Several times a month Extra-Strength News features “Performer Profiles” where we ask 20 Questions to notable improvisers from around the country to get their thoughts and insights into the art form and shed light on how their brains work. You can also check our Improviser’s Glossary for explanations of some terms and concepts.
Eric Hunicutt has spent nearly half his life improvising. Not, like, non-stop, he’s done other stuff too. But he started improvising when most people are still taking driver’s ed. He’s one of iO West’s favorite teachers (and ran the Training Program for several years) and also teaches at Steppenwolf Classes West and Warner Loughlin Studios. He’s also a gem and a half. EXTRA-STRENGTH highly recommends you check him out any time you have the opportunity, and you can see him perform on Tuesday nights at iO West with Sweetness and premieres his new scripted show “Sitting at the Grown Up Table” this month at the Charleston Comedy Festival.
When did you start improvising?
When I was 15, in high school – with Comedy Sportz in Raleigh, NC.
What do you like about long-form versus short-form improv?
I really have fond feelings for short-form… it’s how I got interested in improv to begin with, it’s been so useful in long-form and was so fun and playful, it’s where I learned to be confident onstage… I think without doing short-form first I would have been very serious, very precious about long-form and it wouldn’t have been nearly as fun… that being said, I find long-form to be a great challenge in terms of ensemble, managing the tempo, the technical challenges of structure within long-form work is something that is constantly interesting to me – how each form requires the use of different brushes, how to troubleshoot and discover within each piece. I think, generally, that long-form is more intriguing to the performer, if not always as accessible to the uninitiated audience member. Plus, I really like that in long form I’ve been able to bring more theatre, more grounded acting, to the work, as opposed to focusing on the funny and the laughs per minute… and in turn the way I think about long-form has taught me a lot about how to approach scripted work – they feed each other so well.
What do you do to warm up?
Depends on the group – sometimes nothing, sometimes warm up games, often it’s just chat with whomever I’m about to play with – I really like anything that allows the group and myself to just step onstage as relaxed as possible and smiling and already playful – I’m of the opinion that whatever you want to do is totally cool, warm ups are simply a way of feeling nice to walk onstage, they’re not mandatory, and they’re not some precious process that has to be the same every night…
What’s your favorite character(s) you’ve played to date?
Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
What shows/performers do you like to watch?
My favorite shows tend to either be very small cast or very large cast- I love TJ&Dave, Dasariski – I like watching a few performers get onstage with an hour and sort of lock themselves in that room and figure a way out.. that’s very rewarding. At the same time, I think huge casts are great to watch because when a really big show goes well it’s an amazing example of the power of ensemble… the original JTS Brown in Chicago was such a fantastic example of that and was really cool to see as a young improviser. As for performers, I mean, there’s so many – I’m a huge fan of the generation before mine, they were so instrumental in me falling in love with this work – Craig Cackowski, Bob Dassie, Stephanie Weir, Tami Sagher,TJ Jagadowski, Dave Pasquesi…. There were so many incredible actors doing improv for the years I was in Chicago, it was hard to find someone not to love in any given show. And I have to give props to Jim Woods, a phenomenally funny and talented guy – I’ve performed with him for 18 years now and he still makes me laugh every single night.
What do you see as your greatest strength/weakness as an improviser?
Strength: I listen.
Weakness: Sometimes I don’t listen.
Has being an improviser had any impact on your career?
Yeah, sure – I mean, when I started improvising I had no idea I’d wind up making it my life, moving to Chicago, spending so much time studying, watching, performing… I think the biggest surprise is that I’ve wound up as a teacher – this art is so dynamic, so elusive at times… I find it hard to believe that I’ve somehow found myself trying to explain to others what I’ve learned.. that being said, the only thing I like as much as performing is teaching, coaching, directing – it’s where all the rough spots I’ve had along the way get turned into positive things, hopefully little bits of experience or lessons that will help my students through their journey or improve their scene or simply help them feel ok with struggling in their journey.
What advice would you offer someone who’s new to improv?
