All this month we are celebrating acts that you need to look out for in 2025. Today it is the time to put the improv act Rumourville on the stage and find out all about what they have in store and the shows you can expect!
Hello tell us all about your improv troupe?
Pete: Rumourville is a long form narrative show about how a rumour causes all manner of shenanigans in a certain location.
Sophia: It’s a very adaptable show, we can perform it in 20 mins or an hour, which is great for gigging on the mixed-bill London circuit.
Claudia: Individually, we have very different approaches to a similar kind of stupid.
Helen: we are 5 experienced improvisers, coming together to spread spicy rumours, that make audiences laugh and characters cringe.
Matt: Mid- to longform improv that takes inspiration from the wonderful, flammable and at times totally inconceivable world of rumour-mongering.
How did your troupe come about?
Pete: We were hand picked by the original founder who thought we’d work well together. Like The Fast & The Furious Crew. We’re also all about family.
Sophia: We actually started as a group of 17th Century Pilgrims dealing with a Scarlett Letter -esque situation. Our show premise, I mean. Our troupe came together quite peacefully.
Claudia: friends of friends of plus ones! We all gravitated around similar improv communities.
Helen: for me the question isn’t how we came together, it’s how we have stayed together! Lots of groups fall apart but we have grown stronger as a team, perfecting our craft, winning over bigger and more challenging audiences and getting featured on the BBC. This genuinely is a lovely close group of friends, who love each other as much as we enjoy performing together.
Matt: A combination of the right people knowing the other right people and all said people being in roughly the right place at sort of the right time.
How was 2024 for you?
Pete: It was great! We produced some double bills, did some fringes, and got offered our first mainstage shows. Which was nice.
Sophia: by Mainstage shows, Pete means our first PAID gigs! We worked really hard to promote and rehearse for these shows, and also ended up doing a live show on BBC radio!
Pete: Oh yeah, we were on the radio. Should have led with that.
Claudia: it was filled with a lot of satisfactions and gigs. We would be nothing without Sophia, who not only is a great player but also an incredible producer. She is training us to be her assistants and delegates.
Helen: Busy! Which is what you want as performers. So much stage time perfoming together, and with other exceptional teams.
Matt: Pretty good, but nothing compared to what 2025 is going to be.
How did you get into improv?
Pete: It was part of the stand up comedy society at my University. It was uniformly terrible, and resembled improv as much as football hooliganism resembles a Broadway performance of ‘Miss Saigon’. I moved to Calgary a few years later and a friend invited me to a course run by Rick Hilton, one of the OGs who learned under Keith Jonhstone in the 70s. There I learned it had rules, and formats, and I enjoyed it immensely and knew I wanted to do it consistently.
Sophia: I also joined the comedy society at university, and loved the low-effort vibes of not learning any lines, turning up after a days’ work and projecting whatever weird mood I was in onto the scene just to see what happens. Now I’m more experienced, I know it’s actually a lot of thought and focus – just as much as scripted comedy.
Claudia: I Bugiardini, an Italian group based in Rome, was doing auditions for their improvised musical, BLUE. I sent an email saying “I am completely unqualified, I just wanted to say that I like your show”. They invited me to their school and there I started. When I moved to London, I landed one day and the next I was already in an improv class.
Helen: I went to audition for a play, walked into the wrong room and ended up auditioning for an improv group. No one was more surprised than me when I was selected to be in the Oxford Imps, and 15 years later I’m still perfoming.
Matt: Enjoying making people laugh too much not to pursue it, but ultimately being too lazy to write stand-up.
What was the top 3 highlights for you?
Pete: Our first Cambridge Fringe, with such a great, unexpectedly large, audience. Our BBC Upload radio session. The terrific response we got at this year’s Brighton fringe.
Sophia: Our Radio Gig, but specifically when I gave Helen the suggestion to be Pete’s Mum in a game where he was guessing who-is-who. She played it so well and I hope his actual mum heard it live. I also have enjoyed producing and selling out our double bills alongside other teams such as Dinner Daddies, Comediasians, The Workplace, and Lost The Plot.
Pete: She did.
