Danielle:

Today, I am super happy to have Adam Courting with me, who is a very curious creative, whose work spans devising, improv, writing, acting, and so much more. And today I’m particularly excited to be able to ask Adam about the place where improv and Shakespeare meet in his work, which is quite a delightful combination. But before we dive in, Adam, is there anything else you’d like people to know about you and your work?

Adam Courting:

I’d like you to know that I’m still looking for more things to do. So collaborating. I’m perpetually like curious and interested in the world around me. So you may see me popping up in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar ideas. Don’t be alarmed. I’m just experimenting and exploring.

Danielle:

I love it. Amazing. I think that’s a great note to get off on. Fantastic. So one of the things that I know about you from having a little bit of a look around online is that you’re currently part of two different improv groups, which is fabulous. And I wanted to start there because we use the term improv as though it’s one thing, improvisation, but actually it covers so many different kinds of forms and styles and different flavours. So I wondered if you wouldn’t mind giving us a little bit of an insight into those two different groups and the particular skills that you bring to them and love to explore as it relates to comedy and creativity.

Adam Courting:

Lovely, yes, be happy to. So the first group, I guess I’ll do it in order that I joined. So the first group is Do The Right Scene. It’s an all-black improv group. We are London’s first as far as we know. So if anyone wants to come out the woodwork and show us sort of trust papers from, you know, before, it’s fine, we’ll accept it. And we do predominantly, we’ve done a lot of short-form improv. So that is improv games, things you might have seen on Whose Line Is It Anyway, that sort of thing. But we also do incorporate more longer form comedy. So it’s an all-black group and that is quite key to what happens there.

So the founders of the group, so some of the early, Tai Campbell being one of them and Athena Kugbleno who’s, they’re both comedians and they both perform and write and do lots of other things outside of it. I think part of it was creating a cultural space where the names of characters, the types of stories, the themes that come out, they’re not specifically from the black African or Caribbean community, but that does come up a lot. And it’s sort of part of it is the idea of creating a space where it’s okay and normalized to have a name like Femi or Folu, you know, to talk about barbershops or you know going to the Caribbean and that not being the key part of the story which can often happen and so the idea isn’t to create a separate space where other things aren’t discussed but it’s to create a space where as well as the usual Cecil’s and Bob’s and Francis’s exist there can also be other Jamals and Athenas and Tais and other parts so I think that’s probably one of the key things about why the group exists and also what it hopes to offer to the world.

Sometimes it’s like, why are you doing what you’re doing? It’s a question we don’t always ask ourselves. Is it necessary? Maybe it’s personally necessary, fine. Does it bring anything else? Does it add anything? Because when you perform on a public stage in a public space, there’s limited resources. There’s only so many venues that we can perform in. There’s only so much time we can have on a stage. And I think it’s great that people express themselves. I never ever want to advocate people not expressing themselves. But for me personally, it’s important to sort of say, is this necessary now? Can I step aside and let someone else tell their story? And there’s a version of that, an improv, which is actually, let’s make some space for other groups to do the right scene.

Also it has a monthly night which we call a POC night, so it brings all that is the nature of the night is and there’s a free workshop… or sorry, it was a free workshop…. Uh, everyone’s got bills to pay, but it’s a very low-cost workshop before where people of colour can come and also participate in bringing their individual names, their unique names, their unique cultures, throw it all into one big melting pot. And we can all kind of take the time to appreciate different cultures without having to represent them ourselves. We can just share a space with someone sharing what they bring. And they have a chance to perform in the show afterwards. So that was a plug, but it was an indirect one because the point was… The whole idea is that different people can perform and bring those stories and characters. And even though we’re an all-black group, we are not saying that it has to be all-black the space. So we were saying we want everyone who feels like they’re on the outskirts from that ethnicity or race or cultural side to come on in and share that with the audience.

Now the audience, we encourage everyone to come to. So there are no restrictions in that sense. So it’s part of the reason why I enjoyed the improv project. I’d kind of done some improv before, lost the passion of it. And it sort of, for me, as I was searching my own identity and starting to understand it more, and I guess claim it more and be more confident sharing that, this felt like it was a good intersection between my identity and the work that I love doing. And it spills out into the comedy and it means that there were lots of references that I can feel safe sharing. Same with lots of the people I perform with, we can bring all these references and not make them the core focus. And so it allows the comedy to expand out in different directions now, maybe unfamiliar directions in improv spaces, because now we’ve got different brains and different ideas, different lenses sharing their version of… this is what I find funny. This is what’s interesting to me.

