Alex Casey talks to the women behind Sleigh!, the Basement’s fully improvised Christmas show, about how to think on your feet this Christmas.
Improvised comedy is just like jazz, says Alice Canton. “In order to be a good improviser in jazz you need to know scales, you need to know arpeggios, you need to know chord structures and progression,” she says. “Without all of that, you can’t just blat out random notes, and that is the same principle in our world too.” The world she is referring to is that of Sleigh!, this year’s fully improvised Basement Theatre Christmas show, of which Canton has taken the reins as co-producer alongside Brynley Stent and Rhiannon McCall.
Stent is quick to point out that, despite Canton’s sophisticated analogy, improvised comedy is mostly about failing and embracing stupidity. “We sound like we know what we are doing, but actually on the night we are just like, ‘let’s just be silly’.” The trio have been working together for the past few years putting on shows with Heartthrobs, an Auckland collective of comedians and comedy actors known for improvised pop culture pisstakes such as Lust Island, McKenzie’s Daughters and The Salem Bitch Trials.
All of this has prepared them for Sleigh!, the 2022 entry into one of the most hallowed comedy institutions of all: The Basement Christmas show. Set in a “Worstfield” mall on Christmas Eve, the fully improvised show has a rotating cast of 23 performers and the always-crucial surprise celebrity guest. They take suggestions from the audience every night for locations and story beats, and McCall says that while they have explored various stereotypes you might encounter at a mall in rehearsal, all the characters and scenarios are created live every night.
About the only thing that will remain constant in Sleigh! is the setting: a grim suburban mall. “Our shows are comedy shows, but they’re also soap operas,” says McCall. “There’s always high drama, and a mall on Christmas Eve is just ripe for high drama.” As well as being the perfect setting for festive frenzy, the mall also has a special place in all three producers’ hearts. “We’re all Christchurch girls, so of course we’re mall girls,” says Stent. “The mall is our church,” adds McCall. “The mall is the cultural foundation at which we worship,” concludes Canton.
Ironically, the trio have put off all their own Christmas preparation thanks to Sleigh!, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a few improv pearls of wisdom for winging it through the silly season. “Embrace failure,” says Stent. “If your pav doesn’t turn out, just chuck some strawberries on it and make an Eton Mess.” McCall’s go-to improv exercise is “yes, let’s” which is about accepting other people’s suggestions and advancing the narrative. “That’s a good ethos to take into Christmas – say ‘yes, let’s’ to another serving of dessert, or another shot of the brandy.”
Canton offers a potential technique that is often used in improv to get out of storylines that are going nowhere. “You can just go, ‘the real reason I’ve brought you here is…’ and then you just fly by the seat of your pants – that’s what we would call a turning offer.” She suggests this could work well during an awkward Christmas conversation, such as when one might need to “divert attention away from Nana and her racist politics,” for example. “That turning offer is going to be what brings joy to the audience slash the rest of your family members,” she says.
Finally, there’s another lesson from their time in Heartthrobs that is worth remembering this Christmas: the power of sharing the load. “We operate as a three-headed dog,” says McCall. “None of us could have done this on our own.” Stent agrees: “I don’t know how normal producers do this by themselves. I’m so busy and I don’t have a fulltime job, and I have two other people helping me.” For Canton, their work on Sleigh! and the broader Heartthrobs universe can be boiled down to one phrase: “The auteur is dead, long live the collective.”
Or, even more fittingly: “Santa is dead, long live the elves.”