Ep. 168 - ‘Growing an Improv Scene’ with Martin James - Just Get A Real Job

Episode Transcript
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(00:05):
Hello and welcome back to Just Get a Real Job podcast with your
host me, Jamie McKinley. It's so good to be back putting
out new episodes and I thought this would be a great one for us
to kick things off with again. It is my pleasure to welcome on
the show Martin James who is oneof the Co founders of the
Glasgow Improv Theatre and has been a driving force in really
helping to grow the scene in Scotland.

(00:26):
Particularly the Glasgow Improv Theatre has really gone from
strength to strength from recentyears, and it's even running its
own classes and curriculum now. So it was great to have Martin
on the show to talk about what improv is, because we've not
really had a lot of people involved in improv on the show.
In fact, I don't think we've ever had anywhere in improv
properly on the show before. So it was really interesting to
chat to Martin a bit about what the medium is as an art form

(00:47):
itself and chat to him about what it's been like to grow a
scene from scratch, what it's like to run a creative business,
especially when it's something like the Glasgow Improv Theater,
which Martin and his Co foundershave been running on top of a
day job. Yeah, it was a really
interesting conversation and great to chat about a new medium
that we've not explored much on the show before.
So I hope you enjoy this one. It's a really interesting chat.

(01:07):
And thank you very much to Martin for all his time.
It's probably been surpassed nowwith all this lovely weather
we've been having in Scotland, but we recorded this episode on
what was at the time, the hottest day of the year so far.
So I really appreciate Martin bearing with me and that evening
and, you know, sitting inside onsuch a nice night.
It's great to have him on. Before we get into this week's
episode as well, I just want to also flag that we have revamped

(01:29):
our patron on subscriber system.And thank you to everyone that
signed up to that so far. Like all the money you guys
donate to the show goes back into the podcast.
We're putting in so much work atthe moment to keep growing the
show and to keep improving and to make this as professional as
possible. So all the money we'd been
raising really does help with that.
So yeah, if you want to get involved with our Patreon, the
lowest subscription system is now 3 lbs a month, and the

(01:52):
highest, if you want to become acreative champion, is 8 lbs a
month. Obviously, I appreciate most of
our listeners. We're in a cost of living
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But even if you just want to support this podcast by sharing
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(02:13):
family, all of that is still really helpful.
And you know, I started this podcast to be a resource.
So I always want this show to remain free and useful to
people. But if you can't afford to sign
up to the patron, there's links below the show.
You can click on that or you canjust search
justgetarealjob@patreon.com as well.
But you know, thank you everyonefor your continued support.
Like, it blows my mind how nice and supportive our listeners

(02:34):
are. And you guys honestly carry this
show so much. So thank you very, very much.
Last thing I quickly want to sayin this intro as well is please
do keep an eye on our social media channels because we've got
some exciting news dropping hopefully at the end of the
week. We've got some really, really
cool things in the works at the moment, which I can't wait for
you guys to hear about. Anyway, that is definitely
enough waffle for me. Without much further ado, this

(02:55):
is episode 168 with the brilliant Martin James.
I hope you enjoy. Just get a real job.

(03:18):
Hey Martin, how's it going? Thank you very much for coming
on Just Get a Real Job podcast on one of the hottest days of
the year in Scotland. I appreciate you staying indoors
for me this evening and and coming on to chat.
Thanks for having me Hot day hotpodcast.
No, we'll, we'll, we'll rattle through this, we'll get back
outside. It will be worth it.
But just for our listeners, Martin, you, of course, you run

(03:41):
the Glasgow Improv Theatre. You're one of the founding
members of it and you've been performing improv for a long
time. And you are the 1st guest I've
interviewed that is from an improv background as well.
So doing this podcast 4 1/2 years and we'd, we'd never
really had anyone from the improv seen on.
So I'm, I'm excited to have you on and find out a bit more about
improv for our listeners, but also chat to you about some of

(04:02):
the great work you've been doingand launching a company and, and
growing it from the ground up. So yeah, pleasure to have you
on. Yeah, not a surprise that I'm
your first improv guest. It's a very niche thing, so
there's not a lot of us. But I mean, it definitely is
growing and I mean, we'll talk about this later as well.
But like, you know, things like SNL coming to the UK and you

(04:26):
know, it's it's a medium that I think a lot of people in the UK
maybe don't also understand. They have like a stereotype of.
And then when when they go to see it, like myself, I think I
came to see Couch last week, thefirst proper improv show I'd
been to outside of Edinburgh French.
So I mean, I myself don't, you know, fully understand it.
So I'm, you know, it's interesting to chat to you about
it. But I suppose a, a good place to
start. That is what is improv?

(04:47):
The listeners that are tuning inthat maybe do have that
stereotype of what they think improv is or maybe just don't
know a lot about it, have that American view of it.
Yeah, I think the UK view of improv is very much informed by
Whose Line Is It Anyway and other short form improv stuff.
And short form is where people are playing games.

(05:09):
You know beforehand what game you're going to play and then
people are still making up in the moment.
It's still improvised but I think that's where most UK
people would be familiar. Whose line is it anyway?
Also Paul Merton's improv chums at the Fringe that that was
another big show. And then also just like
improvised improvised. I'm trying not to say a real 1

(05:35):
improvised Black Matter, like the the show, you know,
improvised Teletubbies. That would be a big thing at the
Fringe that has sort of gone away a little bit, but I think
that's most people's entry points.
But my entry point too, or the style that I enjoy more, is long
form improv, which is essentially improvised sketch.

