Time Out Chicago says:

Spontaneous Combustion: All-female troupe Sirens proves improv is more than theater's bastard child

By Novid Parsi | Time Out Chicago

ON THE FLY The women of Sirens make it up as they go along.

Last fall, I saw a comedy called Clutch that had me laughing for weeks whenever I remembered the offbeat, often hilarious slice-of-life writing. It wasn't until months later that I learned the script I so admired didn't exist; everything I saw had been improvised.

Clutch's creators, Sirens, a six-year-old all-female improv comedy group, perform long-form, narrative-driven sketches, as opposed to short-form improv games in which some rule (like starting each word with the next letter of the alphabet) structures each sketch. But why did I think the entire show was scripted?

Lillie Frances, Sirens' director, says my impression is a typical one with long-form improv. "People say, 'Those characters were so awesome. How do you memorize all those lines?' And you're like, 'That was made up.'" Frances attributes that reaction to the character-based realism of their brand of improv. "Long-form is like an improvised play," Frances says.

And that's what was striking about Clutch: As in a scripted play, characters had goals to achieve and conflicts to resolve.

Though considered a distant barefoot relation to single-author drama, improvisation involves an interactive give-and-take that, as many playwrights attest, is central to writing plays, too. Not simply about putting pen to paper, playwriting often uses the spontaneity of bodies in real time and space. So then why is improv considered the bastard child theater never deigns to claim as its own?

Frances hints at an answer when she explains her role as director. Directing improv is "like a basketball coach working with a basketball team," Frances says. "The coach can't plan out the entire game, but [he or she] can definitely run that team through drills and exercises that make them stronger players and focus them as an ensemble."

That team-player, collective-writing quality of improv points out how all theater involves the back-and-forth of many players. So acknowledging improv as an integral member of the theater family might rock the playwright's (already rocky) status as the family's only child, or primary artistic voice. In an art form that still places the text above all else, it's tough to value a genre that doesn't have a text.

Clearly, scripted theater isn't the same as improv, where nothing that's said can be taken back. During rehearsal for Sirens' latest show, Paso Doble, one improviser delivers a monologue in which she's the butt of an office prank, getting slapped in the face with shaving cream, only the words accidentally come out "shaving can”leading to a broken nose and other unexpectedly comic mishaps.

But while the ten Sirens talk about that one-off, unpredictable quality of improv, any theatergoer knows that serendipity takes place in traditional theater, too, where no two performances of the same script are identical, and where the language can seem so fresh and true-to-life that the actors appear to think up the words as they go. As playwright Bruce Norris puts it, writing for the stage is "like improvising...just like sitting in a room and improvising by yourself." One Siren, Erin McEvoy, flips that analogy: "Improvising is writing. It's just that it's only going to be done that one time." In both cases, creating a free-flowing environment for creativity is the key.

After rehearsal, the Sirens head out for margaritas and Tex-Mex, and dish about everything from men to taxes. It's clear these more casual interactions are an extension of their rehearsals. They listen, then talk to and over one another--like in improv and in real-world relationships.

By the third round of margaritas, one Siren mentions the group's "confluence of personalities," then stops herself: '"Confluence.' And I'm drunk." Another says, "And I had to struggle for 'complacency.'" To which the first deadpans, "Who doesn't?" Both then turn to me and joke, "Write that down! Write that down! "
Really, someone should.