David Hamilton: Improv Uncovered

Prepare for an exciting journey into the world of improvisation with our special guest, David Hamilton, improv teacher and founder of Anubis Improv. You're about to find out how his passion for improv turned his life around and how this art form can transform yours too. From his early fascination with acting, David has grown into a successful improv coach, helping individuals discover their own talents and thrive, even in challenging times like the pandemic. 

In this enlightening conversation, we delve into the magic and thrill of improv performance, while David shares the difference between invention and discovery in improv performances. Get ready to learn how scenes play out differently depending on whether we invent them or discover them. We explore the parallels between improv and other performing arts, and how they can each help us uncover our unique talents. We'll also touch upon why stand-up comedy doesn't quite resonate with us.

Finally, we'll journey with David as he recounts his move to Glasgow, his encounter with the improv community there, and his noteworthy performance at the Edinburgh Improv Festival. And we can't forget to mention his introduction to the Herald style of improv, which brought with it a whole new set of challenges. See how the power of improv transformed David's life, and how it could do the same for you. Join us on this wonderful journey of discovery and transformation.

Transcript

David Hamilton: 0:00

improv will absolutely change your life.

Brian Plaideau: 0:13

Hello, welcome to the Nola film scene with TJ and Plato.

Tj Sebastian: 0:17

I'm TJ.

Brian Plaideau: 0:18

And, as always, I'm Plaideau. Today we have a special guest, even though I started a little earlier. Tj and I both take improv here in New Orleans from Anubis Improv From now a close personal friend of mine, the one, the only, David Hamilton.

David Hamilton: 0:34

Yay, what's up? It's so great to chat with you all.

Brian Plaideau: 0:38

What's up, man?

Tj Sebastian: 0:38

Yeah, man, thanks for joining us. Sure, why don't you tell us how you got started with improv? Oh yeah, that's the burning question that I've been wanting to know. Sure.

David Hamilton: 0:49

So I'll tell the long story, because why not? So it all started when I was 11 years old, so way back when, when I was a kid, I thought I might be interested in acting and I ultimately did like three safety films, which are just basically like corporate films as a kid. This company called Cinderstar and I did those films and then didn't pursue it much. After I got into music, my first career out of college was as a tour manager. I came off the road as a tour manager in like 2009, 2010, with this idea that I wanted to pursue my own creativity, but I didn't really know what that meant, right? So I ultimately got to talking with a co-worker at the time at a pizza place shout out to Theo's Pizza and he had taken improv improv classes and he was like it's great. I had heard about him and I asked him about him. He's like they're great, you should absolutely do it. So my original thought was okay, this is a good way for me to see if I'm interested in performing as an actor is what I was thinking, like I did when I was a kid. And so I went to the first class in 2013 and February and 2013, I think and I was hooked immediately and so this theater allowed us to take classes as much as we wanted, which is something that I've taken on.

David Hamilton: 2:19

In a new business, once you've passed the level, you can sit in on classes at any level below the level that you're at for free. And so I was taking like three classes a week. I was doing their intensive, I was just doing everything. I just was loving it, absolutely hooked. And so by 2014, I think, I graduated in May of 2014. And by the end of 2014, I was teaching. The conservatory director there kind of recognized that I might be good at teaching level one which is a really difficult level to teach because you're teaching fundamentals but also you have to kind of be a kindergarten teacher and be super sweet and it just takes a certain personality to do it, and I loved it.

David Hamilton: 2:59

And so from 2014 to 2018, I was teaching, I was coaching troupes, I was, I ended up as co-conservatory director and building manager and a bunch of other stuff at this theater. And then in 2018, I started Anubis, and it started just to do corporate workshops, just to do kind of the business side of things, and then eventually I developed an Improv for Actors program, which is where I met Brian. We were working with Jim Gleason's acting studio doing that and then from Brian's class actually their class went through the entire Improv for Actors program, which was three levels but was basically there was three short levels. It was basically just equivalent to our level one Improv curriculum. But they were hungry for more and encouraged me to convince me to write a curriculum of my own. I wrote a curriculum of my own and now we've got a four level long form Improv curriculum and we're teaching classes in New Orleans, where it all began, and in Oxford, Mississippi, where I am now. That's the long story.

