Do Not Adjust Your Stage
Published: Thursday 31st May 2018
Anyone embarking on a comedy career will need to get prepared for performing in some weird and not-so-wonderful places on the way up: basements, back rooms, the back rooms of basements. But hey, one day you might get to play the National Gallery.
The improv posse Do Not Adjust Your Stage will be doing just that this Friday night (June 1st), all trooping past the famous Trafalgar Square pillars with the show Blank Canvas. How does it work? "Curators of the gallery will choose paintings from their archives to inspire improvised comedy scenes, sketches and characters," says a blurb. "Neither the performers nor audience will have seen the artwork before, making for a unique and totally spontaneous evening of comedy."
Which is not your average live set-up. So we got DNAYS's Tim Grewcock to take us back through their troupe's history, from local pubs to global gigs - they've played Paris, New York, Chicago, and London's National History Museum, with their previous show, The Wunderkammer.
The question, is do those venues ever have to adjust their stage?
First gig?
We've been gigging together since we met in Sheffield in 2007, but we weren't Do Not Adjust Your Stage then. Our first gig under this banner was at The Miller - now Hoopla Comedy Club - in November 2011, and the first format revolved around TV being taken off the air so we had to fill the channels with improvised programmes. Great fun, but we were allowed two hours, which is a lot of improv!
Favourite show, ever?
Hmmm, tricky - can we name three? It's hard in a group of seven performers to get a consensus!
Top three have got to be Soho Theatre in 2017; playing to a packed house on the main stage at UCB New York; and Blank Canvas at The National Gallery.
Worst gig?
A show we did in Amsterdam - there were 100 stony Dutch faces looking back at us, perplexed, as we did a run of scenes about Dion Dublin.
The oddest thing you've improvised about?
Ok, you asked... a giant walk-through arsehole that was built by an artist for Burning Man festival and then transported to the British Library for an installation. That was very odd.
Who's the worst improviser you've ever come across?
The brilliant thing about improv is that everyone in the community has probably been the worst at some point. Plus we're all too nice to say!
Are there tricky challenges when doing shows in galleries?
It's usually to do with staging. The National Gallery is great as they have an actual theatre and it's all set up for shows, but we've had to adapt to all sorts of stages. Whether it's a giant squid hanging from the ceiling (Natural History Museum) or the rumbling of trains overhead in the Vaults - we've got pretty good at just rolling with it.
What's your best tip for keeping a big improv group together?
To rehearse every week, and to book shows abroad if you can so that you can have fun holidays you get to call 'work.'
The most memorable review, heckle or post-gig reaction?
Probably a Danish man who told us "First experience, impressive experience". We often find a big chunk of audiences have never seen improv before, so we always want to give them the best impression of it as possible, and it's great to get feedback from first timers.
How do you feel about where your careers are at, right now?
Pretty good - Shaun and I have just released a short film called SPOKKE, which is going well. Matt's writing for TV, Helen is producing shows with the next generation of vloggers, Nick won the Bafta Rocliffe Comedy Award last year and Rhys is in Amsterdam performing with Boom Chicago whilst searching for Edwin Van Der Sar. So it's all good!
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