As a group, you deal with the art of improvisation and you are directly connected to your audience. Has there been a time when your audience, rather than helping out, has made your performance considerably harder?
Ya impro: I’m Kostandinos and this is Serafim, it has happened that there is someone in the audience who refuses to budge or participate but that is ok with us anyway, this is improvisation.
In general, how do you react and what do you do when your audience refuse to behave accordingly, like when interaction isn’t easy?
YI: I am Fouli and this is George and when the audience doesn’t support us we try our best to do whatever we can as to not have a negative impact on us.
You offer educational seminars and all the while you take part in the program “Open Schools in the Neighborhood” with the workshop “Stage a play from scratch”. Who drop down their guard more easily – who are more willing to experiment, adults or children?
YI: As we all know, it is more difficult for adults to do away with what holds them back, it is easier for children to go into action and play and express themselves, speak their ideas and their inspirations, but they have no limits, they need guidance whereas with adults the opposite happens because they want to break free of their limits, the filters, because they always have this little voice in the back of their heads that stops them.
What is the experience you have acquired from improvisation?
YI: (George): For me, improvising is what I have been doing my whole life, but then Kostandinos popped up and said that this is dramatic art, therefore I have 38 (but for a day) years of experience in this.
Where do you get your inspiration from?
YI (Fouli): We get our inspiration from the top of our heads or from the audience the moment that something happens right then and there or from our team player, (George) we all get inspired constantly; just from the point you are standing you receive stimuli but whether you’ll let these stimuli inspire you or let them take their effect on you, that is what we do, we let them act on us.
When you received your invitation as speakers for TEDxAUTH, what was it that made you accept?
YI: We said “yes and…” because that is what improvising is all about, supporting it and saying yes to any stimulus and taking it a step further from saying yes to simple every-day things, this is improvisation.
You come from different career paths, how did stand up comedy come up and how did you all group up?
YI (George): It is not stand-up comedy, it is art, “improv” (improvise), I began with theater, I discovered this after two years in Athens and it was something that hooked me, I went to see how it was and I didn’t want to stop, (Fouli) I am a theatrical play producer and when I realized that children’s free play is what we do with improvisation, I wanted to revisit my childhood.
Translation: Niki Saridaki
