By Maggie Hannon |
UP’s improv group, The Bluffoons, create a safe space for silliness. This week The Beacon sat down with Bluffoon members Nathan Mattix, Peter Rodriguez and Tara Egan to learn more about improv and the club. Their next performance will be at 10:30 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 14 in Mago Hunt Theater.
Do you have any pre-performance rituals? Nathan Mattix: We have a pre-game ritual for the show for sure. I don’t know if we can just share that.
Peter Rodriguez: No, that’s a secret.
Mattix: Even the people in improv who haven’t been in shows don’t know what it is.
Where do you get your inspiration from? Mattix: There’s certain groups around the country that are professional like Upright Citizens Brigade or Seattle Jet City is incredible.
Rodriguez: Sometimes you just watch sketch comedy on TV. You watch Key and Peele.
Mattix: As someone who makes humor, it can kind of ruin humor for you because I’m watching Key and Peele and I’m dissecting it. Oh, why is this funny? Well done Key and Peele! It’s more of a golf clap and less of a hilarious moment.
Tara Egan: Feedback from the audience, not just comments, but you learn really quickly what’s funny when an audience laughs at it.
Mattix: We definitely draw inspiration from each other as well, and that can go in the other direction if there are two people in the group that are just not there mentally or energy-wise it can bring down the group. So, for better or worse, we’re interconnected.
Rodriguez: We’re all in it together.
What has been your weirdest improv moment? Egan: Generally when we come back from summer, or after long break, or if we’re having a really stressful week our practices, some of our games tend to go to crazytown. And instead of building a story we’ll be on a spaceship with 3,000 different kinds of aliens on it.
Mattix: And the harpoons.
Egan: Before the thing explodes.
Mattix: We always end up with really strange inside jokes every year. Like, last year, if you could somehow involve the phrase “500 pounds of salmon” in your scene, that’s just funny. We have a rule that you don’t do blue humor. You don’t go full Daniel Tosh. You don’t go there, but it happens. One of my first shows I made a Holocaust joke, and I got sprayed with a spray bottle like a dog. It was bad.
Rodriguez: When you’re not giving a lot of forethought into what you’re saying, you go places.
Mattix: We had a scene my freshman year where there was a son trying to convince his parents to do it again. Like, he thought that their relationship was splintering and he was really worried. That was weird.
Rodriguez: I was in a scene a couple weeks ago where the suggestion was nude pets, and I was being harassed by very seductive dogs at Petco, or something like that. It ended up being really funny but at the same time like this is weird.
Egan: I think when you’re in improv, your bar for weird goes higher.
What was your first experience with improv? Rodriguez: My freshman year I was put in the Valentine’s Day show, and I guess they were trying out some new forms of improv, and it was horrible. I guess everyone was a little off that day. It was my first show, so I was off more than anyone and I didn’t have great attitude coming out of that show, but I was able to work past it. When you start out there you’re like, “Wow this can get better! This can only get better!”
Mattix: It was before I had joined the club. There was an event where the Bluffoons opened for a group called Comedy Sportz that’s in the area. And Comedy Sportz needed a volunteer to play a game called Four Corners and I joined. As you may have noticed I’m quite tall. I’m 6’7 and I played Dobby in a scene, and Dobby kept taking off his pillowcase. He was a bit of a nudist, and Harry was trying to encourage him to be a little more modest. Then I knew who the Bluffoons were, and they were like, “Who’s this guy?”
Who is your favorite Actor/Actress/Comedian? Mattix: In the world of funniness, I think my favorite person and someone I’d aspire to be more like is Bill Hader who used to be of SNL. He usually plays side characters in movies he’s in, but he plays them ridiculously well. I love his character in Hot Rod, for example. And most of his characters in SNL, like Stefon, is freaking incredible. Bill Hader is really versatile and really funny. He has a gift that I want to get better at, which is when he’s in a scene he makes the other people look better. Like he plays well, and that just shows the fact that he’s rarely playing the main role. He’s really good at supporting everyone else in the cast, and I’d love to be more that way because I tend to hog the spotlight.
Egan: I love Tina Fey. I would be her best friend if I could, but she’s really busy.
Favorite thing to do after a show or practice? Mattix: Sleep. Our shows are really late this year and our practices are really late.
Egan: When we go to Jet City, which is an improv company in Seattle, we go for a couple things a year, we get pretzel dogs afterwards and pie and ice cream. It’s mostly food based.
Who is currently the best Bluffoon? Mattix: Best Bluffoon freestyle rapper is Peter. He kicks ass. It’s ridiculous. He doesn’t know it, but now he does.
Rodriguez: Okay, I guess I’ll take it. I won’t argue for my own sake.
Mattix: Within the club we have a competition team, and each one of us brings strengths that the other people don’t have to that great of a degree, so we complement each other. If you look at a basketball team, and asked who is the best player, you would say the best shooter is the guard or the forward. The best person at dunking or being large is the postman. I do that. Everybody brings different strengths.
Rodriguez: Apparently mine is freestyle rapping.
Egan: Congratulations, and deep voicing.
Rodriguez: White Morgan Freeman-ing.
What would you say to someone considering joining? Egan: Do it!
Mattix: Do it!
Rodriguez: Don’t even think. Just do it.
Mattix: It’s an investment as well. Every year we’ve had people join, and not really have their heart in it, and they end up dropping out.
Rodriguez: Then again, we have people who, they don’t show up every week, but they’re regular returners. Whenever they have time. They might not be in as many shows.
Mattix: We will teach people. It’s preferred actually if they don’t think they’re hot shit. We’ll teach them how to do improv. We won’t put them on stage before their ready.
Egan: Don’t be overwhelmed. Everyone was in your spot once.