It’s a marathon not a sprint. Do everything you can to get as many tools as you can from as many people as you can and bear in mind, you’re never going to find The Answer… that’s what makes this a lifetime thing, you can’t solve it. Study everywhere, everything. Perform as much as you can and with people you respect and like. Do other things – things that help you fill back up, feed your soul with whatever you can – your interest in the rest of your life is where layers in your work come from… you can’t just work on figuring out how to improvise, you have to figure out how to live, and that means spending time doing things in addition to class, rehearsal, shows…
There’s a lot of “rules” to improv – which one(s) do you think is most important for a successful scene/show? Which one(s) do you see broken the most?
This is my least favorite idea out there about improv – that there’s all these rules. I think that is garbage. I really do. There’s tools, there’s technique, there’s craft, there’s ways of working that help the interaction onstage work more efficiently, help the exchange of information be clearer, but there’s so many “rules” out there that are simply the product of someone trying to find The Answer, to solve improv, and it limits the imagination of the artist to assume there is such a thing as “right” and “wrong”, “good” moves and “bad”… it’s a poison that is consistently pumped into our art and it will eventually lead us all to a reduced, safe, and mediocre place. I once heard “decisions are tiny deaths” in terms of acting, and these rules are there because someone, somewhere, decided there’s a “correct” and “incorrect” way to do something. Which is the elimination of a set of options, thereby killing off a whole set of things that MIGHT just work if supported well… I think that there’s no such thing as a mistake onstage, there’s just unsupported offers. Happy accidents, “mistakes”, these are the things that need to be supported the MOST in a scene, a show, because by not supporting them, we decide they’re somehow “wrong” and never find out how and why they’re genius.
But, to answer the question, I think the most important things for a successful show (and this begs the question of what a “successful” show is…) are simply to listen, react, respond, and play moment to moment while embracing structure and form to the extent that it serves the show (rather than making the show fit in the structure out of some sense of obligation…) play the scene, the show you’re in, not the one you think you are in.
The things that I most often see that get in the way of good work… in no particular order: laziness, ego, playing with an agenda, the desire to be “funny”, bailing on scenes/shows that aren’t going how you planned, not trusting the simple ingredients to produce a spectacular meal when put together on the same plate… basically, though, I think this all has its root in fear. Fear of not being good, not getting laughs, not giving your teammates and scene partners what you think they want from you, fear that the audience knows you’re afraid, etc. – it takes all the abandon out of the work and the abandon, the willingness to have happy accidents, this is where the magic is in our art – the little irritating grains of sand that by the end of the show have resulted in pearls because they’re carried throughout. Without these imperfections, these little grains of sand in the show, you don’t produce the pearl at the end – it’s the willingness to run towards the mess that makes us artists. Otherwise we’re people standing and talking while other people sit still and don’t talk, which sounds awkward and unpleasant for everyone involved, and often times is. It’s way better when we’re all hurtling towards something, not knowing what or how we’ve found ourselves in such a place.
What inspires you and/or informs your improv?
The people I play with, watch, the people I study with – I love the collaboration of it, the mutual agreement to jump out of the plane and see what happens on the way down. Also, the fact that we’re a part of a very young art form and just in the time I’ve been doing it there’s been such a variety of progression and so much expansion and growth in so many directions – it’s super cool to be a part of a living and evolving art, to have a hand in shaping this thing that so many people are feeding.
What do you look for in a coach or teacher?
Passion. The best coaches and teachers are people who can’t imagine the world without their art and therefore bring a certain urgency to their work… being taught or directed by someone who is on fire about their work is such a great challenge to rise to their energy.
What’s the worst scene you’ve ever done (or seen)?
No idea… there’s been so many… hopefully I learned from it, although the worst scene would have to be one where I thought I was doing something brilliant and didn’t realize how bad it was, thereby learning nothing from it… nothing worse than a bad scene that you learn absolutely nothing from because you’re not paying enough attention to why it’s bad. That terrifies me- the thought that sometimes you just don’t know you’re really sucking because you’re just not present enough to realize it.
Have you ever been embarrassed by anything you’ve done on stage?
I’ve said so many things that were said solely in an effort to get a laugh and then didn’t and I felt dirty for going for the joke and not even doing the joke well. Gross.