(05:59):
So for the most part you're trying to come up with sketch
premises and act out those sketches all in the moment.
And that's coming from more of an American style of improv.
And the the other thing about improv is there's also lots of
different types of it, isn't there?
As you kind of outlined there like that, you even within long

(06:21):
form improv, there's different genres and ways of doing it and
different teachings and stuff, isn't there?
Yeah, there is. And you know, as I say, this is
a niche art form, but even within a niche art form, people
will of course get snitty and belike, well, I'm not doing this
style of improv, I'm doing this other style of improv.
But everyone should just do whatthey like and what they go

(06:42):
towards. And if you're into doing short
form, cool. If you're into doing like
narrative stuff, that's another sort of long form type
structure. And then yeah, within the sort
of UCB style, which is like Upright Citizens Brigade theatre
style game based improv, there'stons of stuff you can do.
You can do Harold's, you can do montages, you can do the movie

(07:07):
format where instead of trying to do an improvised sketch or
you're doing like a full improvised movie.
So there's lots of different rabbit holes you can go down.
I suppose the other question, I mean we'll come on to speak at
the more sort of detail, but like within Glasgow and stuff
from sort of growing your company, have you found that
like it has become more popular in the UK?

(07:27):
Do you do you find you'd managedto attract more and more people
to the scene and stuff? Yeah, for sure.
It was really tough going in theearly days.
So I started doing stuff. Taylor the 2015 start of 2016
and there wasn't many shows. There was a couple of short form
improv shows that would be run in like coffee shops and train

(07:49):
stations and random places like that.
But there's nothing really regularly going.
And it took a long time for it to build up to the point where
we're teaching classes. And that's bringing more people
into the art form because beforeyou start to have classes and a
kind of infrastructure and levels, people, people can go

(08:12):
to. And then most importantly,
giving them like a pathway to the stage.
Not simply just teaching them classes and taking their money,
but letting them get a pathway to being on stage, being in
their own teams performing shows.
So soon as we start to teach people, more people come to

(08:32):
watch the shows and that that just grows and grows.
And really within the last year especially, it's really kind of
hitting an exponential point in the graph where it's it's, it's
starting to grow fast, which is really nice.
It's exciting. And I suppose as well, with
things like tech talk and socialmedia, I think art forms are

(08:54):
able to travel across countries and faster as well.
So even if you're not in Glasgow, for example, there
might be people that watch your improv shows on YouTube or
TikTok from other parts of the world as well.
Like in America, where the medium is bigger, which then
also attracts new people to yourcontent and to your work and
stuff as well. Yeah.
Yeah, that's, that's been quite a recent thing.

(09:14):
We've we've had a YouTube account for a while, but again,
only the last year or so I've started to post like Phil shows
onto YouTube and then trying to clip out stuff just for tech
talk. Yeah, just just before I go on
here, I'm like, I've got half anhour.
Let me try and bash out a tech talk clip.
So it's it's a lot of it's a lotof work.

(09:36):
Like we're a very small team. Like it's me doing all the video
stuff at the moment. We're hoping other people can
start helping out with videos. But that is a really good way of
reaching people. And I do ask people a show
sometimes, hey, who's heard about us from Tech Talk?

(09:57):
And I'm sure there's some shy people who've maybe seen a clip
and they've came along. That's why I hope, I hope I'm
not making all these Tech Talk clips for no one and there's no
benefit to them. It's also like a isolation thing
as well though, because I mean, even with the podcast, which
nearly I've seen the start like 4 1/2 years at the moment.
And it's like slowly over time, you've built, it takes so long.

(10:17):
It's just consistency with things like that.
And the algorithms always, you know, change and you can never
keep up with them either. But you know, it's great to see
this sort of your company growing.
And I want to speak to you more about the logistics and the
running that as we go on, but I want to we all normally also
start the podcast. I want to ask about your own
personal large and so your own personal sort of early days,
because I know we studied improvin American stuff, but as as a

(10:39):
youngster, were you always interested in performing and
comedy and, and improv and storytelling, etcetera?
I think I was always drawn to, yeah, comedy and funny stuff,
and I wasn't much of A performer.
I think I would mostly just likedo bets with my friends and like

(11:01):
that sort of thing. I was never like a theatre kid.
There's a big raft of people in improv who are who come from a
theatre kid background, so I didn't have much of A
performer's instinct like that. I did some live music
performance when I was in my 20s, so that gave me a bit of
comfort being on stage without freaking out too much.

(11:26):
But the comedy stuff was just being a fan of it, knowing for a
long time I'll probably like to do stand up at some point.
And I think early on I was like,I'll probably do stand up.
And I learned about improv later, and it was from watching
improv. I'm like, oh, I think I want to
try that as well. And that's what got me into it.

(11:48):
I'm interested to ask for this because I know a lot of stand
ups who do improv as well and but I know I feel like I know
less people who do improv and then stand up secondary.
Like how do you think they interlink with each other?
Yeah, I started both at the sametime.
It's really difficult. I'm nowhere near as good a stand

(12:11):
up as I want to be. I'm trying.
I took a long year, I took like four or five years off of stand
up and I'm trying to get back into it just now.
But I was never quite able to crack stand up and difficulty
for me now as I've just done years and years of improv.
And that to me feels much easierto get laughs and do well.

(12:36):
And then when you're trying to do stand up, there's just a
jarring difference. And so when your materials not
working on on stand up, you're like, why isn't this working?
Whereas like the night before I was able to do well for an hour,
whereas I can't do well for 5 minutes now.
So I think that's my own personal thing which some stand

(12:59):
up slash improvisers might relate to.
But I think to answer your question, like I think there is
quite a lot of benefits to doingboth and benefits to being like
an improviser with improv background as thinking on your
feet as sort of like reacting towhat the audience is saying.

(13:20):
Oh, they like this, but I can doanother punchline.
I can do two or three more bits.I can make up a a new bet on the
fly because I'm used to doing like making up a sketch on the
fly. And a lot of stand up routines
will be going into like a routine where it's doing lots of
act outs as maybe different characters.

