The Spontaneity Shop: Performance and training Improvisation company
Home > About > Q And A > Tom Salinsky
- How long have you been improvising?
- As long as I can remember. I played "Whose Line Is It Anyway" out of the "Whose Line Is It Anyway" book with some university friends around 1992. I attended my first formal improvisation workshop in January 1995, just days after the death of Peter Cook. A sort of passing of the baton, it has been suggested (usually by me).
- You co-founded The Spontaneity Shop. When and why?
- In 1996 and because Deborah told me to. Our first show was 22 April 1997 so it will be our birthday soon! Please send cakes and/or money. Actually we were The Old Spontaneity Shop in those days. We became The Spontaneity Shop in 2001.
- What's The Spontaneity Shop's vision?
- We want improvisation in all its forms to be celebrated and appreciated, from the gamiest, gaggiest, silliness to the depths of profundity. Since the depths of profundity can often be awfully close to public masturbation and there are plenty of other groups taking care of the gamey, gaggy stuff, we usually prefer character-and-story-based-comedy. We also want to retire on our vast Spontaneity Shop fortunes in our middle-forties.
- What do you love about improvising and why?
- It's a tremendously immediate and exciting art-form with a power to entrance an audience like nothing else. At it's finest, it combines amazing acting, brilliant storytelling, innovative staging and adds to that the same thrill that an audience gets watching a high-wire act. Plus, I'm really good at it.
- What's your favourite improv memory?
- I have a very strong memory of making an audience at one of our earliest shows gasp in shock when I dropped a (mime) vase. That was worth more than any number of laughs.
- You teach improvisation. What do you think are the most important things for an improviser to know?
- Be bold and playful. Then the rest is easy. (Damn, have I just done myself out of teaching an eight-week beginners course?)
- You're writing a book about improv. How did that come about and what will be in it?
- Dear god, the book! Yes, Deborah and I are writing a book which we have grandly promised will contain everything there is to know about improvising, running an improvisation company, making money out of improvisation and much else besides. We've successfully pitched the idea, worked out the table of contents, negotiated the contract, and banked the advance so I thought the hard part was over. Turns out we have to write the damn thing now. I can't really spend the time to answer these questions, you know, with this book to write. Hey look, Scrubs is on. I love Scrubs...
- What else do you write?
- You know, I think Zach Braff is pulling too many faces in these later episodes. I'm sorry - what?
- I said, what else do you write?
- Sorry, I wrote for BBC Radio 4's "Weekending" when I was still a student, and have written a great deal of sketch comedy and corporate comedy over the years. I recently wrote an episode of an improvised sit-com (don't ask) for Scream Films and I have a comedy-drama in development at Carnival with my writing partner Robert Khan.
- Weren't you in that show about those people who thought they were in space?
- Space Cadets, ah yes. That was a weird one. I had to deliver a bogus lecture and then provide the voice of mission control. Almost as entertaining as the show itself was the insane Internet chatter about the possibility that the hoax was itself a hoax and that the real dupes were the viewing public. In fact, the dupes were Channel 4 since the show cost £4.5m to make and nobody watched it. Except me of course. I taped every episode. And made special labels for the boxes. With my face on them.
- What's your maxim for life?
- "Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am master of my fate and captain of my soul."
- How many degrees of separation between you and Kevin Bacon?
- Three. I was in Space Cadets (2005) with Michael Klesic who was in Multiplicity (1996) with Andie MacDowell who was in Beauty Shop (2005) with Kevin Bacon.
- Would you rather receive an Oscar or wield a light saber?
- Oscar. If you have to ask why, you clearly don't know me.