And for me in terms of comedy, I’m always interested in how do we evolve it, develop it, you know, there are certain things that are… I’d say they will continue through time. The Rule of Three and, you know, comedy beats, lots of stuff that will just be part of comedy. However, the lenses through which we shine that through… the perspectives we bring, the character types, archetypes, stereotypes, all of that is subject to shifting and I guess that’s one of the things that I enjoy with the comedy that we do there. So that’s effectively my Do The Right Scene soap box I’d like to say and there’s room to continue to grow and we’ve got a show coming up where we want to kind of again shine it through different prisms and lenses and challenge ourselves to not fall into the, the stereotype of what a Do The Right Scene show might be and really push ourselves to expand and explore and share new cultural references and explore it in different ways and challenge ourselves to be both diverse and inclusive at the same time. So yeah.

Danielle:

Fabulous, thank you. Oh my goodness. I’ve got so many questions to ask about that, but I do want to give space to the second group as well, just because I mentioned two, and I’m going to learn from both of them. So if you wouldn’t mind telling us a bit about that too.

Adam Courting:

Absolutely. So, Acaprov, the shortest way to describe it is a showstoppers but acapella. But I thought it does both showstoppers and Acaprov a disservice because they’re two very different things. So, I think it’s fair to say that was the birth of that concept of an improvised musical. But the acapella aspect where… beatboxing and rapping and the absence of a pianist, any sort of musicians, everything being done by the cast. For me, it’s such a great challenge to create everything from the space, especially musicals. I mean, there’s something joyful about musicals and especially the Acaprov musicals, which is rooted around love and connection and relationships and togetherness. You can kind of do them any way you want, but that is effectively where… Acaprov sits, you know, there’s lots of humour. It can veer onto darker aspects, but it never really sits there. So it has this sort of broad scope of humanity, but centred around love and around creativity and what Acaprov brings.

What it’s brought me personally is… I have a love of music, of creative music. I used to manage a band years ago. I learned to play a bit of guitar through them, write songs on my own when I was upset, sad, you know, late 20s, going through a situation, pick up a guitar, write a song, just for the sake of it. But it’s just this lovely space of, in order to create an ensemble that can harmonize, that can create music together and create a very full palette of music. as well as providing a musical with the relationships, the developments, all of the things you associate with a musical, the progression of a narrative in a way that you know will be resolved in a way. It relies on a lot of trust, a wide skill set, but also. an embracing of the difference that everyone brings with people being stronger at some things, and other people being stronger at others. And it’s got a mix of both celebrating who you are, what you bring, but also we can develop additional skills in the process and you can challenge yourselves within it in a sort of safe way among people who are supportive to create these like spectacles.

And it is magical, you know…It’s just a fantastic space of, in the same vein that improv brings something out of nothing, but to see this rich tapestry of, you know, a very mixed group of humans. Improv attracts non-performers in the sense of it’s often just people who… do a wide range of jobs, nine to five or, you know, flexy time, who also step into the improv space. And it brings that, it holds that in a way that the regular acting world or whatever we’re going to call it, typical acting world doesn’t. So lots of really different ways of thinking, of being, and it kind of holds them, it brings them all in together. And then we get to express ourselves through this, this medium. that involves us really listening and really sharing moments and paying attention to each other and paying attention to ourselves.

And there’s just a joy that comes from the intro song that we sing, from singing the title of the show that an audience member has provided with us, provided for us, in harmony together, from that moment to the final song that we all sing together, to those final notes, sung in harmony. There’s just something magical that happens in the audience and between the performers that for me brings something beyond just a kind of artistic enjoyment. It’s very kind of soul-filling for me. So, and it’s all, you know, humour and comedy and joy just rooted in all of it. You know, it’s about how do we see people experience these difficulties, people that look just like us but in a kind of… in a comedic way, it’s not… it’s not traumatic. There is drama in there, but there’s also a lot of comedy underpinning it. It’s like life, it’s a reflection of life. There’s sort of… there are lots of comedic elements to just everyday life, and it kind of helps to frame and capture that, and then present it in the way of a show that looks like it was written.