(13:41):
So that sort of stuff it can be can be really beneficial.
I just personally haven't cracked it yet.
Who, when you were sort of a youngster then you were into
comedy and stuff, who, who were the sort of big influences on
you that maybe have no shape to your approach as a performer
yourself when you do things likecouch or your own improv?

(14:02):
Yeah, that's a great question. The younger part of it is
interesting. I think one of the first big
comedic influences was Have I Got News For You and watching my
family watch it and see my dad watch it and trying to figure
out all the jokes and stuff. So I remember trying to be like,
I never wanted to be left out ofthe joke.
I always want to understand whatthe joke was.

(14:26):
And then I think from there was liking like Stuart Lee and stand
ups like that. And improv like influences came
much later on in the picture. And I sort of go into it from
podcasts like Comedy Bang Bang, so Scott Ockerman, Paul F

(14:48):
Tompkins, who aren't trained improvisers but are good at
improv. And from there like Jason
Manzukas. And then you start, I start to
really get into all the UCB stuff and tons of people from
there, different teams are like really big influences on like
what I'm doing now, I think. And did that sort of lead into

(15:11):
you going to study improv and like go and learn it in the
States and stuff? Is that kind of what prompted
decision to do that? Yeah, it was listening to Comedy
Bang Bang and podcasts like thatwhere the guests would be on and
they're talking about either UCBshows that they're in, like,
come see me Wednesday nights at 10:00 PM on search history.

(15:33):
And I'm like, what is this? And they'd say, oh, you know, I
met Harris Wettels in my One O 1class.
And you start to hear all these different names.
It's like liner notes. And it just got me fascinated of
like, I really love this thing. They all seem to go through this
school and you can just take a class at this school and then

(15:54):
you're kind of part of it as well.
Yeah, it did UCB One O 1. And that that just seemed very
like fun to me to go and do it. The other I suppose as well,
like the other thing I loved, wealways ask on the podcast about
how where people are from has influenced them as great people
and stuff. So firstly, where are you from
and in Scotland and like how is that impacted you, especially

(16:17):
going somewhere like America, which is very different to the
culture here? Yeah, I've, I'm from Glasgow,
but I feel like my accent is rounded off a little bit from
travelling. But I think in LA the mostly
dead OK with my accent I would have to as in terms of

(16:37):
understanding me, they're able to understand me.
However, when you're doing scenes in class, and this would
also happen, I took sketch classes, I took all, I took all
four levels of the improv curriculum at UCB and then I
took 2 levels of their sketch course.
When I was reading stuff out, I would have to read it out in an

(17:00):
American accent. Otherwise it's weird to them
because they're like, from theirperspective, the like, why is
this character like a wild Australian character now?
Like it's just jarring to hear an accent.
So for me to be quote, UN quote normal over there, I'd have to
do like quite a neutral Americanaccent.

(17:22):
In terms of like the, you know, being from Glasgow though, and
stuff like I feel like what, what I am I about improv is I
think it gives people the it's permission to almost be a bit
silly and to tap into like kind of like a child, like stay.
And I mean that as in a good way, because I think often I'm
very guilty this. I'm far too serious sometimes
and I, I take myself sometimes too seriously in certain
situations that I'm, I'm, I struggle to like be silly.

(17:45):
Like a good example is I'm one of those people that would come
to your improv show last, but this actually did happen.
I was at your show last week andI would be too shy to shout out
a thing because there's just, I don't know, Even though I did
this podcast, I'm quite an extroverted person.
There's certain situations whereI'm just like, I don't know,
growing up and up from a work class background, you just
wouldn't, I don't know. So I just wonder how does that
does that ever have an impact onyou and navigate in that space?

(18:07):
I'm the same way honestly. See if I'm, I'm doing shows all
the time, so I'm on stage all the time, but see, if I'm
watching a show and I'm in the audience, I do not want to be
involved at all. I didn't want to have crowd war.
I don't want to be interacted with.
I don't want to be pulled up on stage.
That'd be a nightmare. So I yeah, I still feel that as

(18:30):
well. That's that's still a very
relatable thing. But in terms of getting over it
like once, once you once you've done enough shows it, it becomes
less stressful and the the number of shows, as that
increases, you become less precious about it and you can

(18:51):
feel a level of comfort on stage.
But as I say, you know, I'll go see a live show and I'm like,
please, please don't talk to me.We are not sitting in the front
row. I'm sitting in the back row.
I'm not making eye contact with the compare just in case.
So I get it. Having that really interest that
you, you know, such involved in the scene here and like a, you
know, kind of prominent performer, but you feel the same

(19:12):
way. And that's, it's interesting to
know that, you know, makes me feel a bit better.
Because you're just there to watch.
You shouldn't have to be involved unless you want to be
involved. You're just there to have a nice
time, so. I've interviewed some stand ups
before. I've actually talked about to me
saying they don't like the culture of like they don't
really like hairco culture. When comedians pick on the

(19:33):
audience too much because it sets a sort of, it makes certain
people in the audience a bit fearful, and they think that
kind of sometimes creates too much of a tension in the room,
which is interesting, Yeah. Especially when, yeah, I think
it's, you know, IIMC and we'll talk to the audience.
I think improv is a lot nicer tothe audience.

(19:55):
And there's just like a nicer spirit overall.
I think that's fair to say. But I think a lot of MCS and it
still happens in improv shows, to be fair.
If you're talking to an audiencemember and then they become the
joke, like you're, you're sort of.
Punching them as they're the punching bag of the joke, so as
long as you're talking to them in a way that's not making fun

(20:17):
of them, I think that's a much more fun way for all involved,
basically. I I think the other thing that I
would, I'd sort of observed fromseen improv and known people
that do it as well is that it's a team thing more than stand up
as well. Because you do get solo
performers and improv, but most improv is team based.
So I suppose you kind of need tobe able to work in a team and

(20:38):
probably not be a knob or you'renot going to get very far
because you'll kind of get like found out quite quickly.
Yeah, not being a knob gets you very far.
And again, yeah, having the teamwork is a large part of it.
And that can also help people feel comfortable on the stage.
I'm not up here having to do everything on my own.
My teammates have my back. They'll support me.

