Getting to Know More About Blaine Swen and THE IMPROVISED SHAKESPEARE COMPANY

Increasingly, it seems, all roads lead to Nashville – or at least everyone seems somehow to have a connection to our fair city. Case in point: Blaine Swen, the creator and director of The Improvised Shakespeare Company lives here – a fact unknown to me until I tracked him down to belabor him with questions about his company’s upcoming performances at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center on November 10 and 11.

Of course, because I am the very definition of cool indifference, I didn’t ask him what that’s all about, leaving that part of the investigation up to you, dear reader. Here’s my plan: You get tickets, go to the show and then pepper him with questions about his personal life and report back to me.

The shows are set for Friday and Saturday, November 10 and 11, at 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. both nights, in The Andrew Johnson Theatre. For ticket information, go to www.tpac.org. 

Until you are face-to-face with him, you can find out about Blaine and the critically acclaimed Improvised Shakespeare Company today.

All About The Improvised Shakepeare Company: Based on one audience suggestion (a title of a show that has never been written), The Improvised Shakespeare Company® creates a fully improvised Shakespearean masterpiece right before your eyes. Prepare for an evening of spontaneous comedy using the language and themes of William Shakespeare. Nothing has been planned out, rehearsed, or written. All of the dialogue is said for the first time, the characters are created as you watch, and if ever you're wondering where the story is going...so are they! TimeOut Chicago calls it “Staggeringly Brilliant” and “Downright Hilarious!” You've never seen the Bard like this before!

How did Improvised Shakespeare Company come about? My first experience improvising in the style of Shakespeare was doing just a short five-minute scene as part of a larger show, like they do in Who’s Line is it Anyway. Then, I performed with groups where we would experiment with performing in the style for up to an hour. Eventually, I founded The Improvised Shakespeare Company in 2005 while I was a student at The Second City Conservatory. The student stage at The Second City was a great place to develop this show. After our inaugural run there ended, Charna Halpern invited us to come perform at the legendary iO Theater where we have run since 2006.

How do you prepare for a show? Is it different from regular improv? Our preparation is more like practicing for a sport than like a traditional play rehearsal.  Since we don’t have established lines or choreography, we focus on building skills that we will use onstage. For example, like with regular improv, we practice listening, supporting each other, and reacting emotionally. Unlike regular improv, we also practice things like speaking in Shakespearean vocabulary and rhyming. At times we have met regularly with professors at Loyola University Chicago who guided us through Shakespeare’s canon. We take time to watch Shakespearean plays or films.  We’ve even studied non-Shakespearean material, like Plato’s Republic or the plays of Ben Jonson, to immerse ourselves in Shakespeare’s world and help us improvise in the style. Even with all of this, though, you’ll still catch the very heavy Monty Python and Simpsons influences on our show!

What is the normal audience response – do they really get into what you’re doing? It is overwhelmingly positive, after people see the show. Before people see it, they’re afraid it’s going to be terrible. A lot of the people who see the show for the first time are dragged there by people who have seen it before. People think, “no way this can be good” and their friends are just saying, “trust me, trust me, you’re going to love this.” Then they see it and they become the people dragging friends to the show. Now, we have people who come again and again. There are people who have seen the show more than 100 times. And people do get into it, in part, I think because there is a sort of fun cultural alchemy that happens in our plays. Shakespeare drew heavily on cultural touchstones of his day. So, we do the same. Where he would reference Greek mythology or the Bible, we might, in the same breath, reference Disney mythology or Beatles lyrics. That also makes it so that even if you know nothing about Shakespeare’s plays, you’re still going to get a ton of the references in the play.

Do you find yourself acting as a kind of ambassador for all things Shakespearean? Oh, not as much as you might think, but I do find myself acting as a gift-receiver for all things Shakespearean. I’m talking mugs, books, action figures, finger-puppets, even Shakespeare-themed mints and band-aids. It’s a go-to gift category from my family and friends.

Were you always an aficionado of The Bard? Or is this something you came to by accident, if you will? I’ve had an affinity for Shakespeare since I was first exposed to Romeo and Juliet in high school. It felt bold and colorful and I was surprised at how funny it could be. But I’d say our primary entry point to this show was as improvisers and comedians. The world of Shakespeare gave us a wonderful place full of heightened emotions to play with as improvisers and that’s what drew me to create the show. But then our improv became better the more we dedicated ourselves to learning about the world of Shakespeare. The less we spoofed Shakespeare and the more we became a love-letter to Shakespeare, the better our show got.

What’s your favorite word or phrase attributed to Shakespeare? I’ve always been a fan of “moonbeam.” As an improviser it really comforts me that Shakespeare made up words. If I can’t find the right word to say, I can just make one up!

All About Blaine Swen: Blaine Swen is the creator and director of The Improvised Shakespeare Company. His iO Chicago credits include the two-person group Blessing with Susan Messing, the house team Bullet Lounge, the one-man improvised musical, BASH!, The Armando Diaz Experience, The Deltones, and Challenger. He has also performed in Chicago with The Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Pegasus Players Theatre, The Second City Education Company and The Backroom Shakespeare Project. He has toured the country with The ISC, the iO Road Show, and The Second City’s BizCo. His television credits include Crisis (NBC) and Odd Couple (CBS). The Chicago Reader has named him the “Best Improviser in Chicago.” Blaine has a PhD in philosophy from Loyola University, Chicago. Find him on Twitter @BlaineSwen.

photos by Kiera Lytle

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