Doing it Write
Ghost Jail and the smarter side of improv
Thank goodness for strangers, and thank goodness for strange lands. For if not for these things, then Toronto’s Ghost Jail Theatre Company might have never come to be. They may never have become a thriving weekly show and a not-for-profit with designs on Canada-wide domination. They may never have been named after Pac Man.
The strangers in question here are Ian Rowe and Caitlin Howden. Both veteran improvisers, the two came from Edmonton and Montreal, respectively, to Canada’s largest city a few years back. Their strange land was certainly no stranger to improv, though at the time, it could be a little alienating to some improvisers. “I don’t really find this anymore,” Rowe says, “[but] Toronto used to be lacking in this community feel and this sense of family.” It was something Rowe, who’d grown up improvisationally within the tight-knit family of Edmonton’s Rapid Fire Theatre (see also: Scratch), missed dearly. Same for Howden, whose former troupe, Uncalled For, were her “oldest, closest, dearest friends.”
Not immediately seeing a place for himself in the Toronto improv world, and taking advantage of the fact that the uber-popular Catch 23 was then on hiatus, Rowe started floating the idea of his own show. “Improvisers being improvisers said, ‘Great! Call me when you’ve got a show,’” Rowe says. “Then I ran into Caitlin Howden, and she was the first person to say, ‘Hey, that’s a great idea! We need to have a show, what can I do?’”
That Howden was not only gung-ho but also willing to help was one of the seals on the deal for Rowe. That both were Toronto transplants (and therefore a bit lost in the improv world there) fueled not only their desire to create a show but a desire to create it differently. “We wanted to bring the community together,” says Rowe, and bringing people together remains a big part of Ghost Jail’s mandate to this day, literally (it’s written in there) and figuratively—Rowe and Howden highly encourage their audiences to stick around after the show, and performers are pressed to interact with the masses. This mash-up is responsible not only for some fun times, but also for a heightened relationship between performer and audience. “They expect more from us,” says Howden. “We’re not playing to a lowest common denominator.”
That Ghost Jail is smart-prov at its finest isn’t all that hard to fathom if its origins are considered. Once Howden and Rowe came together, they began to weigh the artistic possibilities that lay before them. First off, Howden had seen a show that Becky Johnson (Catch 23, Iron Cobra) had put on involving onstage writing and improv. At the same time, both Rowe and Howden were getting into Chicago Public Radio’s This American Life. “What I liked about This American Life,” Howden says, “is that these were some great, personal stories that were being told.” Great storytelling was essential, she felt, to bringing the audience closer to the improvisers. For the performers, the blend between good storytelling while in a scene and good writing on the sidelines, presents a unique challenge—to be both onstage and off at the same time. And to balance the theatrical with the personal. “To hear [the writing] is very intimate, I think,” says Howden. “That’s what I liked about This American Life, too.”
And so, balancing improv and writing, and focusing these into a great piece of theatre, became Ghost Jail’s mission. Now that they had a show, they also needed a name. As everyone does, they agonized, until someone jokingly brought up a friend’s name for Pac Man—Ghost Jail. “We had a laugh,” Rowe remembers. “But then we thought, it’s perfect.”
From there, it was a no-brainer for Rowe and Howden that Ghost Jail become a not-for-profit theatre, “which is a giant pain the ass,” says Rowe, but he also knows that it will benefit the company in the long term. “Hopefully, we’ve built a structure with the not-for-profit that allows the show to exist without us and beyond us.”
Hang on a minute—two (former) strangers who manage to create something they can truly call their own, and they want it to exist autonomously, without them? This sounds distinctly unselfish, and pretty unlike the usual territorial pissings that usually go along with creative endeavours. About this, Rowe is effusive: “Yeah, ownership is threatened a bit, but community is more possible. At the end of the day, we’re careful artistically with our show. We’re protective of it and we make sure it’s done a certain way. That helps to maintain the ownership. But we don’t do a show so that people know that Ian and Caitlin do a show. We do a show that’s important for us to do artistically.”
Furthering this idea, Ghost Jail runs a season, sells memberships, and is looking at teaching the form within the Toronto improv community and across Canada (Rowe heads to Vancouver at the end of February to teach the form for performance at !nstant Theatre’s Young & Spontaneous Festival). Rowe is currently applying for grants to help make spreading Ghost Jail more possible, but it’s something he’ll pursue regardless. Howden seconds his desires: “I would love it if there was a Ghost Jail in Edmonton, in Vancouver, in Montreal, in Winnipeg.” Having both traveled to festivals across Canada and beyond, Rowe and Howden recognize the vitality available in sharing your formats with other like-minded improvisers.
And so, the two now prepare to take their show to other strange lands. And while they drown under the pile of grant applications and other responsibilities (Howden is now a regular performer at Second City), Ghost Jail’s creators each have their own improv touchstones. For Howden, knowing your audience brings everything together. “It’s really important to know who you’re playing for. It would be naïve to be like, ‘Oh, improv is improv.’ It doesn’t work that way.”
Further to that, Rowe wants the show to be great theatre. “I’ve talked a lot about community,” he says, “but I need to be clear that that’s within a context of professionalism and a certain level of performance that needs to be delivered. When improv is a big fuck around jamboree, I really don’t like it. When it’s a focused rock n roll show that punches you in the chest? Awesome!”
Both are clearly excited about their art form, their show, and the distance Toronto improv has traveled in the short time both have been in the city. Neither, however, will take any credit for helping to enrich the city’s scene. It’s enough, they say, to simply be one of the options. When it comes down to it, Ghost Jail’s artistic directors are grateful—that they get to put on a weekly show to a loyal, unique audience, with performers who often thank them for the opportunity to play, write and create for that unique audience. “Being funny is great, and if you’re funny, people will come back now and again,” Rowe says. “But being part of something is way cooler.” i.ca