Also, the first Harold show my parents ever saw me do (in Chicago) was terrible – it was cheap, blue, just bad- I got dry humped in two different scenes and then again in freeze tag; my Mom said to me afterwards “So, when are you going to do another play?” Not the reaction I’d hoped for. Oh, and there was the time that Pat O’Brien pulled my pants off in a show with The Reckoning at this bar called The Hideout in Chicago – I was playing a dead cowboy and he pantsed my “corpse” and the rest of the team refused to edit the scene, so I was face down and bare-assed on the stage of this bar called The Hideout (in Chicago) for like, 15 minutes. Ok, come to think of it, that was pretty funny, but it led to a good solid 6 months where the goal of everyone on the team was to expose my ass in shows somehow. You’re welcome, Chicago!
Do you have any “no fly zones?”
Not necessarily, but I really prefer not to be violent onstage if I can avoid it … I think it’s a real shame when a show is totally deflated by an actor actually getting hurt – nobody likes to see that.
Do you ever get stage fright?
Only in the sense that I get real nervous sometimes right before I walk out, but once I hit the stage it all fades away – it’s the anticipation, the expectation – and I absolutely love the feeling of that anxiety as it leaves me.
High or Low status?
I don’t really believe in the high/low status thing. I think it’s one of those things done to intellectualize what’s happening onstage, to make something intuitive into something academic – it’s an outside perception of how the points of view, wants, etc. of characters are interacting in a given context and is kind of a useless concept in terms of moment to moment play, because I can’t be present, listening to you, active in the scene, if I’m sitting outside of it analyzing the so-called “status” dynamic in the relationship.
Show me a so-called “low status person” – you can’t, because that’s our idea of what a character is about, it’s got nothing to do with who they are, what they want, or how they go about getting what they want – it’s the audience’s idea of that person- and I can’t play the audience’s idea, I’ve got to BE that person, right here, right now, in this moment… that’s my job as an actor… to BE, not to try to project some sort of concept onto the character.
That’s not to say that there’s no such thing as people who hold power or influence over each other in the scene – of course that exists, but it’s not about “playing status”, it’s about playing the truth of the character, relationship, and context, saying yes to the facts and feelings of a character, a relationship, and playing in agreement to that information… now that, I can do, because it means getting at the truth of the character and relationship and being affected by my scene partner(s), remaining open to change, open to discovery – this is where the “status switch” happens, when we’re changed by the other characters, context, and the things that happen in the scene, but it doesn’t require us to step outside of the moment to do the math and make decisions about what’s happening… in fact, it demands us to be open and affected moment to moment. I think the focus on consciously manipulating “status” has really put a lot of people in their heads and it’s something we can work in without having to overthink it.
Straight or Absurd?
Yes, please.
Preferred Opening?
I love pattern openings (sometimes called “organic”, but this is a misnomer… shouldn’t every opening be that?). This probably comes from many years with The Reckoning in Chicago – we really dedicated ourselves to making the opening our calling card, we spent a lot of time and energy working on expanding what the opening could be and how it could inspire, influence, design the rest of the piece… with some pretty amazing results, I think. We had some shows where the opening challenged us to live up to it and the results were kind of magical – a great opening gives you permission and challenges you to live up to how you’ve begun, which is a real fun way to start a show.
Anyone who hates pattern openings has just decided that it has to be a certain thing (lots of “whooshing” and such…) I mean, if the opening was something to just be endured by the audience and the group, why the hell do we do it – especially considering it’s the FIRST thing we do??? Openings are totally up for grabs, can be anything, and when there’s a good one, it really does set the tone for the rest of the show – a good opening shoots you out of a cannon – I think that any opening that leaves you the challenge of living up to it and the discoveries within it and allows you to use every part of the buffalo, that’s a great start to any night.
Favorite Improv Form?
I really love a good two person show where nothing is planned. Just go out there and look at each other and begin. That being said, Harolds are constantly a challenge; I really like going to play in that sandbox every week and seeing what we build… and anything I’ve never done… every new form is a totally new challenge.
Favorite Line You’ve Ever Said?
No clue. Would have to be something in a Shakespeare show- the way those words feel to say is just unlike anything else – they’re better than English, they’re Shakespeare, man!
