In the afternoon, I recorded a couple of hours with a teacher from the UCB whom I’ve wanted to interview for some time. I’ll be whittling that down to a podcast soon. And in the evening I did my first podcast recorded live in front of an audience. The show was at the People’s Improv Theater and featured three teachers, Ed Herbstman of the Magnet, Nate Starkey of the PIT and Porter Mason of the UCB. For both of these, I was using my new digital recorder and I think it came out great. I posted the podcast up today. I hope you enjoy it.

One thing that I especially liked about the panel interview approach, is that the conversation flowed quite naturally and I think we each gave each other ideas. The end result is probably better than if I tried to interview them separately. One topic flowed to the next and when we finished–about 20 minutes over–we still had plenty to talk about. I hope I’ll be able to do these live panels again.

If you are an organizer for an improv festival or schedule shows for a theater and would like me to do one of these live at your venue, please let me know.

And finally, if you are in New York, and enjoyed this live podcast, do me a favor and pick out another show to see at the PIT, go to see it and be sure to tell the manager that Kevin Mullaney from the IRC Podcast told you to go. Thanks!

John “Dr. Wimpy” Ward, was a very dedicated and passionate member of the New York improv scene over the last eight years. He took classes, performed and was a huge supporter of others. He often appeared as an agent with Improv Everywhere. He was a funny man and by all accounts a joy to play with. He started doing improv in his mid 50s. This last Sunday he passed away very unexpectedly.

Auditions for improv teams were held the weekend before he died at the UCB Theatre. It’s a collective freakout the community goes through every year as hundreds of UCB students compete for a handful of coveted spots on Harold teams. And among the hundreds of hopeful 20 something kids, desperately wanting to be on a team, was John Ward, a man in his 60s who looked remarkably like my childhood vision of Santa Claus. He was one of the few that got a call back, and I bet he was as thrilled as anyone to be seriously considered for a team.

It’s hard to resist the urge to reduce a man’s life down to a simple life lesson. I’m sure there was much more to John than his improv career, judging from the stories trickling in about his life before improv. But his example is an obvious slap in the face to anyone who thinks that it’s too late for them to be an actor, a musician, a writer or a comic.

If you’d like to learn a bit more about John, I’ve included some links:

• A tribute on the Improv Everywhere site
• A thread on the Improv Resource Center following the news of his passing
• John’s page in the IRC wiki

If you knew John and have things you’d like to share about him, please feel free to add them to his wiki page.

This week my guest is Billy Merritt who performs and teaches at the UCB Theatre in LA. We talk about premise based Harolds (Pirate Harolds, Robot Harolds and Ninja Harolds) and his character based performance classes where he has his students to create a single character over eight weeks. We also discuss character wheels, the cube edit and the hawk edit.

Caitlin’s work as a writer can be seen at omgoose.com and ucbcomedy.com (with her beta team Diamonds, Wow!).

And don’t forget to become at fan of the podcast on Facebook:

To take a class with Kevin, check out the classes page at UCBTheatre.com. He can be seen performing with Reubin Williams on Saturday nights and also writes videos for UCBComedy.com.

Now you can become a fan of the IRC Podcast on Facebook:

This week I started pages for the New York groups Centralia and Burn Manhattan. I also started a page for Inside Vladimir, a long running Chicago team that featured Tina Fey and Amy Poehler (I added some info to both of their pages also, but they are still a bit sparse). I also added a little information on a team I was on and coached in NYC called Ice-Nine. There is also a fairly new page for the team Leo Callahan and updates on the pages for the Magnet Theater and New York performer Micheal Short.

There are lots of pages that could use some love. I’m trying to get the guys from Vladimir to add more information about the group to their page. I was a bit surprised that there was not a page for The Real Real World, given it’s long run in New York and the many early UCBT improvisors who were a part of that show. There was also a Chicago version that included many performers from Vladimir. I’d also like to get something up for the Living Room. This was a show created by The Family in the 90s at ImprovOlympic (now iO) and also featured Fey and Poehler. It had a very simple format of creating a fake living room on stage where the performers could discuss issues and tell stories and then jump up and do scenework whenever an idea came to mind. The goal of the original run was to make a TV pilot, which did get shot, but wasn’t sold to my knowledge.

If you have information about any of these items that you would like to add, please start an account there and add it.

I next heard a little bit about it on the January 4th UCBTNY Podcast featuring John Frusciante and Will Hines. Anyway, I thought I would just post something to plug the show and share the video. It’s quite fun. Enjoy.