Brian Plaideau: 4:02

And you say we convinced you, we begged, we pleaded, we bugged you and when David left out, we started Improv for Actors January of 2020.

David Hamilton: 4:12

Oh yeah, right, it was a month long class and three levels.

Brian Plaideau: 4:14

So January of 2020, level one, february of 2020, level two, march of 2020, level three got interrupted by a little thing called the pandemic and we didn't know what was going to happen to our world. And David did not charge us, he was kind of enough to keep us going every two weeks, bi-weekly, bi-monthly. I knew I was going to say it wrong, but and we just get together like this, but it was over like a zoom thing, and we would just improv which we've talked to some famous Improv people, and Improving over when you're not next to the person. They didn't understand how we could do it. It was. It blew their minds and then when the vaccine finally came out, we all got that.

Brian Plaideau: 4:55

We were able to get back in a room together, finish level three and we had our graduation recital and then we wanted more. So, along those lines, because TJ can tell you the story about it, you probably are, you know, but I definitely push Improv like a dealer, you know. But I was posting things on social media and I was like, join us, join us. And you messaged me and said, dude, people think Improv was like a cult already. You got to chill.

David Hamilton: 5:23

So I mean it can be pretty culty, but it's so joyful and important and it, you know, it teaches so many things that help us with our personal and professional and romantic lives. I mean it is, it can be culty and there's actually like some actual concern to that. I mean there are actually people who you know not cult leaders in Improv, but there are people who like taking advantage of their status as like Improv teachers and that's you know, and I don't mean to make light of that. But it's culty because you come together as a community in a way that we rarely do as adults, outside of organized religion probably, and so it can be a really special place Improv class and Improv communities.

Brian Plaideau: 6:08

Yeah, we could have tested the power every two weeks because you were so stressed out during the pandemic. I'm sure everyone who listened to this would remember but maybe in the future kids will be listened to this and it was so new to us. You never knew if you were going to be able to go back to work again, what's going to happen to the world, and you just be stressed out and you had that pain. We do our improv, we talk like this, we do our little scenes and then we do a little round. Robin, hey, tell us the takeaway. Oh, I learned this today. You know how'd you feel? And every one of us would say, oh my God, I feel so happy. The stress would just you touch that creative part of yourself and it pops a balloon of stress and just lets it go. And it was here. I'm kind of like yes, yes, yes, that's addictive. It was so cool, you know yeah, yeah, it's very positively addictive.

David Hamilton: 7:01

You know, it's a very good habit to be in.

Tj Sebastian: 7:04

Yeah, I'm only just now finishing up level two. So eight weeks in and our class has really come together in that eight weeks. We started out as strangers and now we're all like we're. We're in a WhatsApp group and we message each other and I've got new friends out of it and I got into improv, started taking the classes to help me with acting.

Tj Sebastian: 7:29

One of the biggest things with acting is you have to make that connection with the person you're in a scene with and improv you have to be paying attention to your scene partners. You're gonna miss something and there's a lot of other things that I can dig into that improv has helped me with. With acting, One is kind of bringing me out of my shell a little bit. That vulnerability that's something I've been struggling to overcome the inhibition to show vulnerability and it is so critical. With acting, I've gotten way more than I even hope for so far out of improv.

Tj Sebastian: 8:06

I've never had difficulty standing in front of a crowd of people and delivering a prepared speech because you rehearsed and you can't really see them anyway and I thought that I was gonna be nervous getting on stage when we did our first showcase. But I wasn't. We lined up and I felt great. I didn't have the single ounce of worry about what are they gonna think and what if I, what if I show something that's too vulnerable. I didn't have any fears at all. It was exhilarating, honestly, to get on stage and do that.

David Hamilton: 8:38

Yeah, it's really special, the performances, and we say it and it's so hard to believe when you're going through level one and level two, but we say, like, the performances are the reward for the hard work that you put in over the eight weeks. And you think, man, this is gonna be nerve wracking and this is gonna be tough, but it really really is a reward. It's really exhilarating and special and there are a few things that you have that kind of level of trust with people that you haven't known that long and you really do become friends because you're sharing a very intimate but obviously not in a sexual way, but like a very intimate part of yourself. You're sharing your creative side, which is very youthful, it's very much. It taps into your inner child and that's vulnerable and when you share that with people for eight weeks, you become bonded. There's no way not to. There's really not. And it helps with everything. Improv helps with everything and my partner, who is an improviser, shared with me a video that Alan Rickman had done in an interview where he was talking about the importance of listening as an actor and he went to so far as to say I don't know.