Danielle:

That’s amazing. Oh my goodness. I wish I could come and see a show tonight. I’m sold, I’m there. It’s wonderful. And I’d love to know, from where you are now, when you think about being in that ensemble and you’ve already mentioned things like trust and paying attention. Are there any other things that you have learned to be part of an ensemble now that you just didn’t know when you started?

Adam Courting:

Definitely. I’d say one of the key things is an understanding of yourself. I think it can often be forgotten about because performance to some degree involves you becoming someone or some version of yourself that isn’t necessarily the you that buys newspapers or you know subscribes to fresh food delivery companies. And I think the understanding of how your brain works, what your interests are, but also what bothers you, what frustrates you, the conditions that you need to feel happy or safe. That is, that’s the thing that I really had to learn to pay attention to and have learned really affects the way that I can step out into a rehearsal or a performance space and I now advocate for people to really spend time digging into that because creativity can often be an escape from the day-to-day world and I guess it always will be to a degree.

However… I think it’s not helpful to avoid tackling those things about yourself that are driving you day to day and just to dive into the creativity and work because even they can give you something sometimes it can be the lifeboat if we never come back to tackle those things they come out in our personality in our behaviour, in our choices that we make. And often this is where we can end up with difficult moments on stage, because if you’ve not processed your own issues with gender, with race, you know, when you’re in that moment of having to make a quick decision based on your reflexes, that’s where it starts to tap into that. And that’s where we can get some uncomfortable spaces that are rooted in your unconscious and in that slight anxiety that you get when you have to make a choice. Sometimes that’s what you’re tapping into. Not always, but, you know, that sometimes.

So I found that I’ve had to do a lot of looking at myself and being honest and am I ready? Am I ready to be performing right now? You know at various points I take time out of things and say actually this stuff in life…. I need to take care of, and sometimes the shows have been a place to avoid doing what I need to do, but it will always come out at some point and It’s not always healthy for that to just suddenly come out when I’m rehearsing, when I’m doing a show, it’s not always fair to the people I’m working with. If I’m not ready to work, but I’m just bringing myself in there, then I might bring things into the space that aren’t helpful for what everyone’s trying to achieve, including myself. So I’d say like a better understanding of self of unpicking things. Reflection has always been something that I’ve tried to incorporate since I started doing forest school work. It’s great. It’s like being able to reflect regularly on not just what you’ve experienced but how you felt, how you respond to a particular stimuli, what things keep coming up, are there ways that people describe you that you may not necessarily be happy with but are continually there, you know. Are there things I can address because that is the sort of stuff that can… filter out when you’re trying to set up this trust space and we’re working as a team collaborating. Now I’m more likely to share in a room… I’m experiencing this right now and so these areas I may struggle with or you know in that space and I’m more likely to kind of face up to that. Whereas I think previously I would have bottled it and it would have just popped out and in an opportune moment and suddenly um other people are having to help support me in a rehearsal or in the middle of a scene and then it’s hard you know there’s embarrassment and shame and that I don’t necessarily address it afterwards. So, or it gets lost in the mix of, what a great show, we had a moment, we got past it. So it’s more important for me to find that kind of peace within myself than to just force myself to experience difficult moments on stage just for the sake of, you know, the show must go on or, you know, I’ve committed to this thing, so I have to do it.

Danielle:

Hmm. That’s incredibly wise and really good advice that you don’t often hear people give, it’s really valuable. Thank you. And I’m wondering, you’ve mentioned trust, like being able to trust yourself and doing that work on yourself, but you’ve also mentioned it in relation to the sort of wider space and how we create that to be able to take those risks. And obviously inherent in improv can be things not working, things failing, that can be part of the process too. So. I’m really curious, particularly with comedy, where we are pushing different things and exploring material in that… you hear standups talking about walking right up to the line and sometimes going across the line. And we’re talking about it as though it’s the thing we can see, but it isn’t. It’s a very complicated, nuanced, multifaceted thing that…

Adam Courting:

You just know when you’ve crossed it.

Danielle:

Yes. So I’d love to know just in terms of your work, how you… Think about those conversations with colleagues and what you think are useful conversations to be having, from where we are in 2023, about the kind of things that we bring into comedy…how to have those conversations usefully. That’s a really difficult question, I know.

Adam Courting:

Yeah. I will throw my two cents in and it will hopefully contribute to the wider part.

