Guest Blog: Actor Sarah Kempton on the Art of Improvisation and Ten Years of CSI: CRIME SCENE IMPROVISATION

In 2012, six years after becoming a professional actor, I got a calling….Spiritual? No. Profound? No no. Important to saving the world? Absolutely not. Fun? YES AND it turns out, life changing.

My hobby was now my job, so I needed a new hobby…I tried hockey - I used to play at school, what could go wrong? (Everything, it was awful.) Then for some reason, I started improvised comedy classes.

It was a small scene in London at the time, few gigs, fewer training opportunities and a distant memory of ‘Whose Line is it Anyway?’. But I felt like I’d not only found something I could love as much as traditional acting, but I’d found my tribe. A warm, friendly, welcoming, hilarious tribe.

I quickly learned improv in the UK was comedy’s dirty little secret. Not considered an actual comedic art form.

In 2014 I was part of a group of five people who decided to create an improvised murder mystery show for theatres. We wanted to put the audience first and create a show not just aimed at the improv community, but for everyone, a mainstream theatre going, comedy loving audience. How scandalous. This year we’re celebrating 10 years of CSI: Crime Scene Improvisation. It seems to have worked, maybe people do want to see improv after all?

We were more shocked than anyone when our first year at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2016 was a success. We played to illegally overflowing rooms every single day. We were turning audience away for an hour prior to our start time because the room was already full. The room next to us had a stand-up in it, his room always had space, so our turned away audience would go and see him instead. We helped fill this guys room for a month. How unfortunate for him he’d pre-scripted a 15 minute bit about how terrible improv was, where he’d gleefully mock it and take the piss. Thanks to improv he had a full room…ah the irony.

In the US they’re years ahead of us in considering improv a legitimate art form. I challenge you to name a successful American comedian/comedy actor who didn’t start in improv. I’ll wait for you to google….keep trying….yep, see what I mean? So why is it still relegated to a joke here? Look, maybe we Brits lean more cynical, and the idea of enthusiastic people wearing matching t-shirts makes us recoil. But here’s a secret….that’s just not what improv is anymore.

London based schools like Free Association and Hoopla have grown exponentially and incredible improvised shows like Austentatious and the Olivier Award-winning Showstopper! have driven the form forwards into the mainstream. There are more incredible improv acts across the UK that I could name, performing every different genre of improv imaginable.

So here we all come, proclaiming “yes and”, “I’ve got your back” and “can I have a word please?” as we emerge from the shadows.

We now live in a world where any entertainment we want is on our screens whenever we want.

I have subscriptions to five streaming services. Five. Yes, of course I use other people’s logins for most of them, sure…..but to drag an audience into a theatre you need to prove why. And guess what? Improv is designed to be live. What improvised shows do is create an utterly unique live experience that only that audience in that room, at that time, will ever experience. The show is created by and for the audience. There’s magic in the room. It’s the ultimate live experience.

CSI are about to return to perform at the stunning Wilton’s Music Hall. A piece of history, the oldest music hall in the world. That space was built for communication between performer and audience. That’s what music halls were - a live experience shared by every person in the room for that one moment only. So, it seems only right that we can contribute to that history and that space with a comedy style that suits it to the bones - improv.

CSI: Crime Scene Improvisation is at Wilton's Music Hall on 28 September

Production Images Credit: Jayda Fogel

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