Bad Dog rising

Scrappy theatre company marks its territory in the Toronto improv scene

BY DAVE MORRIS

Vancouver has one. Winnipeg has one. New York and Chicago have several. Toronto has had one for two years now, but many people don't know about it. Yet.

The Bad Dog Theatre belongs to a rare breed -- it's the city's only space dedicated to improv, the art of performing without a script in front of an audience. The non-profit theatre has done what many arts groups only dream of: turning a small storefront on the Danforth into a theatre with two performance spaces where they run several shows a week and a range of training workshops. And the theatre, which celebrated its second anniversary with a bash this past Saturday, has become a hub for the local scene.

"Sometimes we've been out there on the street flyering hours beforehand, saying, 'Hey you want to come see a show?'" says Kerry Griffin, Bad Dog's artistic director. "Lately, it's really been starting to come together."

With the closing of Second City's Tim Sims Playhouse in April, the city lost one of the few spaces where sketch comedy and improv groups could rent cheap space. For those who haven't been able to move to comedy-friendly bars like The Rivoli, the Bad Dog has become one of the few viable alternatives. Their rapidly filling schedule has meant they've had to turn several groups away.

Unlike stand-up, which is traditionally the province of the rugged individual, improv and sketch comedy need a supportive community to flourish. Having a theatre dedicated to improv gives performers a place to test ideas that simply wouldn't work in a bar full of rowdy drunks. And now that Bad Dog has started to develop an audience who can show up knowing there will be decent improv onstage nearly every night of the week, the groundwork for the next generation of improvisers is firmly in place.

Most people associate improv with a certain brand of high-energy comedy, thanks to shows like Whose Line Is It Anyway?, but the long-form improv performed in parodies like Bad Dog's Stars Warz or Hairy Patter and the Improviser's Stone isn't quite the same thing. Actors challenge themselves to build relationships among each other and the audience, while moving the plot along from scene to scene. It can be hilarious, touching, irritating, fascinating and moving -- in short, all of the things that describe theatre in general.

"A lot of people came to see improv as this sort of fast-paced, shticky kind of thing, which is a little different from long-form improv," he says. "It certainly can be funny, but it also can be dramatic," says Griffin.

A veteran performer and member of popular troupe Slap Happy, Griffin helped Bad Dog transition from its previous life as the Theatresports Toronto organization. A competitive improv game created by Calgary-based improv guru Keith Johnstone, Theatresports is a trademarked show that is now performed on every continent except Antarctica.

The Toronto group started in 1983, and has continued in some form ever since. Griffin signed on in 1994 after graduating from Second City's training classes, staging shows with the company around town. After years of bouncing from venue to venue, in 2003 Bad Dog's associate show producer Marcel St. Pierre found the current space at 138 Danforth Ave. and brought the idea of renting it to the rest of the artistic team at Theatresports Toronto.

"It started as kind of a pipe dream with myself, Ralph [Macleod, Bad Dog's general manager] and Marcel saying, 'Wouldn't it be great if we had our own theatre?'" says Griffin. The Toronto chapter's board of directors thought it could work, but when the central organization objected to the use of their trademark, they settled on Bad Dog for the new theatre's name.

"In Chicago, which is kind of a mecca for improv, there are theatres like the Improv Olympic and the Playground Improv Theater," says Griffin. "We didn't so much model ourselves directly on them as much as say, well, why can't we have something like that in Toronto?"

And with Second City's closure on the horizon, it couldn't have come at a better time.

As a venue for emerging talent, Bad Dog allows new faces to climb the ranks relatively quickly. Julie Pinto, a graduate of a joint University of Toronto/Sheridan College theatre program, signed up for an entry-level class at Bad Dog a year ago. Now she's a member of the mainstage cast, performing in both Stars Warz, The Bad Dog Sessions: Improv Unleashed! and The Uh-O.C.

With a group of young, sometimes raw improvisers and a schedule heavy on shows making fun of TV and movie franchises, it can be tough to get attention from stuffy media gatekeepers. Not all of Bad Dog's shows are parodies, but tongue-in-cheek titles like Hairy Patter and the Improviser's Stone can send shivers down the spines of grown-up MAD Magazine readers with lingering pastiche damage.

But Pinto approaches shows like The Uh-O.C. as genre studies rather than cheap satire. "I've never watched the actual O.C. It's just a teen drama, like Beverly Hills 90210, The Breakfast Club, et cetera. There are archetypal characters, like the geek or the jock," she says.

"With Stars Warz, you obviously know how it's going to end," says Griffin. "The Death Star's going to blow up, but how you get there can be different every time. We tend to avoid the series in-jokes and go more for the little character moments. We make references to the shows obviously, but a lot of it is just completely improvised."

Hijacking pop culture is one way to get the audience in the door, but Griffin sees a future in developing a local audience interested in improv as a form.

"Particularly in places like Chicago or New York, people think, 'Tonight I could go see a play or I could see a movie, or I could go see some improv,' but in Toronto right now most people just say 'I could go see a play or a movie.' That's the challenge for us."