Fooler Than You

Ten years of the General Fools

Last year, Regina’s General Fools celebrated their tenth year. To mark the occasion, they decided to put on a show. Makes sense for an improv theatre company—but the Fools’ Jayden Pfeifer was a little worried. “We were all over the place. We had basically taken a year off, and the tenth anniversary could have been very eye opening,” he says. And not necessarily in a good way.

Pfeifer considered the possible outcomes. “’We took a year off, and no one cares anyore,’ or ‘We took a year off, and things suffered.’” Luckily, that wasn’t the case. Within a few days, the General Fools 10th Anniversary had sold out Regina’s Globe Theatre. That’s four hundred and twenty seats, in the round. Those are rock n roll numbers, not live theatre stats. And so, the General Fools—Pfeifer, Mike Fly, Rob Appleby, Amy Matysio, Tatiana Maslany and Steve Torgerson—stepped out on stage in front of hundreds of close friends. Words to describe such an event are simple: “It was fantastic,” says Pfeifer, a smile creeping into his voice. “It was an amazing night.”

Four hundred and twenty is an astonishing number, certainly, but on a day to day basis, the number that matters most in Fools Land is six. That is, the six people who make up the ensemble, even as many of them are no longer geographically linked to the Fools’ hometown. Currently, Pfeifer, Appleby and Torgerson are the only ones who still live in the city; Fly and Matysio now live in Vancouver, while Maslany calls Toronto home. It’s now a rarity (and a welcome one, judging by the response) for the Fools to work together as an entirety, on stage. It’s a far cry from their formative days.
For an improv company with a decade under their belt, the Fools themselves are young. The median age of the group is somehere near twenty-seven, and the seeds for what would become the General Fools were planted when three of its members (Appleby, Torgerson and Fly) were only seventeen—they were part of a Canadian Improv Games team from Sheldon Williams Collegiate school in Regina. After going to Nationals, the team came back, graduated, and decided to make the crossover to pro. Matysio and Pfeifer were recruited shortly thereafter, and Maslany joined in 2004. There were others, as well—at one point in the early 2000s, General Fools had eleven in its cast.
That they were the only improv theatre company in Regina was both a challenge and a blessing, according to Pfeifer: “Being the only game in town, we were afforded the opportunity to grow and change,” he says. But isn’t being the big fish sometimes a motivation for doing, well, nothing? “We were given a lot of confidence by the loyalty of the audience,” he says. “It drove us to do better and learn more as a company.” Mike Fly agrees. “The community in Regina was so supportive. I don’t think we would have succeeded in another market.” He points out that while the sell out last year was amazing, it wasn’t a precedent. “There was one year where our average was over 260 people per show. We used to sell out weekly shows with 300 people.”
What helped the Fools thrive, other than the support of a community, was a unique point of view.  For many seasons, they did a run of posters featuring each player. “The idea being that it’s the artists that make the company,” says Fly. At one point, there were even General Fools trading cards.  This philosophy of people first is what set the Fools apart. Additionally the company has always viewed improvisation as a legitimate and vital form of theatre, planning seasons and marketing the shows as any independent theatre company would. With three of its members pursuing theatre degrees—Pfeifer, Appleby and Matysio—it only made sense to apply what they had learned in school to their own company. “We wanted improvisation to be treated as art,” Pfeifer says. It was a point of view that prompted the Fools to move from short into long form improvisation. “We saw it as a viable artistic format.”
Early on, however, the General Fools were games-oriented. “We went from high school improv to literally watching Whose Line for inspiration,” Fly says. Their first home was the stage at the Royal Retro Cinema in the Royal Saskatchewan Museum. After film showings, the Fools took the stage for midnight shows. They began building a loyal following, and started performing on a weekly basis. Eventually, they bought into the TheatreSports franchise in order to diversify the cast and prevent burnout.
Soon, however, they realized that few performers around the city treated improv the same way they did. “That’s when I realized that I had a real pride in the company and pride in the work,” says Fly. A decision was made to scrap TheatreSports and begin producing long form improv theatre. The Fools brought in !nstant Theatre’s Alistair Cook to help usher in the era of long form. Cook’s workshops, and the desire for their work to be taken seriously in the theatre community set the Fools on a new path—and quickly. “We scrapped our entire season finale show and put in long form games,” Pfeifer says.
The Fools’ move from short to long form was initially a tough one. Audiences of three hundred dwindled to one hundred, and the company traded in the instant gratification of weekly shows for the more careful production of a five-show season of long form. With this new era, however, came something else: the ability to get funding. “It’s really funny, because I hear other groups complaining about not being able to get grant money all the time,” says Fly. “I think the problem is that most improvisers aren’t producing fine art.” Fly argues that most improvisation is treated as “pop art, which is accessible and easy.” There’s nothing wrong with pop art, except that grant organizations aren’t into it. “They want fine art, because fine art sets the bar for pop art.”
The current incarnation of General Fools is only usually able to come together  on stage once or twice a year. For Pfeifer, that’s hard, but not terrible. Rather, it forces the company to innovate. “We are a group of artists who choose to work together as often as possible,” he says. “What the absence of these bodies has shown us is that there are other opportunities for us to work together as a group.” Accordingly, the Fools have recently written a radio series pilot for CBC, and they’ve started honing and filming their best scenes as sketches. Pfeifer is set to produce the improv portion of the Canadian Comedy Awards ceremonies, which are happening this year in Regina. (It’s worth noting that General Fools are up for Best Improv Group at the awards, while Pfeifer and Matysio got a nod for best male and female improviser, respectively.)

The challenge going forward, then, is for the Fools to keep on creating, in whatever form that might take. And no matter how far away from one another they might end up, it’s thecoming together that matters. “With other groups, no matter what, I don’t have that instant rapport with them,” Fly says. “[The years with the Fools were] formative, growing up years. Going through shit years. Pulling friends out of fights and watching them have break ups and consoling them through life issues. That’s the stuff you can count on, even if it’s subtext on stage.”

Now in their eleventh season, General Fools are one of Canada’s longest running, strongest improvisational theatre companies. Whenever the distance between them might seem insurmountable, Pfeifer thinks back to that tenth anniversary sell out crowd. He says that it was the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next, and that they have to keep reinventing themselves going forward. “As a company, we bonded over that,” he says. “This was an opportunity to sign on the dotted line and say, ‘This is us.’” i.ca