Interview: 'I Think It Is One of Our Funniest Shows': Actor Jonathan Sayer on Improv, Having Fun and The Origins of MISCHIEF MOVIE NIGHT

Mischief Movie Night, the hit improvisational show from the comedy group Mischief, returns to London this month. The show is different every night, with audience suggestions helping to create a new film every night!

Recently, we had the chance to speak with Jonathan Sayer, who plays Oscar in Mischief Movie Night. We discussed how the show was actually the start of Mischief, what it is like to do improv versus scripted comedy and some of his favourite moments from past runs!

---

So starting with a bit of a general question, how did you first get involved in the worlds of theatre and comedy?

Since I was very, very young, I've always been fascinated by comedy groups and just making people laugh. I used to watch Morecambe and Wise, who are an old UK double act, at my grandma and granddad's house, and I always thought that's what I wanted to do. And then I started to do drama clubs as I got older, went to drama school and all that kind of stuff, but the thing that has always got me really excited is comedy.

So going to the Edinburgh Fringe and seeing comedy groups there, seeing comedy shows, and before that, just watching every possible comedy I could, like Monty Python, Smack the Pony . . . Just everything, really! So doing professional acting training, but knowing that my passion has always been the creation of laughter.

And for those unfamiliar with the show, can you tell us a bit about Mischief Movie Night? 

Of course! Mischief Movie Night is a long-form comedy improv show, so everything you see is made up. It begins with me introducing myself, as Oscar, who's a tremendous film buff -  he's got every single film that's ever been made, every film the audience could possibly imagine. The premise is that the audience choose a film from Oscar’s infinite collection of movies, and then we go from there.

So the audience suggests a genre of film, the location . . . So it could be a horror film that's all about angry squirrels! Then the audience choose a title - the title could be This Is Nuts!, for example. And then Oscar, or Emmy, digs out the DVD and we watch it. So I have a remote and I can press play, and then all of the guys improvise the entire movie together over the next hour. If it's really good, then it just plays through. And if they make a mistake, I can pause it and point out why what they've done is ridiculous. We can rewind it, fast forward it, we can cut to other movies, DVD extras, all that kind of stuff, but it's very audience-led as well. It's all entirely inspired and based on whatever is suggested each night.

What inspired the creation of it? 

Well, that's actually how Mischief began as an improv group! So there is a wonderful man called Adam Meggido, who was the director of Peter Pan Goes Wrong and Magic Goes Goes Wrong but also is the co-creator of Showstopper! The Improvised Musical. He also ran the foundation course at LAMDA [London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art]. And so for everyone that did that course, and indeed, everyone who went to LAMDA on the three-year courses like I did, improv was just a really exciting world that you got a lot of access to. And so Mischief started taking improv shows to the Fringe, the Canal Cafe and the Hen & Chickens. So this is one of our first-ever shows! It was called Lights, Camera Improvise back then, but this is how we started as a group.

And so what is the creative process like for creating an improvised show like this?

It's quite hard to explain! There's two bits of it. So back in the day, there was the creation of the framework around the show, which is what I just explained - there's someone who has every movie ever made and these are the things that we're going to ask the audience for, and the idea of being able to pause and rewind and working out the language of it, which was all just done in rehearsal, discussing and chatting as a team, coming up with ideas, throwing stuff in. And then, how do you improvise a long-form show?

The way you rehearse is you practice the skill set. So if we were to improvise a scene, I have to guide you, and you have to guide me. So I might say, “Oh, Jemima, good to see you! I've not seen you out of the house since your husband left you,” and then you have that bit of information, give me information and we work out where we are. We co-write a story as we go and we set up the who, what, where, what the protag wants and all that kind of stuff. And everyone's furiously trying to remember that on the sides! You just say “Yes, and . . .” Like that movie, Yes Man - you literally just say “Yes, and . . .” To your colleagues' ideas.

So there's practising that and doing opening scenes where you try and get all the information that you need to get nailed down. And then just doing the show a lot! Doing it in Edinburgh, doing it in different venues . . . We did it over the lockdown as well, but working with an audience and just working out how to do that stuff whilst being amusing, funny and playful. So there's two levels to it.

So you're going back to your roots by bringing Mischief Movie Night back. What is that like? 

