Interview: 'What We're Doing Is Inherently Silly And A Terrible Idea!': Dylan Emery, Co-Creator of SHOWSTOPPER! THE IMPROVISED MUSICAL On Art Of Improv

Showstopper! The Improvised Musical is a unique production where a group of comedians, singers and musicians come together to create a new musical every night before an audience. Over the years it’s been running, Showstopper! has won an Olivier Award and even recently reached 1,500 performances.

Recently, we had the chance to speak with Dylan Emery, one of the co-creators of the show. We discussed how Showstopper! came into existence, what it’s like to prepare for a performance of Showstopper!, and what he hopes audiences take away from the show. 

So how did you first get started in the world of theatre?

In my school, I had a fantastic drama teacher called Andrew Morehouse, who was into improv. As an English teacher, he’d get groups of his students and he'd just be like, “You’ve got five minutes - devise a scene in which x, y and z happen.” And, of course, it was incredibly exciting! Then I did some plays at school. And then at university, it was just like, “What do you do for fun when you're not doing your degree?” I played musical instruments and did plays. So that's the actual start. None of it was from training - it was just doing it because it was fun to do!

And what made you want to be a part of Showstopper! The Improvised Musical?

Basically, the story of Showstopper! is the story of an amazing British theatrical presence, Ken Campbell. He's really well known amongst a certain generation of people here. He wasn't interested in doing mainstream theatre. He wanted to do weird, edgy, strange, comedy theatre - take it to the people, rather than having it in stuffy theatres. He was an amazing person, and I was very lucky enough to work with him. 

He was asked by Mark Rylance in 2005 to do a celebration of Shakespeare at The Globe Theatre. He had worked with Max Webster who was able to improvise in iambic pentameter. So Ken went, “Oh my God, what’s that? That's fun!” So he got together Max, plus a whole bunch of other improvisers and other actors - not trained improvisers, but trained actors - and said, “Let's go to the Globe, and we'll do massive impro shenanigans, but in the style of Shakespeare.” 

Then he got invited to the Royal Court, and at that point I was invited to join, because I was already doing impro in London, but I also was a musician. He needed someone to do underscoring and background music, so I joined the team. I'd already been studying impro for like five years, so I took my impro learning and added it to all the stuff that Ken had been doing. And that's how it started! 

And for those who might be unaware of what Showstopper! The Improvised Musical is, can you tell us a bit about it?

So Showstopper! is a fully improvised West End-style musical. It is a two-hour long show where we have a band, a cast of six or seven people, and we fully improvise a musical from start to finish. Characters, storytelling, choreography, songs . . . Absolutely everything is from scratch every night based on audience suggestions.

So the audience will provide us the concept of the show, then it'll give us styles of musicals. So someone will say, “Can you do a song in the style of Phantom of the Opera?” And we've worked on all those musicals and listened to them. What makes these particular musicals unique? What's the lyrical quality? We imagine that the composer and the lyricist have written the song for this musical for that night, so we do a pastiche of that style. But it's not a comedy pastiche. It is as if they'd written a brilliant song for our musical. So we do that, and then we get the title of the show from the audience, and then that's it! But also, we have an onstage writer/director who can stop the show at any point and get the audience to change things. That's where we have lots of fun as well!

How does one prepare for an improvised show like this?

As with all impro, you don't rehearse as such. Practice is a better way of putting it. The allegory that's often used is like a sports team. You don't know what game you're going to be playing, but you can practice all your skills. So in our case, we have people going, “Okay, we'll give you a setup. Start the scene. How would it be if it was in a good musical? What would it be like? How do you get the dialogue there? How do you reach that emotional point at which you have to sing?” And then with song styles, if we've said this is going to be in the style of Phantom of the Opera, how does Lloyd Webber actually write tunes? You have to look at it. It's a lot of chord changes, it's very arpeggiated, and it's very inspired by opera.

So you literally practice just throwing things out there with people in a rehearsal room and amazing musicians. And when new musicals come in, we have to listen to them and go, “How are we going to do songs?” If someone shouts out Hadestown, we're gonna have to be able to do that. How do we do it with a keyboard player, a drummer, someone on reeds and then me on guitar? How are we going to make that sound like whichever the musical is?

How do you find people who are able to do a show like this? Do you find people with more of an improvised background or more of a musical theatre background?

So it's really interesting, and it depends which country you're in! In the UK, it was a big, massive mix. I knew lots of improvisers, and Adam Meggido, the co-creator, knows lots of musical people and actors, so we had a mix of the two. We were teaching the improvisers about musicals and teaching the musical theatre people about impro. I say teaching, we were discovering it all together.

We had a strong vision of what we wanted it to look like. We didn't want it to look like an impro show - we wanted it to look like a musical. So the big difference between what we've been trying to do is ask the question, “What would it be like if it actually was a great musical?” We are actually trying to write a great musical - we just happen to be improvising it. If you do a song that leans too much on the impro, that doesn't really sound like a musical, so then we move away from it. But also, if a song is too emotional, we go, “Oh, that's not fun enough.” We want something that's sparky in the moment, but also feels like it's got that emotional weight that a musical has. 