Claudia: doing a show somewhere and then seeing the same people in the audience of a completely different gig; Brighton Fringe; seeing Sophia’s face when she learn we have sold out.
Helen: Cambridge Fringe, Brighton Fringe, BBC radio
Matt: Brighton Fringe, Cambridge Fringe, being asked to come back to lots of shows.
What was the key lesson you learnt from last year?
Pete: Don’t coast on the format. Things can always be improved and refined.
Sophia: There is maybe such a thing as being TOO ambitious, both on-stage and off! Sometimes saying and doing less is more effective.
Claudia: on stage, follow the path of shared enjoyment, first and foremost.
Helen: production is half the battle of performance. listen and learn from your team. be open to criticism and comfortable giving feedback to grow as a group.
Matt: no matter how badly a show goes, the next amazing one is always around the corner.
What are your plans improv wise for 2025?
Pete: Produce more of our own shows, and hopefully get a semi-regular venue somewhere.
Sophia: I think we should do a debut solo hour in London. Big Things Coming. Big Things Coming!
Claudia: perform regularly in the same venue with this lot! And help out more with the production side of things.
Helen: be the best at our craft, and recognised as such on the improv circuit.
Matt: Keep on keeping on.
What other improv acts are you looking forward to seeing perform online or in person to this year?
Pete: There are some fantastic American Improvisers that do character comedy, who I’d fake my death to see perform; Andy Daly, Carl Tart, Vic Michaelis, Lisa Gilroy, to name a few.
Sophia: I’d like to see Paul Merton and Suki Webster’s Improv Show at some point, as I missed it at Edinburgh Fringe this year!
Claudia: The Bazar! Then, I really love what is happening in West London with Blanche Improv. Also, Matt does half of a two-prov show called “Every Everyday”, and it is fantastic.
Helen: I will be looking out for the big names, but I’m most interested in discovering the new acts that nobody knows yet. So I will be looking out for the up and coming talent.
Matt: Whoever we end up opening for.
What styles do you hope to see more of in improv this year?
Pete: I personally think we need more groups consisting of eight men and one woman. Frankly there’s not enough. That, or more audiences flocking to longform.
Sophia: I want to see more shows that take ideas from a simple short-form ‘game’ and expand that to a full length show – pretty sure ours is like a less violent version of chain murder.
Pete: I am determined to make it a recurring bit, regardless of plot. M Night Shyamalan has his twists, we’ll have our Mob justice bonfires.
Claudia: I hear lots of improvisers looking for a space to do organic, slow-burn associative long-form.
Helen: long form, unscripted comedy theatre
Matt: anything that’s fresh and unashamed to be different.
What improv troupe is your ones to watch in 2025 and why?
Pete: Rumourville all day, all month, all year baby.
Sophia: You should also check out Every Everyday which is our very own MATT PRESTAGE’s show along with ADI GEORGE. It’s so different to what we do here – they have much maturer approach than our ‘I heard you like your climbing harness too tight oooooh’ -type shows.
Claudia: the first that comes to mind is this trio called “The Bad Boys of Improv”: they are a fairly new team and they are incredibly funny.
Helen: Pete is always right.
Matt: Any group that people don’t describe as ‘wacky’.
Do you have any new years resolutions? If so what are they?
Sophia: Mine is to not play characters I fall into, mainly airheaded girlies or mob wives. I have more sides than that, surely?
Pete : Play more airheaded girlies and mob wives.
Helen: push myself with character work and physicality to try new roles, yet undiscovered
Claudia: finish all the improv books I have bought in the past two years.
Matt: Be louder. But only when no-one else is speaking.
Are you on social media? If so how can people find out more about your troupe?
Pete: We are ‘rumourvilleimprov’ on Instagram and nowhere else. We have the social media presence of Daniel-Day Lewis.
Claudia: We mostly use that account to promote our work and keep up with Moo Deng. Just like Daniel-Day Lewis.
Three words why people should come and see you this year?
Pete: Come on now.
Sophia: Rumours are silly
Helen: Adele endorsed rumours.
Claudia: You will laugh.
Matt: We’re pretty good.
Welcome to The Phoenix Remix 