David Hamilton: 9:50

He said he didn't understand why people would try to memorize scripts by themselves in a room. He's like why would you ever do that? That's not what this is. Let's get in a room, let's talk it out, let's communicate with each other, because the only thing that matters as an actor is are you actively listening to the person in the scene with you? That's it. All the acting is done, and then, when you're doing that, the response, the dialogue that you have, comes naturally because you're responding to that person. That's right.

Brian Plaideau: 10:24

I'm speechless. That's hard to do. So one of the maybe it was expected for you, but unexpected benefits of improv for me because I was always allowed mouth, I was a jokester is the on the day performance. And what I mean by that, ladies and gentlemen, is when you're on the stage or in the scene. They call it on the day, when it has to happen, like David was saying, leading up to it. You can have so many nerves in practice in class. You step past that point and all that melts away and you just don't think about it, you live it, you have fun. I've seen it in voice acting class, I've seen it in my singing class, in a little bit of acting class too, but especially in improv. What are your thoughts on that? Where could you expand on that part?

David Hamilton: 11:07

Yeah, I like to say it's like riding on lightning. It's because it is. It's this kind of magical experience and time flies by. I mean, you go into your first showcase, I gotta do this for 20 minutes, and then you finish and you're like that was 20 minutes.

Tj Sebastian: 11:24

That's about like two minutes.

David Hamilton: 11:26

Are you kidding me? It flies by and it's because you're putting all of yourself into something which you know, which you know your concentration is in it, so you're not paying attention to time. But you know, I also call it surfing on lightning or riding the lightning, if you're an old Metallica fan.

David Hamilton: 11:42

But, it's just that it's this experience with people that feels tenuous, because you're creating everything in the moment and you don't know what they're gonna say and you don't know what you're gonna say, but it's not really that tenuous. You find your balance in that, with yourself and with your troupe mates, your classmates, and you're just kind of surfing. You're fine, it's. You're not on solid ground, but you're fine, you're doing it, and I think that's the experience of performing live. There really is nothing like a live improv show. There really isn't.

David Hamilton: 12:14

I mean, I love theater, I love film. You know, I love all forms of performance, I love music, I love all forms of performance, but there's nothing like an improv show. You're not. It's never been done before, It'll never be done again. Nobody knows what's gonna. Nobody in the room has any idea what's gonna happen. There's always the chance of failure, Unfortunately, yeah, but it's always there and that and that gives it some juice, that gives it some stakes. It matters. This is it. This is the only time we're ever gonna do this and we're gonna do our best.

Brian Plaideau: 12:46

You know nothing like a live improv show and if you try to bring something back from like a show like I had a class, me and Alan Paul we stepped up to the scene, I got down on all fours and I was a dog and I wasn't talking, I was kind of barking. He's like here, boy fetching. I kind of gave him the side eye like I'm not doing that. He goes okay and he sits down and we're looking at a pretty park and I go with my hand like hey, come, see, comes a little bit, little bit, and he goes wait, do you understand me? I go oh, yeah, you know. And oh, you understood me. Yeah, I understood everything, dude, and things about the change. Oh, I'm blackmailing you and see, so I I would love to bring that out on the stage again, but it's not the same, even if it was to be in him, because there's no surprise, you know, it's yeah so we, when we talk about it, an improv.

David Hamilton: 13:28

It's the difference between invention and discovery. And if you're inventing stuff, now there's a place for Using improv to write sketch. I mean, that's what second city does essentially, right. And so if you do an incredible improv scene and you want to call it back, you want to come back to it later on, write it as a sketch. Now you have to put more effort into it because it's got to be actually funny, right, as opposed to like just funny in the creation of it, which is a very different type of funny. But it's the difference between invention, discovery. So if you're inventing stuff, if you're trying to be funny, if you're trying to Say a weird thing, you're gonna feel it. You're gonna feel it, your scene partners gonna feel it and the audience is gonna feel it, even if they don't know, they're feeling it.

