Improv troupes and performances abound in Southwest Florida. There was improv recently at Fringe Fort Myers, and Sarasota Studio Theatre hosts the 15th Annual Improv Festival in July. Veteran Stage 2 Improv player Kat Ebaugh weighs in on her approach to making improv magic.
“[Improv] should be very organic,” said Ebaugh. “If it’s not, then you’re trying too hard and that’s when the laughs end up not happening, at least in my experience. For me I really just have to turn my brain off and really listen and really react and that’s when the beauty happens.”
Stage 2 co-founder Judith Santos thinks she knows why people love improv.
“It’s almost like reality TV,” said Santos. “They’re excited about throwing out a suggestion, that a suggestion gets taken, and if it does well, ‘Omigosh, that was my suggestion. They did it great.’ And if it doesn’t go well, ‘Omigosh, that was my suggestion, and they didn’t get it.’ They’re still excited. It’s a win no matter what we do. So when we fail, we fail with a smile on our face, and we fail big and it’s great. And when we do well, we’re excited and we have a big smile on our face.”
Since improv performers take their cues from the audience, Stage 2 co-founder Mike Santos offers this tip on how to get the most out of the next improv show you attend.
“The best kind of suggestions from the audience is something we’ve never heard before. Abraham Lincoln, we get a lot. We get traffic. We get a lot of golf. It’s just whatever people can think of off the top of their head. But the more creative, the better.”
Continue reading for more tips and insights into the improv experience.
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Since its debut in 2013, Stage 2 Improv has been captivating Southwest Florida with its unique blend of fast-paced, unscripted comedy. Known for members' expertise in short-form improvisation infused with musical elements, the group crafts original scenes and songs live, all based on suggestions from the audience.
The troupe has continually evolved, expanding its repertoire to include long-form improv, murder mystery shows and sketch comedy. Members' dynamic performances highlight their creativity, quick wit, and talent for engaging crowds of all ages.
In addition to theaters, Stage 2 Improv performs in bars, restaurants and country clubs throughout Southwest Florida.
Before forming Stage 2 Improv, Mike and Judith Santos had performed with other improv troupes. But in 2008, they put together a group to participate in an open mic night on Fifth Avenue that featured a number of stand-up comics.
“We were the only ones getting laughs that whole night,” said Mike Santos. “It worked out great and we decided we might really be good at this.”
Judith picked up the story from there.
“The Naples Players wanted to have a show during the summer,” she said. “They had a spot to fill, and we were leaving this one group and out of the blue, that’s where Stage 2 came from. It was the second stage of an improv opportunity. And then we kind of came up with a group, held open auditions, just a whole bunch of people came out and tried and we ended up taking on a lot more people than we thought we could. It’s like a continual class for us and for them. It’s been great. We just have fun with it.”
That’s when Kat Ebaugh joined the troupe.
“I grew up doing theater and improv at the University of Miami,” Ebaugh said. “They had a kids' program during the summertime, and it was something I really loved to do. When I first got involved with The Naples Players, I was teaching and I met Mike, and then I met Judith, and they were doing auditions. I have been back and forth with them as long as I’m in the country, and I really enjoy it.”
While many other improv groups have come and gone, Stage 2 Improv has endured.
“We are proud of the fact that we have a lot of longevity, and what’s really great is that when country clubs hire us, they might hire us every two years because they think that we will switch it up,” observed Judith. "And we do. We switch up players. We switch up themes. We switch up games. That’s what’s beautiful about what we do.”
“Every show is different,” Ebaugh emphasized. “Any time that we get together, no matter who’s in the show, you could have even the same cast, but everyone’s day is different, so they’re going to react differently to how they’re getting the information from the audience. Every audience is different. So even if you’ve seen us once and you go again, it’s going to be a completely different experience.”
While the number of players in the troupe varies, Stage 2 currently boasts a roster of 16 players.
“We don’t play everybody in every show,” Judith Santos pointed out. “We usually just throw it out there and see who’s available, and then we kind of max it out depending on the size of the venue and the space. We’ve done shows with as little as four and as many as 10. But we try not to have that many players in order to maximize the amount of stage time that each player gets. But when we do have a large group, we’ll play a lot of group games in which everyone can play. But we prefer to keep it in the six range.”
Since the troupe performs skits, short form improvisation and games that are based on suggestions from the audience, whom they feature in a given performance is usually based on availability rather than skill set.
