Mprov: Dat's It, Dat's All!

I've got an Mprov hangover today. 

By that I don't just mean from over-indulging in booze and junk food at last night's improv fest wrap party (though there was plenty of that to be had), but from the last year of fest organizing, emailing and meeting and the last week of fest hosting, improvising and socializing. 

It's a bittersweet hangover. The work is over but so is the fun. 

I gotta admit I'm in total vege mode today. It was all I could do to drag my ass over the keyboard but I'm here now so what the hell.


The final night of Mprov was a blast all around. 

Hosting the early show was the first blast of the evening, if a little challenging. The wait staff at St.Sulpice Pub, site of our annual Mprov participants dinner, was super slow before the show last night. As a result, I ended up drinking way more beer on an empty stomach than I was expecting. Ya gotta understand that I swore off drinking even one beer before any kind of performance years ago. I found that it turned my laser sharp focus into something more akin to a lava lamp type dull focus.  I was pretty lava lamp opening that first show.


However, over the course of the Mprov All Star Mixer Jam's high energy set, Dearly Beloved from NYC's darkly hilarious improv wake and Denver's one man musical wonder, Wilder and Wilder, improvising an entire thirty minute rock opera, the laser had cut through the lava nicely.


Good thing too. 

The second show opened with me and my fellow On The Spot Improv troupe mates doing our now signature format of 15 in 30. And, yeah, we did manage to get 15 scenes done in 30 minutes. Our final challenge in the set (with a mere 11 seconds left on the clock) was to down a beer in one go. And I gotta give a big shout out to Spotter Chris Cavener for not only doing the deed in time but for being so consummate a showman so as to slow down his final gulps of brew to coincide with what was literally the last second on the clock. I can still hear the audience exploding into cheers and applause, buddy.

After us, Toronto's Sex T. Rex treated the now energized crowd a wonderfully warped improv take on the Macaulay Culkin tour-de-force, Home Alone. Though their version did contain a disturbing amount of acrobatics and shirtlessness.

Outside Joke closed the festival with their trademarked Anti-Musical format. It was a complex story about a scepter with many twists and turns. One such twist was introduced in the last two minutes of the show and was met with the insightful and brilliant line, " No. No. We can't afford any more complications as this point." And such is improv. 

I want to thank Montreal Improv, Uncalled For, The Bitter End, Sexual Tyrannosaurus, Outside Joke, Wilder and Wilder, Dearly Beloved and On The Spot Improv for coming out from near and far to deliver their talented best on the Mprov stage. 

Also, thanks to all of the incredibly supportive and giving audiences that really made Mprov 2010 fly.


My biggest thanks, though, goes to my co-organizers Marc Rowland, Francois Vincent and Anders Yates. For personal and professional reasons, I ended up having to hand a great deal of my baby over to these guys for safe keeping. They did an incredible job of picking up my slack. Mprov 2010 would never been the success it was without them. 

Thanks, again, everybody.


Now, I have a few ideas for Mprov 2011...