Brian Plaideau: 14:12

An awkwardness, that's right.

David Hamilton: 14:14

It changes the dynamic of the scene. On the other hand, the discovery if you're truly open to the possibility, discovering what's happening and how your characters feel and what they're doing and all that you can do or say something that's like objectively not funny but it reads as hysterical because you discovered it in the moment the discovery gives you some extra leeway and makes things Funnier, and that's the difference. You bring something back that you did in class or that you did in warm-ups. It's not gonna feel the same. You're always doing yourself a disservice.

Tj Sebastian: 14:47

And the inside jokes aren't gonna. They're not gonna play well to the crowd because your class develops Inside jokes to certain things that are said. You touched on something with the discovery versus invention. I really started realizing the difference and how the scene plays out. With discovery after level two, level one Going up to my turn, I would be thinking, okay, what would be something funny to start this with. And it was never as Smooth as when we got up there and just discovered we had a great scene. There were three of us and we all kind of realized at the same time what the scene was about and it was way better than other ones I had invented on the way up there and it took a little bit of slow turning to get to that point. But the discovery is happening a lot more smoothly now.

David Hamilton: 15:36

I think, and that's about when it happens. And at the end of level two, that's when that starts to happen. I was the same as you, dj. I was like constantly thinking of things. I couldn't imagine going on stage completely blank. The way I broke myself of that habit was I took a week long intensive and we were doing class from 9 am the 5 pm Monday through Friday, for an entire week, with a show every single night. You just don't have that many ideas in your head. I'm not that smart, couldn't possibly. By day two I was like I have no idea what I'm gonna do. My brain is mush. But it was so important to get to that part, for my brain to be mush, because then I really started to Trust that things would come.

David Hamilton: 16:11

It's hard to trust. It's hard to trust that you're connected to something. You know and this gets a little woo-woo, but I'm a little woo-woo You're connected to something. You're connected to the power of creativity and all we're really doing an improv class. It's a lot like Buddhism. We're not really learning new things, we're learning structures, but what we're really doing is just getting out of our own way and allowing creativity to flow through us. That's what we're really doing when we're doing improv, and the more you can do that, the more you'll surprise yourself. The more fun you're gonna have, the more fun your seeing partners are gonna have, the more fun the audience is gonna have, yeah yeah, I found the same thing in singing class all my life.

Brian Plaideau: 16:51

You know it's not like people say, oh, you suck, but you get nervous about that. There wasn't an incident in a, in a choir, and people like, well, you don't really have the voice vibrato, and they were just lukewarm or even less about when I thought I sing, oh, okay. And then in your head and you've heard people say I don't like my voice and I don't sing well, and just that block of energy keeps you from doing anything. So TJ started taking lessons with Olivia, olivia Peck and I separately. I had already introduced TJ to improv, so we were talking, and then I wanted to Strengthen my voice for voice acting.

Brian Plaideau: 17:24

My goal is to be a cartoon one day, more so than I already am. So we were talking. He goes yeah, I'm taking singing lessons, and that was right. When I wanted to do that for the daily ex, oh, oh, really. Yeah. He introduced me to her. I started and she did a pick, a first song let's see where you're at and I was okay. And then it's been a couple months and I just, you know, shared some of my songs on Facebook because I was petrified to do it. You know I liked it, but it's like what is something that screw it? I know I like it and then it's the same thing with him. It's getting rid of that. I've got to be perfect and and just finding your own talent and let it out.

David Hamilton: 17:57

Yeah absolutely that. Yeah, I mean, perfection is the death of any good art, right, like it's not, maybe, with the exception of sculpture. Sculpture, right, maybe, but even then I'm sure I am not a sculptor and have no idea how that process happens and I imagine even then you're making happy little mistakes, right, but you know, especially an improv, you know, perfection is is no good, it's boring, it's very, very boring. We don't want perfect, perfect improv scenes don't exist, number one, because we're not writing them ahead of time. They also wouldn't be good. It would be too clean, there wouldn't be any discovery, there wouldn't be any messiness, there wouldn't be any fun. Really, yeah, yeah, livy is a very talented actor and singer and she took improper actors way back when. That's how I know her.

Tj Sebastian: 18:46

Yeah. So I'm wondering have you gone down the stand-up comedy route at all? Have you done any of that stand-up?