I guess, how I’m reflecting on, um, how I approach the work as a performer, as a creative, whether it’s writing or, you know, working in comedy, writing sketches, performing them…is this. So we talk about truth in comedy, and there’s a lot of, uh, phrases that in isolation can be quite misleading. So things like truth, write what you know, you have to be yourself and bring yourself to the space. So sometimes we’re in unhealthy places for ourselves and we’re in vulnerable places for ourselves. So if you write the truth of a moment when you’re vulnerable, then yeah, you’re absolutely doing that. It may not actually be right for you to share that. It may not be right for you to bring that to a wider stage or wider audience without you doing your own processing first. It might make great material and people may identify with it immediately. But if you haven’t gained some sort of understanding of it, if you haven’t begun that process of what to do with it, then I think it can take, it can start to overtake you. It can move beyond you out of your control and it might further deepen issues that you already have. It might create situations where… We have all these choices before us and we make these choices and we stand by these choices and maybe the choice that you could have made a different choice and still got the laugh or the experience you wanted. However this one might reopen wounds. It might open wounds elsewhere and not because you intended it to but because you just had this generic ‘It’s truth in comedy’, just write what you know. It’s truth, you know, all of this stuff, it can be unhelpful language.

And whenever I read books on writing comedy, there is a Truth in Comedy book. Whenever I read books on all of these different, none of them really talk about, or even have a section on… how okay are you, before you undertake this? If you’re going to delve into your own self, if you’re going to dredge up memories and feelings and frustrations, and if you’re going to dig into trauma, are you okay to doso? Can you hold it? Can you deal with the repercussions of it? It’s never really talked about. It’s just about the work. I think it’s hard to separate the person from the work. Your work is inherently going to take, it’s your lens. It’s quite personal, as much you try and write about different people and different experiences, all very personal. So, I think it’s important that self-work, and that it’s also taken into account while we approach the work. If that makes sense. I think it’s important to not just launch straight in, and to take that time.

And I don’t know, some people have found, you know, made great careers of just digging into traumatic experiences. And I, in a way, I’m not saying don’t do that, but I’m saying be mindful of what you’re doing. You know, especially if you’re starting out. We’re actually now in a space where we are clear that not everyone is okay. And we’re trying to create spaces where we don’t force people to not be okay. Please only come to us if you have something traumatic to bring to the table. Please only tell us this story if it evokes deep felt memories. Please only share the most personal private things… we’re in a space going well actually we can’t always hold that and when it comes out in front of an audience, when it’s put onto a dvd, when it’s streamed out there then it’s out there and there can sometimes be implications beyond you know your control. So i guess i’m just sort of revising my way forward with that.

Danielle:

That makes total sense. And again, it’s super helpful. And last question, because I definitely want to ask you about your Shakespeare work too, and there’s such a lovely link between them. But so many things that you said have provoked more questions. And one that I’d love to know is just as you, because you are so reflective and you are so involved in so many fantastic creative projects, like for yourself and young people, which I’ll also ask you about. When you think about comedy moving forward and you think about, right now we’re in 2023, but think about comedy three, five, 10 years out… are there any things that you would love to see in terms of changes when you think about, say, the young people that you work with coming through and having their chances? What would you still like to see change?

Adam Courting:

I think the main thing I’d love to see change, because I think comedy will always have an element of things that feel closer to this line, that cross a line, you know, whatever the moral or societal line that is. I’d love to see unions and institutions and… production companies just take more responsibility in ensuring that sort of wellness side of it. I’d like to see them take more responsibility for putting things in place that also protect the artists and the performers. I think as a creative, often you just express yourself and sometimes you express yourself because you’re inspired, sometimes, I mean, I guess it’s all a form of inspiration. But sometimes that inspiration can come from a more joyful, excitable place. And sometimes it can come from a darker place. And I’m not saying one has more value over the other, but what I would like to see is those gatekeepers and the caretakers, those that are facilitating this do take more of an interest, in the creatives below them and help to support their understanding of what’s happening.

I think it’s…of course, if I have a club and I welcome everyone and everyone’s, well, that’s not fair…. I think a lot of organizations, even individuals that run their own businesses, in the quest to develop more, to develop their audiences, to generate more material through their medium, through their organization. They don’t always put things in place to protect anything, be it audience or performer. They don’t always see a need or have a desire to censor. And I use the word censor, but to at least challenge people to reflect themselves, there’s not always a process of, you know… if you’re coming in here, I’m giving you a platform. Once you come and speak on this platform, once you kind of appear on this camera, this is going to go out. It’s going to amplify your voice. Now. I want you to be sure that you’re ready to amplify this voice. You know, I want you to be sure that you know the potential…what can happen once you step out and do this.

