(From February 2016)

After my first attempt at improve comedy with Improv 304, it was clear I needed practice, guidance, and aspirin.

“I thought it was funny,” my videographer, Lisa Bernheim told me on the walk back from my first workshop. “I laughed.”

Maybe, but I wanted to crawl under a rock. I needed help. Fast.

So, I reached out to Tony Slack for advice.

Slack joined the No Pants Players 10 years ago. He was brought in by Jason and Jamie Dunbar, two of the troupe’s founders he’s met through the Kanawha Players.

“I was part of the second wave,” Slack said.

But he had no real experience.

“They encouraged me to give it a try,” he said. “But it took a year before I was really comfortable with it, and I don’t think you’re ever perfect.”

Each of the troupe members has their own particular style. Kevin Michael Pauley and Jeff Bukovinsky have always seemed more cerebral. Adam King is kind of a geeky madman, but scruffy, easygoing Tony Slack is a sort of comedic bulldozer.

Slack just plows forward. I don’t recall ever seeing him stall or stop. He said he’s still learning, but he tries to cling to the fundamentals.

“Every game is always ‘yes, and…’ You always agree, but you can add to that, take it in different directions.”

Also, try not to think, he said. That might have been my chief problem, Slack said, trying to think ahead of what was happening.

“Come in with a blank slate,” Slack advised. “Just let it all come out, whether it’s offensive, stupid, funny or not.”

Thinking can shut down scenes.

Improv comedy is very top of mind. The jokes come organically, he said, but the whole thing requires a little bit of faith in your friends.

“Trust the other guy to come in and save you,” he said.

Slack has done dozens of shows over the last decade. He said going out on stage with The No Pants Players was addictive and that after a while, he didn’t really see the audience anymore. He just saw the people in the troupe.  

“But you feed off the laughter from the crowd,” he said. “You always hear that.”

Improv had been good to him and it was also good therapy.

“If you screw up, you just carry on. You can interject your own life into what you’re saying, get it out, get rid of it, and there’s a release.”

They’re kind of life lessons, too.

Lately, Slack has decided to step away from performing with the troupe –at least for a while.

“I got a couple of grandbabies,” he said. “We want to spend some time with them while they’re little, and just life, you know?”

I’d planned to take what Tony told me back to Improv 304, but then missed the meeting. So, I reached out to the No Pants Players to ask if I could maybe come watch one of their workshops.

They said, “Come, check it out. Do some games with us even.”

The secret lair of the No Pants Players lies buried deep in the bowels of a local home healthcare office.

Finding the place was a little challenging. The group meets after business hours, and there was no sign advertising where they were. No one waited to let me in. Instead, the front door to the eerily deserted waiting room had been left open.

Another door led to an empty hall

It felt like any second, somebody was going to jump out waving a pistol, but after about a half a minute of wandering around, some people who worked there sent me to the troupe’s unofficial clubhouse in the very back.

Surrounded by signed superhero posters, with plenty of comfortable places to sit, the troupe worked through a new and complicated game called “three rooms.”

Three pairs of players were tasked to act out three very different scenes. As a particular scene was acted out by one pair, the director yelled, “change,” and another pair of actors picked up their scene using whatever the actors in the previous scene had last said or done.

It was weird, nonsensical, and frequently funny, but the troupe didn’t have the timing down. They weren’t moving fast enough, they thought.

“This game doesn’t have to have resolution,” Bukovinksy said and reminded everyone to always pay attention.

It was a lot to keep up with, but the game was something they wanted to debut soon.

“Three Rooms” was just one of several exercises to work through.

Over the course of a couple of hours, the group worked through either exercises to improve skills or games they planned to do soon. They joked with each other in between working on segments for an audience.

They even encouraged me to jump in from time to time. Without a little prodding, I probably wouldn’t have left the safety of my comfy chair, but I didn’t do terribly.

Still, it was clear I was the outsider.

“We’re a family,” Bukovinsky said. “At our heart, that’s what we are. We aren’t just people who get together and do some comedy, we’re real friends.”

That easy chemistry helps with the comedy, too, they agreed. You trust your friends and you know what to expect out of them.

“We rely on being comfortable with each other,” Adam King said.

Because they’re comfortable as they are, the troupe is slow to add new members. The newest players have been with the group for three or four years. Even the almost supernaturally young-looking Ryan (looks 15 is 25) has performed with the No Pants Players for almost four years.

They only really add new players when others, like Slack, move on.

Bukovinsky said, “People leave sometimes. Things come up. Usually, they get too busy, but so far, we haven’t really had anyone leave angry. The door is sort of always open, if they want to come back.”

For anyone getting started in improv comedy or any kind of performance, they said it was OK, natural, normal, and even helpful to be nervous or afraid.

King said he still gets dry heaves before shows.

“I used to throw up,” he added.

It’s an improvement, really.

Bukovinsky said, “Fear of failure makes you sharp. A lack of fear is bad. The second you think you’ve got this all figured out is the second you fail.”

The trick is to work through it, work around it or just use it to keep going.

And always, listen, but don’t think so much.

It felt like I had a better grip on this.

“I got a couple of good chuckles from you,” Bukovinsky told me as I was leaving. “That’s pretty good.”