“Everyone has a regular job,” Mike Santos noted. “I work in theater and Judith is a banker. But we try to make sure that we use people that we know can get thrown anything, adjust, and make it fun. There’s something to be said about someone who can just improvise anything. It might not be funny, but it might work with another person is doing, or it might be silly enough to keep the ball rolling in terms of a scene. So there’s a lot of different factors, but it’s a willingness to be silly and run with the 'yes-and' philosophy.”
“We never force somebody to do something that they’re uncomfortable doing, but we do encourage our players to try novel situations,” Judith Santos added. “We do have players that are better singers. I, personally, enjoy the singing side of it, and I leave a lot of the physicality stuff and all the big movement stuff to other players.”
Over the years, Stage 2 has found that improvisational games work best for both players and audiences.
“They’re like the show ‘Who’s Line Is It Anyway?’ said Judith. “It can be a variety of things. It could be a group elimination game where you can only speak in questions using a certain topic, or it can be a song game where we’re all taking a turn singing about a certain thing, or it’s a scene game with two players talking about something but every time someone dings a bell, you have to change a word at the end of your sentence and you have to keep changing it, keep changing it until the dinger stops dinging and then you continue your scene.”
Players have to be quick on their feet and be willing to look foolish.
“It’s life with limitations, which is exactly what we all have,” Judith noted. “It’s the opportunity to work and play in a world of yes and just trying things on for size and having fun with it.”
Ebaugh, in particular, loves the yes implicit in improv because it provides that rare opportunity to live totally in the moment.
“It lets me turn my brain off for a moment and really just experience the now and react genuinely and honestly to the current situation, while also making people laugh.”
She especially likes doing “song games.”
“When they work, they’re great,” said Ebaugh. “I really love it when we do the Day in the Life musical because it incorporates both scene work and song.”
In this game, the troupe asks for a volunteer from the audience and asks them to describe what they did that day prior to coming to the performance. Then the troupe gets three random songs to go with three things that happened to the volunteer during the course of their day.
“We have no idea what the music is going to be, but when it plays, we have to make up lyrics about those three things,” Ebaugh explained. “One time someone just went to the paint store. And we’re like, ‘Anything else?’ And they’re like, ‘No.’ And I sang a minute-long song about paint chip colors. It was actually really funny.”
By contrast, Ebaugh finds playing various animals a bit on the weird side.
“One time, an audience member suggested a koala,” Ebaugh continued. “I said to myself, well koala, that should be pretty easy to act out and have someone guess and understand. But when you think about it, koalas just sit around and eat eucalyptus. So I just started climbing someone slowly and pretended to eat leaves off of them. I don’t know how they got it, but they got it.”
“The thing that I love the most is getting to play with Kat and especially getting to play with my husband, Mike,” Judith Santos chimed in. “If we were auditioning for a play, getting cast together would be rare. So this gives us an opportunity to do so much more than you’d ever be able to do in theater,”
As an added bonus, they get to be just plain silly.
“I’m not going to speak about myself,” Judith continued. “I’m going to speak about Mike. We do this game called Four Things, where we try to guess an activity through mime and gibberish. For example, it might be someone playing Monopoly, but rather than playing with someone normal, you’re playing with Rasputin, and you’re sitting on a hippopotamus. So through mime and gibberish, we’re trying to get Mike or any of the other players to figure out those things, and the fact that Mike got Rasputin was the craziest night that we ever had and it just blows my mind.”
This just goes to show that anyone can have success if they’re willing to embrace the yes.
“People don’t realize how much improvisation happens throughout the day,” Mike Santos said. “I think what’s really cool is that sometimes you’re better at certain things than you think. I’m not a very good singer, but for some reason we got the suggestion of the mile run. Like everybody in high school had to do the mile run. So I did this very slow, jazzy version of it where I was walking the mile run. And I was proud of that, you know, lightning struck in my bottle there onstage. I’m not very good at singing but in that instance, you never know unless you try. And I think that’s the cool thing and some of the people in our group didn’t know they were good at improv until they tried it, and then they kept coming back and getting better and better and better. And I think that’s the thing we should kind of remind people. Come see the show, but also, don’t be afraid to go take an improv class or just go to more improv things.”
Next up for Stage 2 Improv are three shows at the Arts Center Theatre on Marco Island. Performances are June 28, Aug. 2 and Sept. 20.
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.
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