(21:00):
They'll help me duck me out of ahole.
Whereas if you're doing stand up, it's just you.
There's no one trying to help you out.
There's people rooting for you to fail.
It's a much different vote. No, for sure.
The the team side of improv is it's, it's hugely impressive
actually, because like even, I don't know, trying to balance
because I suppose and they'll besetting shows where one person

(21:22):
will get more of a chance to do something than the other.
But it's knowing that it's, you know, different shows will
require different people to do different things and stuff as
well. So it's interesting.
Yeah, well, the couch show that you would have saw, I would
guess there was just three of us.
So we, we were. So, yeah, just means the three
of us have to pick up more slack.

(21:42):
We're we're missed our our pal Jeff, who will contribute 25% of
the show. But yeah, that also makes it
easier, right? We're all trying to push this
boulder up a hill. It's easier if we're all trying
to do it and we're all pushing towards the same thing.
No, for sure, just for any listeners that I've wondered
what I mean when I've said the word couch a few times.

(22:04):
And that's the name of Martin's improv team.
And there's links to anyone watching on YouTube or listening
to the show. There's links to like Glasgow
Improv Theatre couch and all thesort of socials for that below
as well. So you want to find it more as
we're talking, you know, click the links below, go and have a
look at that for sure. Martin, I want to ask you about
when you came back from the States then haven't learned a
lot of this improv, and you cameback somewhere like Glasgow

(22:25):
where there isn't that scene you're talking about back in
2016 when you're performing, youknow, things like cafes, it's a
bit more of an even niche thing.How did you feel then?
What were your sort of thoughts?Did you ever imagine it would
become what it has now? No, no, was the answer to that
last part. Yeah, Smash car to 2016.

(22:46):
There's a couple of short form nights.
As I say, there's no one really teaching classes.
There's a group from Edinburgh that was coming through to do
monthly or every other month classes, so no real chance to
learn from a curriculum. But luckily it already went
through a course so kind of knewa little bit of how to do

(23:09):
scenes. And yeah, literally coffee
shops, record shop. I did a gig in, it was either
air or trim train station. They had like a little library
type room and it was for a charity gig, so lots of doing

(23:30):
short form shows. I basically joined a short form
team and slowly tried to teach them long form and tried to get
them to do the stuff that I'd learned over there.
And which is a bad idea to do ifyou're ever in an improv team,
you shouldn't try and be the theteacher or coach of it.
It does not end well, but basically slowly.

(23:53):
I would let, I would teach them how to do this improv format,
which is called the Herald. And I started a night.
I was just like, I want to do a monthly night.
That seems as if from what I've seen in LA, that would be a good
thing to do. And then we'll start from there
and then we'll see how it goes. I don't think I had any plans to

(24:14):
be like I'm going to start a theatre or I'm going to teach
classes. It really took a couple of years
before we started thinking aboutthat.
When that moment arrived, did the sort of decision to start a
company or to start like your own theater group and stuff did
that, Was that something that slowly grew over time then?

(24:35):
Or did you decide, right, we're going to do this, and then you
had to sort of put the work in to to build it up?
I just started as like a monthlyshow, so from seeing how stand
up shows were ran in Glasgow, there's nights like Chunks,
which is still sporadically running and other other stand up
nights that would pop up in Blackfriars or the Griffin or MC

(24:59):
Fabs at the time. And seeing that, all right, you
can just get these pubs on a midweek night for fairly cheap.
And I just run it once a month. And it just took a while to
build up a following to that, towhere that show was doing quite
well. And there was people asking
about how they'd get involved. And I think after that I would
run jams and then drop in workshops.

(25:23):
And again, those would be like once a month.
And we'd slowly keep adding and our, our regular show night,
which is to this day still Tuesday, I would just keep
adding, Hey, hey, Blackfriars, where we were at our time at the
time, our new venues, the old hairdressers.
Hey, we've got first Tuesday of the month.
Can I get second Tuesday of the month to run a jam?
Cool. Oh, can we also get the third

(25:45):
Tuesday now to run this other workshop?
And we just kept on building up like that till we had all the
Tuesdays And we, you know, we'regetting a bit more competent of
teaching classes. And it was at that point that
we're like, OK, let's, let's maybe try and start a theater
out of it. So if you know, the starting

(26:07):
point is hard to define, you know, it started with the Harold
night, obviously, and then you just sort of slowly build up,
OK. Like the Jam, for instance,
started, ran for a few months and then stopped because people
just didn't want to come at thattime.
Whereas now, since it's very, very popular, it's really,
really busy. And we run them twice a month,

(26:28):
but it just had to drop off for a while.
So yeah, just I had to build up slowly.
But it's also just not in a straight line as it grows.
And you sort of founded the company with other people,
didn't it's not just you runningit yourself?
Like there was a kind of groupieat the start that they founded
the company, right? I founded, I called it Improv

(26:49):
Glasgow. So that's why all the social
media is still Improv Glasgow. So that that started like the
Harold night and then the workshops and the jams and then
when we decided, OK, let's try and teach like a proper
curriculum, that's when we changed to the Glasgow and Prof

(27:11):
Theatre, which it which is now and.
I'm, I'm assuming a lot of the courses, you know, run, which is
amazing, but because it's like, you know, some, you know, 2A
week for some of them isn't, there's like Tuesday, Saturdays
or whatever days. I'm just making up days there.
Which I mean, you do like there's like 2 courses a week
that you are able to run for some of the levels and stuff.
And you, you know, it seems likethere's like a, like a regular