Because a performer who, um, I guess is using the social media controversial comments and antagonistic comments will generate hits and will generate interactions and that’s great for a platform. Just engagement is great. But if that has an effect on the performer or the audience, that’s not a concern. If your interest is just engagement. So I don’t want to stop people sharing their thoughts, stop people saying what they need to say. But I would like those that are promoted, that are making money off it, that are gaining something to take a responsibility in also being part of that process of helping someone to just check themselves before they make that step. You know, I want you to come and perform with me. Let’s have a conversation first. I want to get to know you first and understand what you’re doing first. This is weird shortcutting where they don’t care as long as you can do this or you go out on stage. I don’t care what happens. If you’re not great, you might get booed or you might not come back again and I’ll get someone else in. I’d like to see more interest taken. It’s not financially, it’s not going to gain them anything financially, but that’s not my interest. I’d like that to change.

Danielle:

Yeah, thank you. I mean, so much food for thought there and makes such incredible sense. And like the more you say it, the more I can see how relevant that is to so many different creative industries. And how as creative sometimes people criticise different other industries outside the sector, but actually there are more things in place there to take care of people, which we just don’t have sometimes in the creative fields. And certainly not that sort of longer-term vision that you’re speaking of, which is so important, whether it’s in politics, life, education, whatever it is. So thank you for bringing that to the conversation. I really appreciate it.

Adam Courting:

I’m like sorry just to jump on what you said..I found that in the corporate… I do a lot of corporate training and I was astonished at the number of accountability policies and procedures in place at law firms, accountancy firms, other businesses that we traditionally look on as capitalist monsters, and maybe to a degree there are things that certain organizations do, however lots of them…they know exactly how many female leaders they have. They have a target for increasing that. They know how many non-white members they have. They know how many non-heterosexual, you know, they have lots of statistics and they’re like, we are working to improve that and we’re putting these things in place and we’re signing up to this and we’re accountable. And when they do… often I’m training them for when they have new associates joining. And part of what I was told is you’re a good lawyer… We know that but we need the extra stuff.

And as a law firm, you can’t just say, well, we’re the top firm. They need to know what you’re doing with sustainability, what you’re doing with, you know, helping the environment, what you’re doing with initiatives with the community. They’re like having to be accountable to new associates joining, because they can go anywhere. And, then I look at the arts organizations and the stories that have passed, and the fact that lots of that is still in place…almost zero accountability. There’s almost, they’re all closed shops whereby they can run like sort of their own kingdoms and they only put stuff in place if they want to. But in comparison, as someone who identifies as being from the arts sort of space, I’m kind of ashamed of the organizations. I know there are some smaller ones and there are some bigger ones, but It’s not a culture that we’ve embraced in the way that other industries have and that feels a bit of a shame.

Danielle:

Yeah, totally. And so many more questions, I could ask you, but I’m determined to also ask you about your Shakespeare work, just because I think it’s such a beautiful intersection. And we’ve time travelled forwards a little bit to a future and what we’d like to see there. And you’ve given us lots to picture. But I’d love to time travel back to think about the Shakespeare texts that you’ve engaged with and also how you’ve brought them up to context.

So I was fascinated to read that you’ve been involved in multiple Shakespeare productions, with multiple leading roles, including Bottom in Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of the iconic comedic roles. But I’d love to know if we, I’m going to set improv aside just for a second, to see how you approached that role. And then I’d love to know where improv fits with it because they do join together.

So when you were approaching that role, and thinking about it as a role that embraces comedy as well as other things too… It’s a big question, but what were some of the challenges or fascinations that you had with it, and what you wanted to bring to it, as you brought it to life?

