Here’s a CBC Canadian Improv Games documentary featuring GISS Improv, the 2019 National Champs:
GISS Improv Team Bats 0.429!
GISS Improv is returning to Ottawa for the sixth time to compete in the Canadian Improv Games national competition, where they hope to reach their highest potential as performers and transform into one great fire-breathing being with five heads, five hearts, and a batting average of 0.429.
These improvisers will spend the next two months leading up to the competition traveling near and far to commune with nature and perform for people of all ages, hoping to gain the experience and electric charge needed to create a (mostly metaphorical) explosion onstage. Our team represents the brunette faction of the school, choosing to express themselves through various brunette-hairstyles, as well as a uniform that is usually comprised of denim, lucky tokens, Off-White sneakers and a ‘KISS’ inspired logo.
—Amelia McCluskey
“Grandma’s Cooking: She is the Recipe”
Coach’s Corner: the ingredients of great Improv… GISS style
Discovery – This is what excites me the most. I try to play confounding and baffling games to cultivate a condition where we create things that we could not create outside of the context of this immediate shared experience. Group monologuing, word association/chiiiaaps, theme-rolling, metaphor-mining…physical patterns, both expressive and behavioral get repeated, heightened, exaggerated and explored towards some pay-off and discovery. We build vocabulary in our platform and then apply it towards an illusive potential pay-off. It’s lofty, but our aim is for some shared universal human truth (rooted in the ideas that everything is connected and that the most personal is the most universal).
Princeton Offense / condenser mics– We borrow this from the world of college basketball and bluegrass or jazz instrumentation…We endeavor to create a system of shared playfulness where there are no position players (narrator, protagonist, refrigerator, etc) but that we wake up in the middle of improv scenes and can all play the position necessary in that moment. This is predicated on the idea of tools not rules, we try to keep deep tool boxes filled with sharp tools so that when we are called upon to do the job we are ready to do that work, present and purposeful in the moment.
Zen and dasein – a little bit of equanimity and a pinch of Heidegger, with a splash of Kung Fu Panda …the lines between tools and players, instruments and artists blur and we become one in the flow of the moment. The secret ingredient is inside of you, yet if you only do what you can do you’ll never be more than you are. Maybe I get this from my grandma’s cooking: she is the recipe. I am trying to dismantle the notion of effort and harness the body of delight that can exist when we have nothing to prove and nothing to lose but play for the love of creation and discovery in the face of fleeting and irreplaceable time.
GISS Improv’s Coach is Jason Donaldson is the father of three sons, plays mandolin, loves baseball and has very little experience with alchemy. He teaches theatre on Salt Spring Island and has been coaching CIG since 2002. b.a: 0.429
Enjoy an evening with the GISS Improv Team:
| Thursday March 1st, 6-8pm | GISS Improv x Cafeteria Dinner Party | $15/$10 |
| March 5 & 7 | Greenwoods and Braehaven… | for residents only! |
| Saturday March 10, 7:30 pm | Royal Canadian Legion branch 92 | Show $5 |
| Friday April 6, 7:30pm | ArtSpring show and silent auction with very special guests | $10 |
Photos: John Cameron
Compositing on top photo: Claire Robertson
GISS Improv, National Champions
The Canadian Improv Games are a national theatre competition that started in Ottawa in 1977. Over the years a number of notable Canadian performers have got their start on the CIG stage including Sandra Oh, Seth Rogan, Alanis Morissette and Tatiana Maslany. Having started in 1977 means that this year is the Fortieth Anniversary for the competition. Eighteen teams from across Canada compete during the week and on Saturday night five schools competed for the championship. About the Improv Games
Jason Donaldson has been the coach of the GISS Improv team since he began teaching drama at the high school. In past years GISS has made it to the competition as the Vancouver Island rep or a wild card but never has one of his teams made it to the finals. This year his six students ranging from grade 9 to grade 12 made it and managed to win by only 1 point! The students are Kane O’Scalleigh, Fiona Pirie, Shaye Steele, Melanie Gregory-Worsell, Amelia McCluskey and Peter Hoskins.
Story: Rob Pingle
Top Photo: GISS Improv back on the ‘rock’ with the gold! (Philip Reece)
See also: GISS to National Finals and Improv at ArtSpring
GISS to National Improv Finals in Ottawa
You know that old saying, “You have to play the Mayne Island Agricultural Hall before you can play the National Arts Centre”?
It is so exciting for these six improvisors from Mayne, Pender and Salt Spring Islands (grades 9-12) to be going to the Canadian Improv Games national finals in Ottawa, our nation’s capital. Having won the Vancouver Island Region, they have earned a spot among the top twenty teams from across Canada. It’s a story of tremendous patriotic symbolism. It is no small distance from Salt Spring Island, B.C. to Ottawa, Ont. We travel the farthest distance out of all the other regions in the country, to converge on parliament hill and the stage of our National Arts Centre.
It’s a phenomenal opportunity for these kids, from our little islands, to take part in workshops with some of the best trainers on the continent and compete with the top twenty high school teams from here to Newfoundland — not to mention touring our national galleries and museums, visiting parliament hill and hopefully meeting with our MP as well.
See GISS Improv in action: Legion Branch 92, Saturday at 7:30
A live improv-gram will be auctioned… Send someone a real live improv scene.
Stay tuned for more events and information about how you can help support the team and see them in action. They have shows scheduled for Mayne Island on April 7th, Pender Island on April 8th and Salt Spring Island on Monday April 10th. Then, they fly to Ottawa for the tournament April 19-22.
There is a raffle underway, a silent auction in the works and donations are gratefully accepted at fundrazr.com/gissimprov
The team is made up of grade 12’s Melanie Gregory-Worsell, Peter Hoskins and Shaye Steele, grade 11’s Fiona Pirie and Kane O’Scalleigh, grade 9 Amelia McCluskey and their coach, teacher Jason Donaldson.
GISS Improv has made it to the national tournament before. This is actually their fifth time since they started participating in the region in 2004. The last two times they made it on the online wildcard ticket and before that they went back to back in 2007 and 2008. So, it’s been nine years since they last got to hoist this trophy and a decade since their first regional championship.
They have to raise a lot of money in a very short period of time to make this come true. It is Canada’s 150th, The Canadian Improv Games’ 40th and a once in a lifetime opportunity for these students.
story: Jason Donaldson
photo: John Cameron