(27:31):
intake of people coming in and out of that, which is brilliant.
But did you sort of take that American mods that you'd went
through and try to apply it and put your own spin on it?
Yeah, I'm a big RIP off merchant.
Basically. I I just saw UCB and I'm like,
this is the blueprint. They're the best in the world.
They've really codified improv and teaching improv and the

(27:56):
result is just their output, thenumber of people that are just
amazing. The shows were just such a high
quality. There's other great improv
theaters over there as well, butI just really was attracted to
UCB and I basically after I tookthat first one-on-one course in
2015, every year I would just goback and study the next course

(28:19):
because the first couple of levels of the courses,
one-on-one and two, one, you could do those over 2 week
intensive courses, but the otherones you have to be there for 8
weeks and you have to like watchshows while you were there.
So I, I had to, you know, justify it by I'll, I'll need to
do that next year and next year and next year gradually went

(28:40):
back and took all the levels. So cut to Glasgow improv
theatre. Our curriculum is based off of
the notes I was taking in class and especially towards the end,
three O 1 and four O 1. I was sort of taking the classes
to to copy the curriculum to, towatch how they're teaching the

(29:04):
classes, to study how they're teaching the classes so that we
could teach similar style courses over here.
How do you find the teaching aspect of that thing?
Because that's obviously different from performing improv
yourself. So like from going from that to
then, you know, teaching this new thing, which again, you'll
learn over time as well. I'm sure you you feel way more

(29:25):
confident now than you maybe didwhen you first started teaching
the curriculum. Yeah, I'm always still trying to
improve as a teacher. We're, we're not, we're not at
the UCB level performing or teaching yet, but that's what
we're aspiring to be. So anytime we have, we just
recently had Billy Merritt here last weekend, who's a UCB legend

(29:50):
and just just trying to move towards, you know, we have our
goals as performers of people who we'd like to perform as.
And then there's teachers like him or Julie Brester or Susie
Barrett. So that that's, I'm always
trying to become a better teacher.
But my the other part of my background is basketball and I

(30:15):
coach basketball for a while. So I try not to bring too much
of my basketball coaching to improv because I think frankly
would break a lot of theatre kids because it's just a harsher
way, especially Scottish basketball coaching.
So I try and take what works from that.

(30:38):
But yeah, I think, I think it takes, it took a while to learn
how to teach improv. And again, just like performing,
you just need repetition. So lots of reps of different
classes seeing what works. I've seen what doesn't work for
people. And once you've taught the same
course multiple times, then you start to see patterns, you start

(31:00):
to see what's what's effective. And yeah, I feel much, much more
confident teaching now than I did back at the beginning, for
sure. That's brilliant.
That's that's really interesting.
And I'm going to have to circle back to the basketball because,
you know, that's one interesting.
I think it's it's just as a Scottish for a Scottish person

(31:21):
to be really into basketball andimprov, which traditionally both
quite big American things is quite it is, you know, it's the
it's the reason that both those things you, you know, clearly
are into and have taught a lot of time to interlink.
So tell, can you do you mind telling us a little bit about
the basketball? Just like pure curiosity.
Yeah, I think I've trapped myself in my life of getting

(31:43):
really good at niche things. One of them is improv comedy,
she's just niche in general. And the other is basketball in
Scotland. Yeah, I've played for a long
time. I briefly played professionally
in Spain and then we played. So I was playing professionally

(32:04):
and then sent amateur Lee and semi pro in the Scottish
National League and played for the Scottish national team as
well. And yeah, and that, that was my
whole life and playing, you know, there's similarities

(32:26):
between that and improv. I think because it really gave
me a good work ethic because to get to where I got in
basketball, we were training andyou know, we're training like
twice, three times a week and had a game every weekend.
And if you apply that to and that's the people who you know,

(32:46):
that's not even why I would get to to a certain level in in
basketball. Even the people in Division
Three, in Division Four over here, you know they're playing
two or three times a week just because they enjoy it.
I do think there is something tolike putting that amount of time
into it. And if you put that amount of

(33:07):
time into improv, if you're practicing once a week, twice a
week, 3 * a week, oh, is that crazy?
I don't know. It gets you good at basketball,
gets you good at whatever it is you're trying to learn how to
do, paint or sculpt, whatever itis.
I think putting that time in canbe helpful.
You know, for sure it's you're getting the reps in.

(33:28):
And I suppose as well what's similar, because what I've found
interesting from running this podcast for over the years is
that so many people that we haveon that work in the creative
industries come from a team sport background as well,
because there is such a link there of teamwork and and work
ethic and stuff. And I suppose there'll be no
different from doing theatre or improv, you know, than being in
a team for basketball because you have to have each other's
backs. And it's slightly different.

(33:49):
But you know, you're performing in front of an audience still in
basketball. There's a there's a crowd there.
Maybe less so in Scotland, I imagine, but do you know what I
mean? There is that a lot of.
People so 100% yeah, that the team I do miss, I miss a lot of
things about basketball by the the thing about the team
mentality, you're 100% right. And you, you do get some of that

(34:11):
in improv. Yeah, for sure.
And it's important. I think it's important in the
arts. I think you need people there
to, I mean, even running your company, if you were just doing
it yourself, you'd probably be banging your head off the desk.
You need other people there to support you.
And you know, I, you know, I couldn't run this podcast fully
on my own. It would be an absolute
nightmare. So you know, it's, you need that

(34:32):
you need other people around youto support it for sure.
So, you know, it's an interesting observation.
Yeah, that's still something to this day.
I'm trying to learn of how to delegate and how to not just try
and do everything myself. But John Mcennis is the other
main admin person at the GlasgowProf Theater.
So he he definitely helps out a lot with the shows and the