It's really exciting! We've brought it back a few times, so it's a really lovely way for all of the company to touch base with one another because everyone's doing different stuff. It's a way that everyone can get in a room. It's really nice to do because it's fun and because the premise of it is all about encouraging, and supporting and making one another look good. All of our values as a company live in some ways within that show. It's good for the creative process. It's a really good environment to be in for creating new stuff in general. But yeah, it feels really good. It's always very fun to do, always very exciting. It's connected to when we were super young, when we were like nineteen, twenty and working together. So there's loads of good, happy memories with that show. But then, it is just a really lovely tool, creatively, to be able to do long-form improv and drop into that show.

And what is it like to be performing an improvised show like this versus a scripted show, like one of the Goes Wrong shows?

With a Goes Wrong show or any written show, you have to be so specific. You're working towards something, and you have quite a lot of control over getting to that. Whereas with improv, you have very little control. And you're not working towards a fixed, “This is what we want it to be.” You have a set of principles, but where it is is totally flexible. So it's a slightly different mindset, I suppose.

Doing a written show, it's about being playful within a very, very tight framework and improv is being playful in a quite loose framework and being able to be playful within the unknown, which I think is quite a good thing. It teaches you quite a good life lesson as well because when stuff is a bit chaotic, when you're not quite sure what's going on, you can still laugh through that and enjoy that. I suppose that's what it's about.

It's different every night, which is super fun for an audience as well, right? It creates super special shows because - and we've always tried to replicate this with the Goes Wrong shows as well - the idea that “Oh my god, whatever is happening only happens tonight. It's only for whoever is in this room tonight.” It's a really unique shared experience. I think it's impossible to have an[other] art form where the audience and the performers feel as close to one another because you are super connected.

Do you find you have a preference for scripted versus improvised comedy?

No! I think a big part of Mischief and my ethos on life is to move around a lot in general, to do as wide a range of things as you can. And they complement each other! Doing scripted work really teaches you, “This is how you deliver a joke. This is how you build something. This is how you invest in character,” whereas improv is a lot more like, “This is how you create stuff. This is how you keep your mind open.” As you get a little older, it's very good to do improv because it keeps your mind open - it like stops you getting fixed on one track because there's too many tracks for you to possibly hold in your head.

Do you have any favourite moments from previous runs of Mischief Movie Night?

So many! Really early, back in the day, there were some phenomenal shows in Edinburgh when we were just starting out and we'd sell out the theatre - which is like eighty seats - but that was super exciting. We did this dance movie that was half fantasy, half dance - it was like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but they went into this fantasy dance world. I remember that being hilarious.

I always remember there's this bit where Harry Kershaw fell in into a wooden box and we kept rewinding it and making him do it again and again. More recently, we did these lockdown shows and a few outdoor shows during the lockdown and all of them were just really memorable. In part, just because it was such a privilege to be able to do stuff at that time, and in our very small, quirky way we were really helping out during the pandemic, providing something to give a bit of kind of levity to the day. There was Henry Lewis playing a talking armoire, that was funny. Harry Kershaw doing the conga alone was very funny. 

[Laughs]

There was a moment Nancy [Zamit] was doing this scene with Dave [Hearn] and she was like, “Goodbye,” and she threw this hat, not thinking, and it just landed on Dave's head. That was superb! And her response being like, “Oh, my God, I can't believe that just happened!” That was great.

There was a very weird thing about like, it was a joke about Bryony [Corrigan]’s finger that I can't quite remember now, but I remember that being very funny. It's a really lovely show to get to have a giggle with each other. A really special thing about Mischief shows is, quite often, the audience are invited to laugh at the performers And with Mischief Movie Night, there's definitely a lot of laughing at us, but we get to laugh with you quite a lot as well, which is pleasant.

What do you hope audiences take away from Mischief Movie Night?

Just that it's totally dynamic! It's really, really different. There's not a tremendous amount of improv in the West End that's long-running. There's Showstopper!, there’s Austentatious, so there's more, but just what a unique art form! And it's super fun. Hopefully, there'll be a mixture of like, “Oh my God, how did they do that? That's quite impressive!” But also, when we fail, just like, “Oh my gosh, that’s so funny!” I think it is one of our funniest shows. In an hour, you can guarantee that you're laughing a lot. And you get to know us all a little bit! I think that's a really fun thing about improv - you get to know our personalities a lot more. No one's got a script ahead of them. It is just that person, their brain and whatever the given circumstances are.

And finally, how would you describe Mischief Movie Night in one word?

Chaotic!

Mischief Movie Night runs from 29 July to 1 September at The Other Palace.

To post a comment, you must register and login.