28: Artist’s Brain - Roy Janik - Narrative Improv, Building International Community, Owning an Improv Theater
This is another episode in our Artist's Brain series where we interview improvisers and other artists about their creative process. Our guest today had an enormous impact on my (Andrew Pish’s) life, and first, let me set the stage…
In 2009, I was an engineering student in my first internship which was at a naval research laboratory in Austin, TX. My desk was directly across the hall from a door that had a sign that said “TOP SECRET” in big bold letters. The door also had a keypad with a code to get in. Scientists and engineers would quickly type in the secret code, rush in, and shut the door before I could lay my eyes on all those sweet, dark, naval secrets. This is the place where I began to have doubts that engineering was the right career path for me, and this is when, while I was checking my Gmail, I saw an ad for improv classes at the Hideout Theatre. That was the start of a journey that forever changed my life.
Enter our guest, Roy Janik, one of the owners of the Hideout Theatre and a member of the 16-year-old and internationally-renowned improvised theater company Parallelogramophonograph, or PGraph for short. Roy and PGraph were major influences on the narrative improv scene in Austin, TX when I started improvising, and he was my first improv team's coach. As you'll hear, Roy is a complete delight - positive and warm and insightful, and that's the character of improv that hooked me for life.
On this episode, we talked about the realities of being an improv theater owner, his narrative improv influences, lessons we all can take from narrative improv, how virtual improv can connect us with the international improv community (which has a lot we could learn from), and his book that he wrote with PGraph on narrative improv called Do It Now: Essays on Narrative Improv.
If you want to connect with Roy you can find him on Instagram @royjanik and you can find more about PGraph on their website www.pgraph.com where you can also order a copy of their book called Do It Now: Essays on Narrative Improv. It is jam-packed full of great insights and lessons to take into your improv.
Also, if you're in Austin, TX when the world opens back up, please check out the Hideout Theatre downtown, it's the place where I started improvising and I couldn't recommend it enough. The Hideout also has a twitch channel at twitch.tv/hideouttheatre where you can see Roy as well as a bunch of other hilarious improvisers perform.
You can also see Stormchaser perform live on facebook.com/stormchaserimprov. For show times and other fun bits from the podcast connect with us on Instagram @stormchaserimprov.
And before you go, if you’ve enjoyed the podcast, could you please leave us a bright, glowing, eloquent review on Apple Podcasts? We'd really appreciate it. KTHXBYE.