(34:54):
behind the scenes admin of all the countless spreadsheets we
have and all the mad statistics that he likes to run so.
Hello, it's Jamie here. I hope you're enjoying this
week's episode. It's just a quick one for me to
say that if you are listening tothe podcast on Apple, Spotify or
whatever platform you engage with our show on, be sure to

(35:15):
give us a follow or a subscribe as it goes a long way into
helping us grow and find new listeners as well as helping you
keep up with all the latest episodes and everything that's
happening. It just get a real job.
You can also support us by subscribing to our patron page
for the price of a cup of coffeeper month.
All the money we make goes back into the upkeep of the podcast.
Thank you for you can continued support and we hope you enjoy

(35:36):
the rest of today's episode. That kind of leads me on pair
with my next question, which will be a lot of people listen
to this and maybe aren't workingin improv or interested in
improv specifically, but they maybe run their own theatre
company or they want to. I think even as a creative
working in anything, if you're on your own, if you're a
freelancer, you you're almost a business now.

(35:57):
You have to have a bit of that business mindset or like at
least be able to organize thingsand have, you know, sell
yourself and stuff. So what have the sort of main
lessons been from growing this company for you so far?
Like, you know, there's a lot oflogistical things go into it
like planning nights or classes or social media, etcetera, the
tech talks you talked about earlier.
Yeah, I think there's two parts to that question.

(36:19):
I think the the promotional partis a is a large part of it.
So being on social media, havinga big social media presence,
hosting content all the time, we're always trying to come up
with like, oh, what's a new hooky show?
Like last night we just did for the first time a show called the
Pundits improv commentary where me and John are on stage doing

(36:43):
live commentary with improv. And that just makes, it's dumb
as this sounds, that just makes a good TikTok clip.
So it's something people haven'treally seen before.
There's, there's a UCB show, of course, because I RIP everything
off from UCB, but that's a clip that will pop up that is just an
interesting and sort of unique. So having that sort of stuff

(37:06):
helps making sure your website is good.
And that's my my main job as an improv.
My main job is software engineering.
So I'm able to use that to make sure that we do have a really
good website, really good integrations with stuff behind

(37:29):
the scenes. One thing I've developed is like
a little bot that runs in the clouds to automatically post
about our shows to Facebook and Instagram and Twitter.
Again, that really aligns the world when it's just me and John
trying to run stuff. So I think that is yeah, that's

(37:51):
that's that's been a huge advantage.
The fact that I'm so heavily into the tech world where and
and John as well. Like we're both in Google Sheets
all the time, but we'll be looking for ways to, we run a,
we have a Trello board for the get, which if you're not

(38:13):
familiar is like you have different columns of like stuff
we're wanting to do, stuff that's in progress, stuff that's
done and just imagine like little post it notes and they're
moving across the board. But we're insanely organized and
both come from like an engineering background.
So I think organization, yeah. If you're running a company, if

(38:36):
you're running a theater group, you're putting on shows, track
stuff, track, track of course, who you're selling to, how much
they've paid you, et cetera. Like you have to do that, but
also track how many people came to your shows.
What's what's like the average donation to to the to your show

(38:58):
formats? So we've we've got spreadsheets
for all this. We run like stats from them.
We've got little graphs. So it's very fun to play with.
We think about a lot like RollerCoaster Tycoon.
I mean, it's so true that you dohave to like I'm so I'm slowly
learning this running the show, like it's so much admin and

(39:20):
logistics. So there's even things that you
have to send emails and make sure people, you know, people
are in their place at the right time, you know what I mean?
And that's before you even get onto the performance side of it
or for me, the recording side ofit.
You know, it's all this stuff that goes on mind the scenes
that a lot of people don't see. And of course, like me, you're
doing this on top of a day job. So it's not like you're, you
know, you have between, you know, 9:00 to 5:00 Monday to

(39:40):
Friday to like always put your full attention into it.
So you know it's own. The creative output is always
just a tip of the iceberg, right?
And no one's seeing what's underthe water, which is the majority
of of the work and the effort. And they're just like, oh,
that's a cool thing you've made that presumably took no effort
at all. And they don't see the hundreds

(40:02):
of hours that we're putting intothe stuff behind the scenes.
What are some of the challenges then of like of running a
company? For like what?
What have you found the most tricky thing to do so far?
I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is like trying to
keep people happy, trying to keep performers happy.

(40:23):
And you slowly learn that that'snot possible.
There's there's no choice that you can make in terms of
programming, in terms of who gets onto which team, in terms
of who gets to guest on this show.
There's no choice that you can make that will make everyone
happy. That is just not a choice.

(40:45):
You will have to make a decisionone way or the other that's
going to make someone happy and it's going to make someone else
not happy. And all you can do is try and
make choices based off of your taste and based off of trying to
be as like empathetic and fair as you can in those situations.
But yeah, I think once you realize that oh, you, you

(41:08):
literally can't please everyone.Like we'll for instance, we'll
do like feedback forms and so often we will get people
suggesting the literal pull polar off each other.
So it's like, how how do we do that?
We either do this like massive swing or we do this massive
swing. So that's that's a major

(41:28):
challenge. Yeah, for sure.
I know. I suppose it's just always going
to be the way when it's like, you know, democracy, you know, I
mean, it's the same is that you're never going to be able to
please every side. And I suppose you can only do
what you can. You can try and listen to feel
as much as possible. But I want to talk to you as
well about the Glasgow scene then.
Like we can touch on this at thestart, but it's obviously it's
feeling like it's in a lot healthier place from from the

(41:49):
outside anyway, looking into, you know, social media and
things like that. But like how do you feel about
it right now and what are your sort of goals in the next few,
you know, the next few years etcetera for that?
Yeah, I think we're in a great place right now.
We one of my goals way back in 2016 coming out of classes as I
want there to be like house teams here.