Adam Courting:

Yeah, it’s quite funny because up until…so I worked with this company called Open Bar and I credit them entirely with helping me to reshape how I thought about the role. So I had applied for, they did some like doubling, so I’d applied for, I think it was Lysander and one of the, I can’t remember which mechanical and it was an interesting doubling in there. And I ended up getting Bottom. So at first I was like, oh, okay. What do I do with this? And thinking about productions of Midsummer…I mean, it’s on at least eight times a year in various places every year. So you have this image and the mechanicals or West Country and Bottom has, is portly, is that a fair word? I don’t know. Apologies if that is not something we use. But Bottom has a bigger belly in all of the productions I’ve seen, whether that is a suit that someone’s put on or they’ve done it. And they have this very kind of set interpretation that involves, you know, Bottom and the mechanicals not being very clever. And so that was, I guess it’s the sort of thing with any Shakespeare pieces…. How do I forget what I know and bring something unique to it?

And when I went for the recall… the director sent an email out…the director, producer saying… we all know you can act. So we just want to see what you bring to the role. And sometimes things just land with you as a, you know, sometimes something really stands out. And it just made me, I sat in a bedroom at the time and I just remember thinking, okay, if I was going to do this, which sounds really silly, but if I was going to do this, and do it any way I wanted, what would it do? And I ended up like rapping one of the little speeches that Bottom did, because it was something that I enjoyed doing. And sort of, I did that in the audition and actually that moment, you know, it unlocked something in me, which was… I can really filter this through my own brain and my own mind and just interpret what I read, through my own lens.

Because often I found with Shakespeare…people have these readings of the characters and the texts. So they will tell you what it’s about. They will tell you, I know that’s not the right interpretation, it’s this. And it may exist there, but as far as I know, none of these people have actually spoken to Shakespeare. And… they are…it’s fine to interpret it but it felt very fixed and people judging a performance not based on the performance but what they expect from the role and that someone has taken it this way and it’s not how they see the character. And it’s the one thing that was missing from Open Bar… they do lots of research, they do lots of work on the text, understanding it, all the contextual stuff and everything. However, you’re not performing in front of a 17th-century audience. You’re performing in front of an audience at the time… I think it was 2017, and I am not an actor from the 17th century. So I need to bring what I understand and what I know to what I’m reading. So in the end, I abandoned this idea, you know, we talk about the Shakespeare voice. I was like, no, let go of all of those things that you’ve been told and that, you know, people that have a greater understanding of the text. Know about it and just think… people have come to see a piece of work that they’d like to be able to understand They’ve paid a ticket not to be patronized They paid for a ticket not to sit and have to go and read about what just happened They want to see some storytelling in front of them and understand what is happening and that is our job, is to make it clear for that audience and clear for ourselves.

So I sort of abandoned that side of it, the kind of classical, this is the canon and how we’ve done it. And I just focused on trying to interpret every line and every relationship with the other people I was performing with, the way that I would if this was me, which sounds like a very simplistic and of course… that’s what we’re doing. But I don’t think that’s what everyone always does, especially with Shakespeare. And you can always be pushed by people around you, by the fear you have of breaking away from common understanding and common portrayals. You can always be influenced indirectly, even if no one actually says it, to try and produce something that other people might want to see.

And it’s almost the opposite of what I get from improv, which is they just want to see your interpretation. So in a way, I sort of brought my improv brain… to tie those two things in together… into that character and went, how would I characterize this? And what do I find interesting about this person? And how do I humanize this person? And just starting from there, made a massive difference compared to portrayals that I’ve done in the past that are more sort of standard text and me trying to be the thing that I think everyone wants to see. So yeah, I think that was once I started doing that and really playing and just allowing myself just to have fun, if I’m honest, just to do things because they made me laugh, or because I thought this would be an interesting thing, you know, to make me enjoy the process.

And the director was great at You know, Nicky Diss, who directed it,  was great at either laughing her head off or just going… that doesn’t work. And because you’re so safe with the way that she directs and works, that you don’t take that personally, you just go, okay, you know. And sometimes she’ll say, how about this? And you’ll try what she says. And she’s like, yeah. Or she’ll go…sorry, that was a bad steer. But I think it also comes back to trust and safety, which I think can often be absent from the rehearsal creative space, which ties back into…is the director, the producer, the organization… are they creating a space where you can feel safe to be vulnerable? Because if they are, then you can start to bring your own interpretations. You can start to play. If they’re not, then you need to have a certain type of personality that will do that regardless. And I don’t necessarily think that’s fair. It doesn’t create an even playing space if people don’t. Not everyone who isn’t super confident can also bring themselves to the roles. So I… reflecting now and thinking about previous productions, I think actually all of the stuff I said… it just comes down to you feeling safe enough that they really want you to do that role… that it’s you that they’re after and they’re willing to accept that you bring lots of stuff they don’t… they won’t think of, and that is great. That’s a wonderful thing, to be celebrated not to be tempered not to be uh, chopped down. Not to be re, you know, directed in a different way, but just to be like enhanced… we’ll shave a bit here, we’ll push that further. Um, and so yeah, that’s ultimately,  what I discovered in that process and I’ve carried on ever since.