David Hamilton: 18:53

has never really appealed to me. It's just not. I enjoy it. I enjoy watching it, I enjoy listening to it, I enjoy stand-up comedians and have forever I mean, I grew up on Eddie Murphy Raugh, you know, I had that on VHS when I was way too young to have that on VHS. And then, speaking of not holding up, boy, oh boy, is that offensive as yeah, that's problematic, but anyway yeah, anyway, I love stand-up comedy, but it's just not my form of comedy.

David Hamilton: 19:24

I don't. I don't have any desire to do it and never have and. And there is a level of perfection and stand-up I was watching I don't know if it's Sarah Silverman's latest special now, but this was a couple of years ago and her jokes are so perfectly crafted. I mean, she's just a master, she's been doing it forever and her jokes are so. Every moment, every pause, every mistake that she makes oh, I misspoke. Everything is perfectly craft, as brilliant, it's funny as heck. But it's just not what I Want. Not what I want in to do in my personal comedy. You know.

Tj Sebastian: 20:01

Yeah, I don't have any interest in it either. I do enjoy doing improv. I don't know if I'll ever get to the point of being in a Troop and doing it regularly. I think I would like to. It's just a matter of finding that right, that right group of people To do it. But stand up never appealed to me either. I like watching it, but I couldn't see myself up there doing that.

David Hamilton: 20:20

Yeah, I mean either I've joked with with my partner, maggie, about doing stand-up and you know the the comedians that I love, or like bill X and George Carlin and like the ones that are saying stuff, and I was like, if I get up and do stand up, it's just gonna be a TED talk, I'm just gonna like.

Brian Plaideau: 20:37

It's not gonna be funny.

David Hamilton: 20:38

It's just gonna be me complaining about capitalism for five minutes, and you know, and people who manage to do that and make it funny are incredibly talented, but I'm not one of those people. I'd just be bitching and that's not really funny.

Tj Sebastian: 20:54

I don't think I have the timing for it. Yeah, because there's a certain level of time and it goes into it. I mean that all got it right there but sure, of course.

Brian Plaideau: 21:01

I think that's other than acting. I think that might be one of my secret dreams to be a stand-up interesting, it's not at the forefront right now. And I did take a class with rich teller eco about joke writing and he wrote the a wrong sketch on key and peel. There was a commercial. If you remember. So, mr Dumbass, I'd love to work for your company. Yes, mr Dumbass, mr Dumbass, mr Dumbass. And then the boss says the name is do moss. He actually acted in that one, the Writing of the Joe structure.

Brian Plaideau: 21:28

That was my first time doing it and, like you were saying, you feel like you get on stage and you just bitch. That's kind of where we started. You know what I mean and mine was like when you walk in a wallmark and people just stop and block the aisle so they can Chit chat, leave a path open. You know I start getting in the cars it lights that are too bright, license plates, a brand new car that are up in the, the tinted windows where you can't even see them, and then people's driving so we won't. We had talked about David, you and I, and, I'm sure, mark Carlo and some of the other stars we talked to during the pandemic. That stand-up is just you're there by yourself. While improv, you are supported by your people.

David Hamilton: 22:05

Yeah, very much so.

Brian Plaideau: 22:06

I just think that's so so better, so much better, because when you can say things like so better.

David Hamilton: 22:13

And you won't look as stupid. The stand-up communities are different. I mean, you know I I shouldn't speak out of turn, frankly, because I'm not really a part of the stand-up communities, but they feel a little more competitive than the improv communities to me and I think part of that is because, like you know, there is Opportunity to make a living as a stand-up comedian. There isn't really an opportunity to make a living as an improv comedian, so the communities feel different. Now, obviously, there's a ton of support and stand-up communities as well. You know people helping each other out, helping people, you know Structure their jokes and get their type 5 or type 10 or whatever. But yeah, it just it feels a little different to me as an outsider. Your experience, my Limited, non-existent experience with it, yeah, yeah we can have your experiences.

Brian Plaideau: 23:00

You once traveled overseas, moved overseas. Yeah, I had a great little adventure. Could you tell us about that?

