Show: Broad Strokes Improv Venue: Laughing Horse @ Cabaret Voltaire Time: 7.30pm Dates: 4th - 12th August Photographer: Niamh Barry Links: YouTube Clip
Please tell me about your 2022 Edinburgh Festival Fringe show
We are an all-women, Irish improv troupe, and we perform entirely improvised comedy shows. We do not have scripts, we do not have props, we just use audience suggestions and build stories around them. We are famed in Dublin for being one of the city’s only long-form improv troupes, that create continuously improvised stories over the course of an hour-long show. The stories we build are full of heroic protagonists, devilish antagonists, undercover spies and suspicious wives, embroiled in a comically impossible and captivating plot. No two shows are the same, which makes a night out with Broad Strokes Improv a truly unforgettable experience.
What do you think of Edinburgh?
Performing at Edinburgh Fringe is such a special and unparalleled experience. It’s an egalitarian and creative arena without prejudices. Everyone is respected and treated equally as artists, and the festival has faith enough in each of these artists to entrust them with a show and express themselves.
Who inspires you?
Our main inspiration is American all-women improv troupe, Wild Horses. They perform extremely impressive hour-long long-form shows with a single word prompt, and no scene breaks or character changes.
Are there other shows you want to check out during the Fringe?
A show we love to see every year is musical improv troupe, Baby Wants Candy. They take a single prompt and create a whole musical, complete with entirely improvised songs and a super tight plot. Their shows contain some of the most exciting, talented and dynamic improv we’ve seen. We’re also looking forward to seeing our friends Improv She Wrote and Club Valentine perform, too!
Finally, ask and answer a question of your own.
Why did we want to create an all-women improv troupe?
Many of us have performed with improv troupes and comedy shows in previous years, but this is our first time performing in an exclusively female environment. We found we had often struggled to feel heard or acknowledged in mixed-gender improv troupes, and as comic performers generally. We wanted to find a way to create improv narratives where we could decide our characters and roles for ourselves, where our gender didn’t matter or restrict us. A space for women to have their own agency in improv narratives and revel in the joy that improv comedy can bring, is more vital now than ever.