Danielle:

I love that. And what about when you then get it in front of the audience in terms of the different contexts that you’re performing in and managing audience interactions and that like uncontrollable part that happens? How did improv fit with that?

Adam Courting:

I mean it’s great again. So from day one, Nicky and Vicky Gaskin who co-produces, their ethos involves you’re going to be in a public space. Pub gardens, most of the time. Different ones, sometimes you’re in built-up areas, buses coming by, sometimes you’re in this great field. Things are going to happen, audiences are getting drunker throughout the show. They’re going to get more interactive. And we just lean into that from the very beginning. There are songs, there is, you know, the pre-chat. I love the pre-chat. So I will go out and just start chatting to people and getting to know them. And because that is the culture that’s been set, the ethos of the company, but the culture we have. Yeah, the first show, first few shows, you’re just trying to remember your lines. So anything that happens, you don’t plan for.

But the whole point is… it’s always embraced. Nicky has said, embrace that, share it with the audience is one of her mantras. If something happens and you feel the need to comment on it or you need to, comment out loud and make sure everyone knows what you’re referring to. And when you, after the first few shows…you learn the script and you’re… confident in your lines. It’s like the most freeing thing in the world, because every day you’re aiming to say the lines exactly as you rehearse them and something can get in the way of that and that obstacle just elevates everything and it’s a unique moment that everyone shares and we don’t…it doesn’t just happen, we get to comment on it and really share it in the way that an improv audience shares in the mistakes, and thrives off the mistakes of performers, and thrives on the unplanned things and the comments that get shouted out that no one expected and how someone deals with that.

And the more masterfully, you know the more expertly, the more comfortably they deal with it or just admit that they can’t more the more fun it is. And then you realize it’s just a gift to be able to not just say… everyone just sit back and watch us impress you with our wonderful show, but to go… do you know what? We’re gonna have to work really hard to make this show work and you’re also a part of it. And that, once you do that a few times, it’s really hard to go back.

It’s really hard to go…okay, well, we’re not gonna hear from you for two hours and then you’re gonna stand up and give us innovation. You just wanna really get out there and you want something to happen because you’re ready for it, you know?

Danielle:

Yeah, I love that. It sounds thrilling. My goodness. And from hearing this podcast, I’m sure people who are in the UK will want to see your work, I certainly do. So where should people go to find out more about you and what you’re up to?

Adam Courting:

So I’m currently being very elusive.

Danielle:

Okay.

Adam Courting:

So yeah, but not intentionally. I’m just, yeah, I’ve been retreating a bit and trying to do more yoga and more mindfulness actually. So I’m having a bit of a reset. However…Do the Right Scene… So at DTRS Comedy, I’ll be doing shows there once a month. Acaprov…at Acaprov  Musical. I haven’t been at shows recently, but I will come back. But in a way, go and see those people. There are lots of amazing people that I will encourage you to see. Because when you see them, you’re kind of seeing a piece of me as well. So even if I’m not there. you’ll get a sense of the thing that I’m connected to. It’s like meeting my family and you’ll get a better sense of like who I am. So go check those places out. I’ve been trying to pull myself away from social media more, just so I can do this me-focused stuff. And so I’m not very prevalent on there, but just every now and then I might post something on there. But mainly, yeah, go check out these groups, but also go inside yourself. That’s where I’m going to tell you to go. Don’t come and find me. Go inside yourself. Because that’s what I’m trying to do right now. And it’s just interesting what you discover. And yeah, then you’ll bump into me at some point.

Danielle:

I love it. I mean, that’s such a beautiful prompt to end on. And I’m sure so many of us need to hear it. So thank you. My goodness. You’ve shared so much great advice today. So many fascinating things that I’m going to continue to think about. And I really appreciate your time.

Adam Courting:

Oh, thank you so much. It’s lovely to be here. Yes. I’ll see you another time.

Danielle:

Yeah, so I have to do round two because I’ve got a million more questions for you. Okay, bye for now.

Adam Courting:

Bye bye.