Going Off Script with Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood

In this week’s two-part mini-sode, I got a chance to speak with two of most influ­en­tial improv per­form­ers from my for­ma­tive com­e­dy-obsessed years: Col­in Mochrie and Brad Sher­wood. Mochrie and Sher­wood were (and are) a key part of the ensem­ble on the beloved Whose Line is it Any­way?, and are tour­ing the coun­try with the lat­est ver­sion of their award-win­ning improv stage show, Scared Script­less, play­ing at the One World The­atre on Fri­day April 27^th.

At Com­e­dy Wham we cov­er the spec­trum of comedic per­form­ers, from stand-up to improv, to actors and beyond, and one of the top­ics that almost always comes up is the process of writ­ing and con­tent cre­ation. So, you can imag­ine my sur­prise that while prepar­ing to speak with Col­in Mochrie I dis­cov­ered he lit­er­al­ly does not enjoy writ­ing. Right in the intro to his (very fun­ny) book, Not Quite the Clas­sics , he lays it bare: it’s just not fun for him. Of course, he goes on to write some fas­ci­nat­ing twists on your favorite sto­ries, includ­ing the very rel­e­vant short where Sher­lock Holmes takes a turn at stand-up, so I asked him if he still real­ly felt it was­n’t in his wheel­house. He grant­ed that the first sto­ry (in fact, the Sher­lock Holmes bit) came very nat­u­ral­ly, but then things took a turn for the dif­fi­cult. ​“I still don’t know how Stephen King turns out thou­sands of pages a year”, Mochrie says, and I agree…there’s def­i­nite­ly some­thing super­nat­ur­al at play there.

So, improv and ​“just in time” cre­ation of com­e­dy is clear­ly where Mochrie’s pas­sions lie, and it’s a dri­ve that has­n’t waned a bit. As he takes his craft all over the world, filmed and on stage, he remains amazed and thank­ful for the oppor­tu­ni­ty to lit­er­al­ly cre­ate some­thing out of noth­ing, over and over again. That does­n’t mean there’s still not a bit of pan­ic involved, and he gives us a peek into the expe­ri­ence and process that have kept him in love with improv to this day, and how it also gives him and his wife a unique frame­work to expand the life they live and the world they experience.

I then hopped on the phone with Brad Sher­wood who has – in addi­tion to the shared Whose Line lin­eage – announced and been a pan­elist on game shows, appeared on count­less episodes of the Jay Leno show, and has guest starred on icon­ic series like L.A. Law. He’s also a skilled impres­sion­ist, some­thing that I think many of us try, and very few of us should ever actu­al­ly attempt in pub­lic, much less on the nation­al stage. The Sherwood/​Mochrie duo are a tight­ly tuned pair, clear­ly used to liv­ing in each oth­er’s men­tal worlds. ​“He tends to lie a lot”, Mochrie warned me; ​“Col­in just says that because I tell the truth about him”, Sher­wood counters.

Sher­wood sees improv as a mus­cle you’re con­stant­ly train­ing, a mar­tial art you have to be ready to deploy at any moment, for any peri­od of time. He likens it to the thrill of sky­div­ing: the rush as you’re fly­ing, and the sat­is­fac­tion once your feet hit the ground. While I’ve yet to try that par­tic­u­lar jump myself, the anal­o­gy res­onates per­fect­ly with the trust and con­fi­dence you have to have in your­self to make it on the improv stage. Sher­wood, like his stage part­ner Mochrie, is a true comedic extro­vert, in love with the social expe­ri­ence of mak­ing up new worlds for the audi­ence every time the lights come up on the stage. And, for the record, I don’t think he lied about a sin­gle thing, or else he’s just that good.

Be sure and lis­ten to the inter­views for much more about improv, and liv­ing your life by cre­at­ing one unique expe­ri­ence at a time.

Mochrie and Sher­wood are not only tal­ent­ed per­form­ers, but two of the nicest and fun­ni­est peo­ple you could meet (and inter­act with at their shows!). So get out to see them on April 27^th at One World The­atre in Scared Script­less. It’s guar­an­teed to be a once in a life­time expe­ri­ence, as no two shows are ever the same. And stay up to date with them at the trav­el­ing duo’s home on the web, Col​i​nAnd​Brad​Show​.com, Col­in Mochrie’s world at Col​in​Mochrie​.com, and fol­low them on Twit­ter, @ColinMochrie and @TheBradSherwood.