David Hamilton: 23:07

Yeah, sure. So my partner, Maggie brilliant, incredible, one of the best improvisers in the world and beautiful was Getting her master's degree in fantasy literature from the University of Glasgow. So we moved to Glasgow, scotland, and it took a couple of months. We were there for a year. It took a couple of months for us to kind of find the improv community there and we happened to find it. So the Glasgow improv theater is, oddly enough, the theater that runs the Edinburgh improv festival. And we Found the Edinburgh improv festival just in time. We actually got lucky somebody backed out or couldn't make the travel and I got in Touch with Jason, who runs Glasgow improv theater. Awesome dude, american dude, california, but awesome dude, that theater is amazing. Everybody over there, sweetheart, love them, miss them very much.

David Hamilton: 23:57

And Maggie and I got to perform on the Edinburgh improv festival just kind of on a whim, kind of as a last-minute addition, and we had a great time. It was so much fun. We had just started classes too. So, you know, I kind of found the theater and all this happened at the same time. We were jumping in the classes. We, you know, got booked on the on the festival and we had been in class for maybe two weeks I think we jumped into level two. They were starting a level two. We jumped into level two and we had been in class like maybe two weeks and all of our classmates like packed the front row, were loud as heck, were so sweet about it Really some of the best people and some of the best supervisors.

David Hamilton: 24:40

So Scottish people are just inherently more funny than other people. I think Irish people have it as well, but they're just funnier. I mean, it's sort of a non-American thing but and it's a very like UK thing as well. But man, scottish people and glass wegeons in particular, just funny. And there were a couple of people in that class Kimmy shout out, kimmy and several others. Kimmy's like she was a baby, she's like 19, 20 years old or whatever. It's just like is one of the funniest people you'll ever meet in your entire life.

David Hamilton: 25:11

And so many of the people in that class were just so naturally funny that the experience of being in improv class with them was so fun, because most of them didn't have improv experience and so instead of learning this brand new skill and coming into it with like I came into it just being like I mean, maybe I'll be the straight to someone's absurd. Maybe I'll be someone. Fun can play off me, and I had to find my absurdity and I had to find my voice, find my ability to be funny. And many of these people were coming at it from an entirely different direction, whether they knew it or not. We're like they were hysteric, natural, and they were just finding a way to be able to do that with other people and it was so fun to watch, so funny, so great. Love that place, love those people. I also.

David Hamilton: 25:55

We learned the Herald too. They teach the Herald. They basically teach UCB's curriculum at the Get the Classical Improv Theater and so we learned the Herald. And I had done a bastardized version of the Herald at the theater that I was at in New Orleans in this troupe called the Jet Blacks, and so I had some knowledge and experience of it. But we did like a strict, real Herald opening the you know, the intercession games, everything, and it is a hard ass form. It was hard but it was great, super rewarding what was difficult about it.

David Hamilton: 26:28

The Herald is incredibly structured. I don't like it and that's the reality of it. I don't love the Herald. I think that and you know the improv that I teach and that I prefer we don't even take suggestions. You know it is wide, open, blank stage in your brain, nothing else, and that's the way I prefer it. So you know I went in with those biases, frankly, but I enjoyed it. I enjoyed learning the structure of it. But I mean you're doing an opening, you're pulling scenes from that opening, doing three of them, doing a game in between those three, then coming back to those three scenes, doing another game and then coming back again. It's a fun and difficult structure but there was just too much rigidity in it for me and I felt like I was constantly thinking and not letting myself be free enough. And I imagine if you get enough experience doing the Herald, it becomes very free. That structure becomes a structure that you can work in. But I didn't get to that point.

Tj Sebastian: 27:26

So I got you.

Brian Plaideau: 27:28

Could you expand upon short form versus long form? Like I have reached out, like I have a fellow actor and she wants to do improv. Her schedule is so busy she's struggling. She's gonna try to. Finally during the struggle she's got some more time to get into your class and we've talked about her. But in trying to describe it to her and other people, how would you tell them about short forming game versus long?

David Hamilton: 27:49

form. Yeah well, the easiest thing for American or British, uk audiences is just referencing whose line is it anyway? Right, whose line is it anyway? It was obviously like the most successful, well-known improv that's ever been done, and it's short form. So short form. You set up the structure of a game and you improvise within that structure and those games are varied and vast and nearly infinite in the number of different games you can play, and they're great, super fun.