(42:09):
I want people to to have to havethat community and a place to
perform after they came at the classes.
So we're only in our third year of having house teams and that
that has been great. And it's really beneficial for

(42:30):
people who are studying improv because then they'll get to see
our current house teams and they're performing a really high
level, really great teams we've got this year.
And then that helps them learn. And then we're going to hold our
annual auditions in July, August.
And they'll just be more, more people coming through.

(42:52):
We'll graduate people off of thecurrent house teams and then new
people are coming through. So hopefully we can just keep
continuing that process, keep spinning out new nights, new
teams and just keep growing the scene that way.
And that's, that's really exciting to me to try and keep
that going, no. It's it's great.
And and just again, for people listen, like people are doing

(43:14):
these courses and then they graduate and you can go up to
the next level. So it's like effectively like, I
don't know, school isn't it? It's like you do one class and
you're if you qualify from that,you're able to then go the up
the next level, I think. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, you can't, you can'tget on, you can't get a job till
your 5th year. Except we've, we've got, we

(43:35):
recommend people study our thirdlevel just because again, we're
getting the temporal specifics. That's the level that teaches
the Herald and that's the show format that the House teams
perform. No, it's already it's already
interesting. I want to ask you as well,
Speaking of scenes like about SNL, which you touched on at the
start, obviously was announced Ithink last month that that will

(43:56):
be coming to the UK. And I know SNL was not all fully
improv, but there's a lot of improvisation involved in that
show. A lot of quite well known, you
know, celebrities that you know,are big actors now that have
come from an improv background in the States and stuff.
And I suppose the idea I was listening to the rest of the
entertainment recently, they were talking about this, how the
sort of hope of it is that there'll be people that are
maybe unheard of in the UK that will get the chance to sort of

(44:19):
perform in this thing. What's your sort of take on that
as someone involved in improvingsomeone involved in the scene?
Do you have any thoughts and ideas about this and how it
would work? Yeah, I think it's interesting.
I think again, long form improv,we're doing improvised sketch.
So to have improvisers involved in your sketch show is a very
good idea, and that's what they've been doing on SNL for

(44:42):
years. As you say, people from Second
City, UCB, the they're like a training ground for SNL.
Lots of people at their UCB class show will be like, is
Lorne, is Lorne Michaels in the audience?
Is he in there? That's a common joke.
So yeah, I'm not quite sure how it's going to work in the UKI

(45:04):
think there's lots of talented improvisers out there.
I don't know who's if the cast has been announced or if any of
those are going to be involved, but I think there's there's
enough talent to make something really funny.
And I think also there's a real shortage of just sketch comedy

(45:26):
in the UK at the moment. There's there's been barely not
like any in Scotland for years. There's a team called Planet
Caramel and they were just like the only sketch group in in
Scotland. And there's other nights like
chunks where people will do veryshort sketches, but there's not

(45:46):
really much of AA sketch community here.
But I think there's a there's anaudience for it.
Like people love Lenny's show, people love like Mitchell and
Webb, so they can definitely make that work in the UKI don't
know if it's going to be anotherone of those failed attempts

(46:07):
where it's like let's try and make The Daily Show work over
here and there was that. I think Channel 4 tried to do
something like that and just didn't work.
But we'll see. We'll see what happens.
I think. I think there's enough talent
here where they could make it work if they if they get the
right people involved, I think. No, for sure, no, it's

(46:28):
interesting. I was thinking about that.
What I've seen in Scotland that's I suppose like things
like Scott Squad are a sketch show.
But I think we tend to not make a lot of and you know, in the
way the UK is, whether it just does feel like there's a lack of
it felt like it went through a bit of a phase and then it sort
of went away for a while. And a lot of the time it's just
the mockumentary style seems to still be like the thing that
they try to keep doing even withthat sort of feels like it's

(46:50):
sort of probably had its day as well.
It is an interesting one, but itwould probably, it would.
I think there is an audience forit.
I think a lot of the Fringe or the things people see live tend
to that that really works on stage.
But for whatever reason it's never quite translated onto the
TV over here and I don't know. Yeah, it's an interesting, I
don't know, coming from ATV background quite where that is.
But it would be interesting to see if that, you know, having

(47:13):
something like Saturday Night Live in the UK is able to kick
start. Yeah, that sort of thing again.
So I know it's interesting and hopefully it would benefit your
own scene as well if it does, but.
Yeah, I think it will come back.I think there will be a new
sketch wave that comes back and it'll probably be, you know,
there's there's people doing basically sketch comedy on

(47:36):
TikTok. So that's another part of it
where they're reaching their audience, doing sketch type
bits, doing character work, but it doesn't at the moment seem to
translate into BBC Scotland or these other TV places being
like, OK, let's give you a sketch show, let's give you a
lot of money to do fully filmed produced sketches.

(48:00):
But I think it will come back atsome point.
Yeah, because you're in Scotland, the old stamp based
this the New Year's Eve tradition like of things like
I'm an excuse and totally blank the name of the other one.
But yeah, these shows that, you know, chewing the fat was back
in the day, of course, but like they just there's that queen of
the New Year thing. But again, it's a very specific
group of people. It's usually the same for

(48:21):
voices. It's not really giving new
talent a chance. So I think there is a real gap
in that in the market there, which I hope is addressed.
Yeah, to to be fair, some of my friends will write on that show.
So they they and their their younger talent coming through.
So I I think there there still is opportunities.
But yeah, I think even they would say, well, that's like a
one once in a. Year, once in a year.

