience of a dozen or so skeptical students who didn’t expect the troupe to be any good. These days, their campus shows routinely attract 250 students.
Now, the group is broadening its existence. It is performing outside campus more, including shows at Patrick’s bar and other venues.
And last week, they spent a few hours with a gathering of St. Peter High School kids teaching the finer points of improv.
“A lot of people think improv is just getting up on stage and making stuff up,” Danger told the high schoolers. “We’re here to tell you there’s a little more to it than that.”
They led the kids through a series of exercises that the LineUs uses to warm up. There was the pantomime game where, after pairing up with partners, one person would pretend to be handing the other an object. The other person’s job was to react to that object and generate a few lines of back-and-forth dialogue.
Another exercise mimicked a job interview. Still in pairs, one person asked questions. The other was required to begin each answer with the words, “Yes, and …”
During both, a fundamental rule of improv was learned: The gift. Instead of creating dialogue that’s funny, improv works better when you give someone something to work with. In the case of dialogue, it’s much easier to improv an interesting conversation if the first person says something like, “Gee, Bob, why is your foot on fire?” as opposed to, “How’s it goin’, Bob.”
“A truly great improver makes other people look great,” Danger told the kids.
Later on the workshop moved on to actual games the troupe uses in its performances. All the while, the high school kids were engaged and volunteering to take turns and laughing and acting and improvising their way through more than two hours of after-school theatrical education.
There was more going on, Danger said, than simply an improv troupe putting on a workshop for high schoolers.
“At Gustavus, there is a strong drive for students to go out and do things for the community,” Danger said. “But at the same time there seems to be this sort of divide between Gustavus and St. Peter, which is strange to me. The two don’t interact very much.
“When we do shows at Gustavus, we try and advertise in St. Peter, but I don’t know that anyone from St. Peter has ever come up here to see it. But if we do a show at Patrick’s, tons of people from St. Peter show up,” he said.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, LineUs is not made up of a bunch of theater students. Danger and Metz, for example, are studying communications. Noah Palm studies psychology. Brandon Boat, history.
In the improv world, there are two basic forms: long, which tends to be more dramatic, and short, which tends to consist of two- to four-minute comedy sketches. LineUs sticks with the short form. They study the craft as well. The group, which is funded by student fees, purchased improv theory text books, which all members are required to read. They also applied for, and received, additional funding to bring in experts to put on workshops.
About half the current troupe had to audition for their parts, including Boat, a sophomore from Iowa.
Boat was an improv kid in high school and competed on an improv team. He tried out during his freshman year and didn’t make it. He tried again this year and made the troupe.
His reason for being involved: “It goes back to something as simple as a child’s imagination,” Boat said. “I think this is the most pure creative outlet you can have.”
Several of the members live together in one of Gustavus’ residence halls. They did this intentionally, Danger said, to make it more efficient when practices and shows are scheduled. Palm says the group has grown close, which shows in the performances.
“When you work with people for a long enough time,” he said, “you get a sense of their imagination.”
Metz is here because he feeds off work. “I like the energy. I like the freedom,” he said. “I like the ability to create a world and the ability to believe in that world, even if it is for four minutes.”
All the working together and chemistry and community outreach has turned LineUs into a familiar entity on campus.
And even at a place such as Gustavus, where every night there’s plenty of entertainment options for students, LineUs is getting to be a big draw.
“When we had our first show this year on campus, we had a huge turnout. It was unreal,” Danger said. “It gets to a point in that Courtyard Cafe that there literally isn’t room to put another person. It’s wall-to-wall people. And it’s so much fun to perform for that many people.”
Published Thursday, Dec. 15, 2005 in The Free Press of Mankato, Minnesota. Reprinted with permission.
Photo by Pat Christman of The Free Press.