David Hamilton: 28:15

Long form is more open-ended. There's no game structure that you're working under. You're just kind of walking onto a blank stage and creating a scene that's not narrative but is reminiscent of theater. You're just creating a moment in time between a number of characters and you're discovering who you are, where you are, what you're doing and how you feel about it, and then you're finding the funny thing, and that's not dissimilar. You're doing scenes in short form improv too oftentimes but you're doing scenes inside of a game structure and in long form there's less structure and, as I mentioned, most long form troops, most improv troops, generally take a suggestion from the audience to get them started and that's usually just to get the juices flowing, to get some audience buy-in, so they feel like they're involved in the show, which I think is of great value.

David Hamilton: 29:06

But for me it created an expectation where the audience kind of wanted to see their idea in a concrete form, and I think the smartest way to take and use suggestions is to go three or four steps past them. If somebody mentions toilet paper, you're taking it two, three steps beyond that. You're thinking, oh, toilet paper, okay, that happens in the bathroom. And then I've got the whole oh tile, tile I'm gonna talk about. Tile is my inspiration. So you end up in doing that, being inspired by something that the audience isn't really recognizing anyway. So you might as well just let it come from the great creative power in the universe. As far as I'm concerned, that's no shade to short form improvisers or to long form troops that take suggestions or that do the herald. I love them all. It's all important, it's all valuable. It's just not the style that I prefer, right.

Tj Sebastian: 30:00

Interesting. I was curious about that too. What was your inspiration for using Anubis?

David Hamilton: 30:04

Yeah, so this is a question I get asked with like a bunch of different reactions or intentions behind this question, because it's such a weird name. So Anubis is the ancient Egyptian God of the underworld, anubis is the coyote headed God that guides people into the underworld. So I used to have a witty response that was about like well, we're gonna guide you into the unknown world of creativity. Really, it's just because I'm obsessed with ancient Egyptian culture. I knew that the coyote headed God would look cool as a logo wearing a suit.

David Hamilton: 30:36

The old theater that I worked at had a luchador, a wrestler, a Mexican wrestler, in a suit, and I was like I kind of wanna do that type of deal. And then that name had never been used. Anubis improv hadn't been used. So I knew I would get all the socials, the website and everything would be an Anubis improv. So it was a combination of those stuff like business decisions, and then it's just, that's my personality. I really I love thinking, talking and learning about ancient Egyptian culture, ancient cultures in general, and so it fit and I love it as a name.

Brian Plaideau: 31:03

As we can see behind you on your plaque which says yes and that was a gift from one of my classes.

David Hamilton: 31:10

Their signatures are all on the back Nice, and there's the plastic dagger that everyone is knighted with as they go through their showcase shows.

Brian Plaideau: 31:19

Yes, I graduated improv actors and I was knighted. And after I graduated the improv class I was given an honorary doctorate the only one of Anubis' first class to be doctor knight, sir of improv, Exactly, Yep, you deserve it.

David Hamilton: 31:33

I wanna be knighted. You'll get knighted, don't you worry. I'm coming, it's good.

Brian Plaideau: 31:38

I'd like to tell people about your socials or where they can research and doing classes and classes. You have to come up Anything you wanna plug, go, feel free please.

David Hamilton: 31:45

Yeah, I appreciate it. Everything's Anubis improv. A-n-u-b-i-s improv. I-m-p-r-o-v. I really only use Instagram, but Instagram, facebook and the website Classes are always posted on all of those things. I encourage you to check out the website. Sign up for our listserv. I send bi-monthly emails every two weeks so we don't fludger in box with stuff. Obviously, we are setting a new date for a new level one class in New Orleans. I haven't set it yet, but it will be on Tuesdays or Wednesdays from six to eight at our studio on Severn in Metery in Oxford. We'll have a brand new level one class starting next year. We'll have our very first Oxford Mississippi graduating class before the end of the year. To make a long story short, everything is Anubis improv Anubisimprovcom. A-nubis improv. Follow us, join our mailing list. We would love to have you, improv. We'll absolutely change your life.

Tj Sebastian: 32:44

Well, that's all the time we have tonight. Dave, thanks for joining us. It was very enlightening. Appreciate you being here.

David Hamilton: 32:49

Yes, my pleasure. I love nothing more than talking about improv.