Interview by: Nico Roy, Guest Writer
Welcome to the Mess Fest Interview Series! Through Mess Fest, we will be sharing interviews with many great comedic minds across the festival. Today, Roy speaks with Kathy Thompson, a third-year Comedy Arts major and creator/director of Fac-Off about the difference between high school faculty improv and university faculty improv, directing people in authority positions, and watching Diane Claussen play an eight-year-old child.
How would you define Fac-Off?
Fac-Off is a faculty and student improv show, so we have faculty and students from TTS. It’s a show to highlight the fun of improv and put some faculty members in a situation they may have not been in before, and just have fun with it.
What drove you to create this show? What was your inspiration to bring these two, sometimes similar and sometimes very different, groups together?
So, I actually did this in high school; we had some teachers along with our improv troupe and it was super fun! Last year during Mess Fest we were going to do a faculty scene thing where faculty would rehearse scenes that students directed, and that’s where the name came from. I believe Tisby Critchley came up with the name “Fac-Off,” so we’ll credit her there. It ended up falling through because faculty is busy, students are busy, and getting it all together for a rehearsal process was not going to happen. I was thinking about it, and it brought back memories of the improv show I did, so I proposed this because it’s a lower stakes environment, just doing improv, and it’s easier to coordinate since not everyone has to be there at the same time.
What was the experience like for you working with professors here at TTS? Was it different from high school teachers?
It was actually a lot different than it was in high school. The high school teachers were a lot more willing and able than the TTS faculty have been, they understood it was a low stake improv show. Here at TTS when I was reaching out to some of the professors, they were kind of hesitant about it. One, because they’re professors at an institution of theatre and I think putting them outside of their comfort zone might have been a bit too scary and jarring for them. Some of these professors have such a reputation that they uphold, so doing this type of show they might have messed up a little and we would have laughed, which might bring them down a peg in the society of TTS.
It has been a lot different between the two, but in the end, this has been super fun with the crew that we have. They’ve been so willing and excited to learn improv, and I’ve done a lot more teaching of improv than I did in high school. It’s been really fun to use what I have learned to teach these people who know a lot about theatre, know a lot about performance, know a lot about what the audience views, and help them see through a comedic lens.
It sounds like both professors and students have gained a new perspective, what would you say you’ve gained from this experience? Did anything surprise you?
Authority plays a role in everything. One thing that was really hard for me at the beginning was all of these people that were in the show had been my professor at one point, and although we all call them by their first names they’re still a person of authority. So, to lead the room and have them listen to me was such a switch for me! I think that was something I had to adjust to, and something I’ve learned is that authority is just an ever-changing concept in that it’s never set in stone and doesn’t have to exist in anything. I think in our rehearsal process we’ve created a pretty level playing field of understanding and asking each other questions and deciding things as an ensemble. I am the director, producer, whatever, but I don’t feel as if I have authority over anyone in a dominating sense. It was a good experience for me to learn that you don’t have to yell at someone to get them to listen to you, even if in the past they had a position over you. You don’t have to compensate. There’s more fluidity than I realized.
"It was a good experience for me to learn that you don't have to yell at someone to get them to listen to you, even if in the past they had a position over you. You don't have to compensate."
That’s really valuable! I wanted to hear a bit about the structure of the show, can you talk about what we might see on stage?
We’re going to play some improv games, a lot of short form stuff. Maybe a guessing game, maybe some more character-based things, a gimmick game. We’ll do some fun audience interaction things, and it’ll just be a really fun time for everyone to enjoy laughing together. The personality of each professor comes out in different ways in the improv scenes, which is really funny to watch: to see Diane Claussen up there, playing Diane the Head of Theatre Management, but also playing an eight-year-old child who really wants a fork from their mom. It is just really funny to see the congruence of them as a professor and as a person, and then the characters they’re playing in the show.
Obviously I’m so excited to see this show in all its glory, but if I was someone on the fence about seeing Fac-Off, and you had one last chance to convince me, what would you say?
When are you ever going to see Diane Claussen, Dean Corrin, and Reza Mirsajadi on stage together performing improv? When are you ever going to see that? This is your chance. Take it.
Fac-Off performs on 01/14 at 10:00 PM on the Annoyance Mainstage Theatre. Faculty members in the cast are Dean Corrin, Diane Claussen, and Reza Mirsajadi. Students in the cast are Stuart Williams, Cooper Lyke, Lucas Johnson, Tanner Sykes, Hanna Anderson, Brady Barrow, Joel Davila. Assistant directors include Sarah Johnson, Stuart Williams, and Lucas Johnson. Fac-Off is double billed with Asian Americans 4 You.
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