Catch them if you can

By Peter Paylor

Trust is a word that keeps coming up when the Improvmonauts sit down to talk about what they do. And, yes, the five frenetic members of Belleville 's homegrown improv comedy troupe do on occasion sit down.

“The five of us are also friends, and that helps,” says Matthew Sheahan, who along with Mihal Zada, Darren Moore, Alexandra Bell, and Nathan Mahaffy, make up the Improvmonauts. “You don’t have to be friends with the people you do comedy with, but you have to trust each other. If you don’t trust each other then you can’t do it. I feel that all of us trust each other enough that we can voice opinions or try something different…we’re going to try stuff together and figure that out together. I’ve always felt at home with these people.”

“Especially early on,” says Bell. “You have those doubts. Is it going to work? Are people going to enjoy what you’re putting out there? Because you’re offering a piece of yourself when you’re doing improv to an audience. There’s that piece of yourself that you’re letting go to be received and there’s always that fear that it’s not going to be taken well, but then one thing I think we would all agree is that improv works best when you have that trust in the team that’s around you. It helps to alleviate those doubts and allows you to reach those places where you let yourself go and just enjoy the moment that you’re in. It’s so freeing to be able to just kind of go to those weird places in your mind, explore some things that you might not in another format under the guise of comedy.”

The five, who have been doing improv together since 2018, all share a background in traditional scripted theatre. “The more improv I do, the more I realize I’m acting,” says Moore. “When I first started doing this, I tried to be me on stage, and it didn’t work. And so, I’ve created an improv character so when I get on stage, I’m that open, goofy…I’m the Golden Retriever Darren. That’s me on stage. That character can do things that I can’t.”

“All of our experience in traditional stage theatre,” says Bell, “things like knowing your voice, the direction to face out when you’re speaking, blocking, staging, things like that…we’re all very conscious of our space with each other and our presence and how that’s being delivered out to the audience, and I do think that comes from all of us having experience in the traditional theatre.”

While what they do is unscripted, writing is still at the heart of it. “All of us are writers in our own right,” says Sheahan. “Writing for a living, writing songs, writing poetry, writing plays, writing whatever—we’ve all written. All that structuring you do when you’re writing something, it’s in your brain, so when you’re doing improv, you’re just doing it on the fly.”

“Theatre is very much a collaborative art form,” says Zada. “One of the things I love most about improv, especially with these guys, is that I can see stories coming to life in a way that when I’m sitting down and trying to write them out, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t process the same way.”

Music plays an integral part in what makes the Improvmonauts unique. Bell and Mahaffy are both experienced professional musicians. As the troupe’s musical director, Mahaffy earns high praise from his colleagues. “I love musical improv,” says Sheahan. “If it’s done well, it’s magical for the audience. I feel we’ve gotten to the point where, when we do musical comedy, it’s magical.” Their audiences seem to agree.

Another integral part of their comedy is the City of Belleville. “Belleville’s a character,” says Moore. “Right? And it’s a pretty funny character. There’s a lot of character and spirit in this town, one way or the other and it’s just a well to draw on.”

“We get it, and our audience gets it, and we have something special that connects us right from the start,” says Bell. “When we’re making jokes about Hawkins Cheezies or the Moira River or the Wally Deaver…as much as it might be framed as a joke, it’s coming from a place of love for the place that we all get to live and create in.”

“There’s more happening here creatively than it deserves in a sense— for where we are and what it is—and it’s like I want to be in that,” says

Moore. “I want to be in that thing. I want to be in that group that is doing that thing that is better than expected. And I think we do that.”

The Improvmonauts appear regularly in venues throughout the Quinte region. Catch them if you can. You’ll have a good time. Tell them I sent you.

Improvmonauts