Johnstone

• Improvised comedy TV show Thank God You’re Here returned last Wednesday after a 14 year hiatus, with its premiere drawing an impressive 684,000 viewers.
• The premise sees each celebrity guest costumed into a character – who is a complete surprise to them.
• Improv grew from a set of strategies for training actors to a performing art in its own right.

Introduction to improv: from theatre to television

• The commercial success of improvised performance, peaking in the late 80s and 90s is often attributed to theatre sports.
• Theatre sports is credited as the brainchild of Keith Johnstone, whose 1979 book Impro, drawing on his experience as an educator and associate director at the Royal Court Theatre in London, is a mainstay of theatre studies reading lists.
• Part of his legacy is the term “the Johnstone school”, the principles and techniques emerging from his Calgary company Loose Moose Theatre.

Cringe and diversity

• Amy E. Seham, now a professor of theatre and dance, was a trailblazer in the critiques of improv’s homogeneity with her book Whose Improv is it Anyway?
• In the book she quotes then Australian Theatre Sports director Lyn Pierse, whose female players were “railroaded by the men onstage”.
• But the early announcement Pacquola would host inspired optimism for at least the gender skew of the series.

Improv down under

• As improvisation researcher Braínne Edge wrote in 2014 article, the US iteration suffered from “an awkward tension” between the core cast and the celebrities.
• The lack of improv training of the celebrities saw them “effectively blocking and denying the action” – one of the key transgressions of improv.
• The success of the original Thank God You’re Here in Australia – and hopefully the new season too – may owe something to earlier improv training grounds in Australia.
• For Australian comedy and the profile of improv, it might just be a case of thank god you’re back.