And do you find there are any particular musicals that work better than others for improvising? 

Yeah! So it was really based on individual people and the moment you're in, because if you're going to have a big, overly emotional, melodramatic musical, get out your Andrew Lloyd Webber - very good at that. If you want a complex relationship between a couple of people, go into Company, go into Merrily We Roll Along. With Sondheim, you have to mention individual musicals, but for most composers, you'll have more of a unique style. So it really depends on which one you're doing. 

What I will say is the ones that are hardest to improvise are the ones that are super fast and already funny, like Legally Blonde. It's really well-structured with very clever lyrics, and it's relentless. And also other ones, like The Book of Mormon and The Producers, a lot of the songs in them already pastiches. So if we do something that's in the style of Avenue Q, it doesn't sound like Avenue Q - it sounds like Sesame Street. So actually, that's, in some ways, that's the hardest. 

So you recently celebrated the 1,500th performance of Showstopper! The Improvised Musical. What has it been like to be on that journey?

It's been amazing! It is obviously surprising we're still doing it, and it is a delight that we're still doing it. It's also a delight that it's still fun to do.  Our cast and musicians probably hate us for the fact that we're still doing it! Me, Adam, Duncan Walsh Adams, our MD, and Ali James, our movement director, basically have one attitude - why isn't it better? Why is it not the most amazing musical I've ever seen? How is the impro getting in the way of making it genuinely a great musical?

We know we'll never succeed - we'll never write the most perfect musical, but it's always challenging. So we'll have a great year, and loads of people come and see us, and then we'll go, “Yeah, but the storytelling . . . Is there something we're doing that's getting in the way of that?” We've never solved the problem of how to make a great musical by improvising, so we just keep striving to make it better. That's why we're still here!

Do you go back and watch old performances?

We look back a lot, especially the first ten years - every single show we would do, we'd watch the show because we didn't know what we were doing, and we were working it out as we went along. All we had was our taste in musicals and our taste in comedy. These are all very funny shows because it is a comedy show, even though our focus is often on making a great or interesting musical.

In impro, there's a tendency to take your time to find a verbal joke that's a very common form. That's not really how musicals are written. And similarly, in impro, you don't tend to improvise choreography. How do you do instant choreography that doesn't look like we're taking the piss out of choreography? It has to actually suit the musical. The fun is in how ridiculous and deep the show gets - not in the fact that we're not good at it, but in by people being surprised when it does work. So we look back and go, “Right, what can we learn from it?” And then we go back into the rehearsal room.

Do you have any favourite memories from the past 1,500 shows?

So many! We have favourite memories in the sense of the opening night in the West End. That was fantastic and surprising. And, obviously, winning the Olivier Award - we were stunned by that. That was incredible. Also, there are certain shows that stand out. It's interesting, because our shows are always funny. The nature of trying to improvise a musical with lots of talented people is it's gonna be very hilarious. But it's probably the shows that actually, emotionally really hit that stand out. So that's probably the ones that we look for.

Are there any titles that you like that come to mind?

This is actually some of the stuff I tallk to the audience about at the beginning! We did a retelling of the biblical story of Noah's Ark, but as a musical, and it was called, “When the Ship Hits the Fan.” They're very good. There was one which was set in a library, and it was called, “I Like Big Books and I Cannot Lie.” So often we'll get puns, but we've got to really make that land, so that's another challenge. And then sometimes we'll just get beautiful titles as well, and they really work.

What do you hope audiences take away from Showstopper!: The Improvised Musical?

I would say to keep a high bar for what can be done in theatre. Even though it's a comedy show, and even though what we're doing is inherently silly and a terrible idea! So just because something is one thing, it doesn't mean it can't be something else. 

In the show, we have a writer figure at the front, and the writer is the go-between with the audience and has fun with the audience. Their job, if it's going too smoothly, is to mess with the improvisers and go and get to the audience. “What can happen now? Let's challenge them more. Let's do a ridiculous bit where there's tap-dancing turtles coming from the back, whilst they're trying to do a romantic scene near a river, and they have to really sell it.”

But also, because you can see all the strings, you can literally see us build the songs as we do it. Hopefully, it makes the audience go, “I wonder if I could do that? It doesn't look that hard,” because it's not that hard! I mean, it's hard to get good at it, but that's just the 10,000 hours. But it's not hard to start, and you'd be surprised how good you are, whether you're improvising a musical or an improv sketch show, or you want to impro Shakespeare, or you want to just paint a picture or write a poem. 

And finally, how would you describe Showstopper! in one word? 

Surprising! 

Showstopper! The Improvised Musical has monthly performances at the Cambridge Theatre and is also currently on tour.