All this month, Avocado Improv are taking the reigns of writing for us to allow us to explore more about the team. This week we delve into the harsh realities of improv and the admin that is involved…

Doing the show is the best part. That brief moment in time when everything stops and nothing else matters. But once we step off stage, real life hits hard. 

Most of our time is spent thinking about shows, planning shows, organising tech, finding new venues, printing posters and flyers, designing posters and flyers, and last but not least, the ever-changing beast that is social media. We probably can’t hit all of these in four hundred words, but there’s a few worth discussing.

First thing’s first, most of our admin is improv admin. How did the show go? What parts do we need to work on? What’s going on with that opening? Besides speaking for hours on end about the moves we made, the moves we should have made, and that time we walked through the table, the opening and closing of a show can be a real headache. Do you wing it? Do you say the same thing every night? What music to play, what are the lights doing? It’s a process that keeps evolving through each show, thinking about how the opening made you feel and how it made the audience feel. Which parts got them excited, which confused them, which made them wanna pretend to go to the bathroom and never come back? There’s an art to creating an opening to a show, or any break in the action for that matter. From the moment the audience enters the theatre to the time they leave, you have the power to blow their minds.

Second up is venues. Now, it is possible to do improv anywhere, but having a stage certainly helps not to look like a total fool. Well, we still look like fools, but fools who people have paid to see. Improv is a beast all its own and some venues either don’t like to programme it, or don’t know enough about it to know they want to programme it. It’s our job to show them why it’s such a great artform, and maybe also how they could make money too. We recently went on a tear, reaching out to venues all over town with a little package we put together. We designed it, put some basic info, some reviews, lots of photos, basically we put the feeling of Avocado into six pages of pure joy. It was simple, eye catching (least we thought so), and had everything a producer needed to know. Turns out, it worked. We kept track of everyone we emailed, when we heard back, what they said, the details of their venue, and ended up booking a bunch of gigs. 

It took effort, but anything good does.

To find out more about the team head to www.avocadoimprov.com

Upcoming shows by the team:

– Oct 5, Barons Court Theatre, 9:30pm

– Oct 11, Omnibus Theatre, 9pm

– Oct 25, Barons Court Theatre, 9:30pm