Zach Ward recently visited Austin for the annual SXSW festival. Zach has spent the last 9 years building North Carolina's DSI Comedy Theater into a major national player, hosting an annual improv festival in Carrboro, NC, now called the North Carolina Comedy Arts Festival. While Zach was in Austin for ten days this March, he managed to catch shows, teach, perform stand-up, sit in with improv troupes and meet most of the improvers in town. Over breakfast tacos and a gospel band at Maria's Taco Xpress, on the last day of SXSW, Zach talked with us about his experiences being immersed in the Austin Improv scene, what makes a good improv festival and the psychology of tag-outs.

What are your impressions of Austin and the Improv scene here?
Austin was awesome. I have been here for ten days. The people were great. Public Transportation is amazing. $1.50 to ride all day! Every place I went felt like hip Carrboro, but twenty times the size. Like a magnifying glass hovering over a small local town with twenty times the amount of hip locally owned businesses. Over the course of two weekends I played and saw improv shows in every improv house in town. Played at ColdTowne, played at the Hideout, saw stand up at Esther's Follies, did a show at Salvage Vanguard with the Frank Mills, and taught a workshop.
I think there is so much crossover and so many people doing so many different things at so many of the theaters in town, which is great. Even going to The Hideout and seeing pictures of teams up at the wall that I actually saw play at a different theater the night before was great! Having drama and infighting between comedy theaters is such bullshit. And even seeing the pictures of the AIC Thanksgiving Potluck was awesome. In North Carolina, DSI has a huge community around it and there is other improv stuff in the area, but people are so afraid to make nice. You guys have theaters that are 15 minutes from each other and you are still friends. I deal with theaters that are a 50 minute drive and there is nothing. So, I have been impressed and excited by this. There is a theater in North Carolina that celebrated their 20th Anniversary this week, and just being in Austin made me think of community a whole lot, so I woke up Friday in Austin and posted congratulations on 20 years to that other theater on the front page of my website, encouraging DSI fans to help them celebrate this weekend and go see shows there. Austin inspired me to do that. And the whole Idea of the AIC itself... just to think there is an organization that exists wholly to market and brand improv within the city is awesome.

What did you bring back to North Carolina from your time in Chicago and what will you bring back from Austin?
I had a lot of fun in playing in Austin. I got to play a style that is different than how I normally play. I got to slow down. Playing with and watching The Frank Mills was great. I want to play a more grounded and paced show and see how that feels. All of the students at DSI, I've taught them how I play and my style of show. I've played a slower style before, it just has not been my every weekend approach, but now I think I might try to bring that back in. My style of play is much more New York. I'm very game heavy. I heighten quick. I go absurd. It's not that I avoid relationships. I have significant detailed relationships when I play, but when you see me play, it's not that one-act-play feeling.
When I was in Chicago I appreciated my training. I appreciated the ability to see so many different kinds of shows, successful and not so successful. But I also took back things that I knew I did not want to do. During one of my classes, I did a tag out into a scene where a classmate was referencing the Bible and being vague and general. So I tagged in and called her out for being vague and general. I thought it was going to be a quick button, with a quick edit and we would move onto the next scene. I was not trying to judge her, I just wanted to get them out of there and move on. My teacher asked me to stay after class and told me that if I ever treated a classmate like that again, I would not be welcomed back. I did not mean it to read like that all, nor did I want to put anyone into that kind of situation. I learned that I cannot risk having my moves misinterpreted on stage, so now I try to support people unconditionally and be positive regardless of the move that could be made. It helped me understand the psychology of moves. So in my teaching now, I'm all about the love. Improvisers and characters are different. But if you do not play with that person all of the time, if a character is berating you, it gets hard to differentiate that the improviser might be berating you. That led me to think about conflicts and how much can be misread by your scene partner and the audience. That was nine years ago, and that has stayed with me.

What makes a good improv festival?
A great festival takes care of the people that are at the festival and makes sure they are appreciated for what they bring to the scene. It should be like working for a start-up. You might not have a great salary but you better make sure you have stock options and great benefits. Be Google and have a foosball table in the break room. Provide that positive atmosphere where everyone is on the same level. Whether you are a college group or a professional group, parties should never be or feel elitist; they should bring the entire community together, where college troupes can be shoulder to shoulder with the professionals and feel just as important. Who else is praising you for doing an awesome improv show? Not even your parents. At DSI, we try to put a younger group with experienced groups we know will knock it out of the park, so that younger troupe can go back and say, " I played with _____." And the experienced troupes can say, "Hey I saw your show before ours. Great job!" It means so much, and what a way to go back to your college campus for your four shows or so that school year with the experience of sharing a bill with a troupe from NYC. It fosters those relationships and building that community. But at the same time while you are having this cool event in your town, you have to think about how to elevate improv to the general public. The festival is a great excuse to reach out to the business community. As a producer I have this event that elevates the local population of our town by 4%. At DSI we try to reach out to every local business and say, "You will want to be a part of this." Also, every year we try to raise the bar to the next level. Next year is our 10th year. I'm already trying to think of ways to get more people involved and what can be better and bigger. Most improv festivals that have died off have stopped concentrating in one of those three areas. They have stopped taking care of people, they have stopped reaching out to the local community, or they have stopped looking for that next piece of the puzzle.

Labels: DSI, improv, improvfestivals, interviews, northcarolina, zachward