Touring To Toronto

PERFORMANCE

This weekend I traveled to our neighbor to the north - (Canada, that is) for the 2008 Toronto Improv Festival with an improv comedy show called "The Spotlight with Sean Taylor" which is one part late night talk show and one part long-form improv with a dash of musical improv, (that's where I come in) thrown in for good measure.

We were all really psyched to make The Spotlight an international sensation this weekend, and I think we did the job. We performed in a theater called The Comedy Bar on Bloor Street which, while still under construction, proved to be a really cool space and the audience was chock-full of Canadians and Americans alike who laughed quite heartily at our 30-minute set.

In tech with Host Sean Taylor and Sidekick Matt Shafeek

Our lovely audience (sat in these seats)

So, you may be wondering to yourself, what this show is all aboot, eh?

Well, it breaks down like this:

After host Sean Taylor interviewed a guest who was selected at random from the audience about their experience on TV, the improvisers took to the stage using parts of the interview as inspiration for their long-form improv set. I interjected with an improvised commercial break for Maple Syrup (what else?) and at the end of the show we asked the audience to give us a suggestion of a made-up song title which turned out to be "Distrustful Harmony" (love it!)
That's when us "Musical Guests" took the stage, (guitarist Babsy Singer and I) to improvise a 4-minute tune that went something like this:

I gave you my baby to care for, and you dropped it down a wishing well
I asked you to feed my kitten, but you forgot and then you old me to go to hell...
This is my Distrustful Melody, This is my Distrustful Melody
I'd ask you to sing with me
To make a Distrustful Harmony...

...something like that. Hopefully I'll get a clip of it up here tout de suite (as the French say) so I can give you some cold hard proof that I'm not lying about it. We had a lot of fun in T.O. and our hosts were nothing but friendly and not-surprisingly incredibly helpful. I'll tell ya, nothing melts the hearts of us hardened New Yorkers like the soft embrace of a caring Canadian.

All in all I'd say it was a pretty successful show and Canadian/U.S. relations in the improv community remain strong.

Here's a picture of the cast and crew, post show...