Jason Shotts and Colleen Doyle
The fourth annual edition of the District Improv Festival kicks off tomorrow night. In addition to a lot of homegrown talent, acts will be visiting from New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. And Los Angeles-based improv duo DUMMY (Colleen Doyle and Jason Shotts) is headlining.
For casual fans who may only be acquainted with the call and response parlor games of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, DUMMY offers a unique take on the medium.
“Different cities have different styles of improv,” Shotts said. “In Chicago, we do a thing where we’re almost expected to do a one act play, but we don’t know our lines.” Doyle adds, “It’s not necessarily us getting on stage and telling jokes. It’s almost like us showing a slice of people’s lives and hopefully its funny.”
Narrative comedy like HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm follows an improvisational method that is built on a predetermined structure. But DUMMY largely performs without a net.
“People ask us if we have a structure or format or if we come in with anything, but we really don’t,” Doyle said. “It’s conceivable that the show is 45 minutes in real time, one scene and one location, but sometimes we jump around and we might see people in multiple times and places and us portraying different characters. It’s just wherever we feel the show is taking us.”
This approach has its roots in the influence of Chicago duo TJ Jagodowski (whom you may recognize from the prolific, improvisational Sonic Drive-In ads) and David Pasquesi. TJ and Dave’s act includes an hour of improvisational dialogue that often subverts an audience’s expectations. Doyle and Shotts have a special, easygoing chemistry that makes their flavor of improv unique. This may be in part due to their romantic relationship, but it’s also the result of their early days performing in the Second City.
“When you’re in a theater town, it’s easier to do longform improv because [audiences are] familiar with it from seeing plays,” Doyle points out. “They’re more patient. It gives you more room to take risks and fail and succeed.”
Having moved on from a proving ground that fostered a level of experimentation, Doyle and Shotts seem to derive the most artistic satisfaction from patiently exploring the space between their respective characters and letting the humor emerge naturally. It’s obviously a little more controlled than their live show, but a short sketch from their old YouTube channel distills much of what makes them so appealing.
Doyle and Shotts mine humor from the simple misunderstandings and equivocating that makes up so much everyday conversation. Their sharp craft and endearing charisma elevates that naturalistic tone into something truly engrossing.
But it isn’t always easy.
“We’ve been to cities where you sense pretty quickly that the audience has never seen a longform improv show and doesn’t know how to react to it,” Shotts says. “So we have to open the show up more with a little speech to explain what they’re about to watch.”
No strangers to Washington, Doyle points out that D.C. is not one of those cities.
“It’s a really savvy crowd here. There’s a great improv scene in D.C., and great teaching.”
The District Improv Festival runs from Wednesday, November 9th through Saturday, November 12th. All shows are at Source (1835 14th St. NW), hosted by Washington Improv Theater, except two Friday night performances at The Unified Scene Theater (80 T St. NW). Please check the festival website for the full schedule.