(48:42):
So if not, we need more of it, yeah.
Yeah, there's radial stuff as well.
But again, that's that's kind ofdifferent.
Yeah. Yeah, I know.
It's an interesting one. Well, hopefully you're
evergrowing scene will also helpadd to that, which is good to
see. I've started wrapping this up
and let you get into the sunshine soon.
We'll just have a couple more questions for you.
We'll always ask on this show love to ask people about their

(49:03):
mental health and how they sort of protect that, especially as
you say you're working full time, you're running this
company on the side. It's you know, sometimes 2-3
nights a week sort of training and then performing often at the
weekend and stuff. How do you sort of manage your
own mental well-being when you know, managing some so much
logistics, for example? Yeah, I think that is another
double edged sword where I thinkdoing improv and doing all this

(49:31):
admin for the Glasgow Improv Theatre, that is just such a
huge hobby. Hobby's not a strong enough
word, but that is that does helpyour mental health.
Like if I didn't have that, I'd be, I'd have to have my mind
doing something else to to keep it active.
So I think that has been great in that respect.

(49:56):
And also just doing comedy generally, like going to see
shows, like being in shows, likeI was looking at the clips of
last night's show, me and John are just on stage laughing the
whole time. And we're just getting to do
that multiple times a week, multiple times a month at least.
So all that stuff is great. So I think my usual tips would

(50:19):
be find something like that. Yeah, go go see some comedy or
you like gardening, go go do that sort of stuff.
Sort out your diet, go do exercise.
I think those are all unfortunately, things that work
very well for mental health. And when I've got all those in
check, I'm feeling good. But in terms of the other part

(50:40):
of your question, yeah, it is there's tons of difficulties and
stress that comes up with running the Emperor of Theater.
And yeah, I guess people would apply this to their businesses
as well. Just try and have a Zen approach
to, of realizing what is within your control, which is usually

(51:03):
just the actions you take and responses and then what is out
with your control? What is stuff that you cannot
control? And that's everything else.
So if you're getting stressed out about there's not enough,
you're not getting enough sales this month or you're not, you
know, a customer's really irate with you and they're never

(51:23):
coming back. You know, there's stuff that you
can do to maybe try and mitigateagainst that in the future.
So those are actions you can take.
But getting unduly stressed out or trying to trying to control
aspects of those situations which aren't within your
control, that's that's where I'dlike push people towards.

(51:44):
No, because you're just picking up on the thing.
You were saying the first part of the answer.
But when you're obviously doing something you love, which is
almost a hobby, but it's more than a hobby because it takes up
so much your time that it's almost, it's a job as well.
It's really, I find that really hard with running this podcast
because I love doing it. What we're, you know, recording
an interview with you right now.It's like, you know, it's one of
the highlights of my day and it's always really enjoyable.

(52:04):
But at the same time, your identity becomes so tied to it
that it's sometimes hard to see it as a hobby as well because
it's, you know, that naturally that stress or expectation or
pressure does get attached to it.
So it is a difficult thing to navigate.
And it. Yeah, it's never a right answer
to that. Yeah, I think just not trying
not to tie your identity into any one thing other than who you

(52:28):
are. But if you start tying your
identity into like, it's this thing, my identity is this
Instagram account and why am I not getting enough followers on
this or this isn't getting enough likes or you know, XYZ
doesn't go on how I like it, then that's that's not a good
idea and. It soon becomes the problem for
sure. And it can.
Yeah, it can lead you to some bad places.

(52:50):
So, you know, it's tricky to something you need to be mindful
of for sure. Sort of last question for you as
well, and I appreciate coming ontonight, but what would you sort
of advice be to anyone that maybe wanted to get into improv?
They maybe been thinking of trying it for a while.
But you know, maybe they're Scottish like you were saying
earlier. They have that natural going.
Oh, I don't know. If you know, if I could put
myself out then that way, what would you say to them?

(53:11):
I'd say take a class. I think if you're ever thinking,
should I try stand up or should I try improv?
You're already there. Just do it.
You're going to have that nagging thought in your mind.
You know, the people who are going to do improv, they aren't
sitting around thinking, should I do improv?
They're just not interested in it.

(53:32):
So if you've got any interest like that, if it's an improv or
anything else, just give it a shot.
And specifically for improv, take a beginner's class.
Everyone's going to be in the same boat as you.
You don't have to be, you don't have to be funny.
You don't have to be quick. You will teach you the rules and
the principles and just be yourself.

(53:56):
And that's a large part of it. And yeah, as I say, repeat
myself, knowing that everyone else is at the same level as you
is, is is good. And it's like a safe fun
environment, so. Brilliant.
And where can have you got anything you want to plug?
I mean, again, as just to reiterate, there's links to
everything in the show notes below.

(54:17):
So if you can find out more about the guys going to theatre
there and Martin's own individual group and stuff.
But do you want to plug anything, if you've got anything
exciting coming up that you wantpeople to to know about?
Yeah, just check out the GlasgowImprov Theatre.
We've got shows every Tuesday atthe old Hairdressers and we've
got beginners drop insurance twice a month on Mondays at the

(54:39):
old hairdressers and you can getall of that on our website.
Pretty much all our shows are like free or pay what you want
as well. And even our courses, we have
two scholarship spots where you can just learn and pro free of
charge on every course. So trying to keep the barrier of
entry low. But yeah, just just come and

(55:00):
check out. If you're in Glasgow, just come
down any choose the others, there's always something on.
Brilliant Martin, thank you verymuch for your time.
I appreciate you chatting to us on such a warm day as well.
But, and I wish you all the bestwith the Glasgow and Perfita and
all the brilliant Mark you're doing there.
Great. Thanks for having me on.
Thank you.

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Ep. 168 - ‘Growing an Improv Scene’ with Martin James

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 168 - ‘Growing an Improv Scene’ with Martin James