PHOTO CREDIT Keith Huang

Imagine, if you will, standing onstage with nothing but a brief suggestion from an audience member for the musical you're about to perform. Who knows what your fellow actors are planning or what score your accompanist will provide? But you're confident that by the end of the sketch, you'll have performed something more than a rough draft of a might-have-been musical.

Musical improv groups, with names such as Once Upon a Time, Face, and Don't Quit Your Night Job, have recently popped up all around New York. In hopes of exposing audiences and engaging actors in the new form, starting tonight the Magnet Theater will host the Musical Improv Festival, with six performances tonight and another six Saturday evening.

"Musical improv scares me to death," says T.J. Mannix, the festival's co-producer. Such a sentiment isn't so reassuring for New York City actors interested in melding traditional improv with the stage musical form.

"A lot of performers are terrified to get up there without a director, without a composer, without a choreographer," Mannix said. But, he continued, the process keeps the audience on the edge of their seats and the actors on the tips of their toes. "It's great to see improvisers who might be afraid of singing and singers who might be afraid of improvising come together onstage and make it work." 

Much of the musical-improv structure comes from the direction of the accompanying musicians. An audience suggestion gets things going and then the accompanist sets the tone for the first song. One minute the actors may be engaged in a love story, but then with a turn in the music, they begin a murder mystery plot.

Michael Martin is a member of the group The Made Up Musical. He describes how Frank Spitznagel, the group's accompanist, picks up on elements within the scene that the actors present, or may have missed, and steers the sketch with the music he provides. 

"In a way, he's directing us as it happens," Martin says. "When I hear him come in, I know it's time to up the emotional stakes of what I'm doing."

Martin believes the new format "brings improv to a higher level," and a lack of specific scene preparation in no way correlates to a lack of refinement.  Improv actors study music, yoga, even clowning, to be applied to a sketch if need be. The performers taking the stage this weekend want to prove improv musicals can stand up to their rehearsed counterparts.


For more information about the Musical Improv Festival, visit www.nymif.com.