No matter where in the country Rain City Improv performs, they hear similar suggestions from the kids in their audiences.
“For the most part, they all have the same internet now,” says Taz VanRassel, founder of the Vancouver-based kids comedy troupe. “Like, every town. So they’re all saying the same thing.”
That wasn’t the case, however, when Rain City visited the Yukon in December for a mini-tour of community schools. When VanRassel asked for an occupation in Watson Lake, he heard hunter; when he asked for a favourite food in Haines Junction, he heard moose meat.
“It’s like, ok, cool, I’ve never done that before,” says Rae Lynn Carson, the other half of the Rain City duo that came up for the tour. It’s one of the things that keeps the job extra-interesting in an industry where no two nights (or, in the case of kids’ comedy, no two Monday afternoon third periods) are the same.
A performance at St. Elias Community School was the mid-point of a tour that included school visits in Watson Lake, Whitehorse, Teslin and Carcross, followed by Destruction Bay and Beaver Creek.
The tour was organized by the Yukon Arts Centre as part of its 10-week program to send performers to schools in the communities with help from the Northwestel Hanging Sky Tour fund.
In the St. Elias school gymnasium, VanRassel and Carson laid out the tools of their trade (audio equipment, pool noodles, a serious surplus of wigs) while they talked about the tour. The pair were up in 2022 to perform as part of the Midnight Sun Moppets Children’s Festival, but they only performed in Whitehorse at that time.
The communities are so welcoming, say VanRassel and Carson.
“It’s cool to do these smaller communities, where you see the older kids are walking into the show and holding a little kid,” says VanRassel. “That happened in Teslin. Like an older brother, or just taking care of a family member, or another kid.”
In some ways, he says, smaller shows like the one in Haines Junction (where the audience included roughly 45 kids from kindergarten to grade seven) are harder than the groups of 200 to 500 Rain City might entertain in B.C. You have to work harder to get them into it, he says. A bigger group builds energy more easily.
For the first few minutes of the Haines Junction show, it looks like it might be a tough crowd. Kids keep chatting to each other, oblivious to the beginning of the performance. When VanRassel asks if anyone knows what improv is, one kid yells out “fractions!” Five minutes later though, the whole gymnasium is invested in the six skits VanRassel and Carson run through, taking suggestions from their audience on the fly and letting the kids write the details into the outlines of the scenarios they work with.
In one skit, physical education teacher, Mr. Rooney, is called up to act as the arms to VanRassel’s body while VanRassel tells a story informed by audience suggestions. In another skit, a student performs the sound effects for a story built around more audience suggestions.
For another, two student volunteers are the puppeteers of VanRassel and Carson’s movements. Both volunteers start out hesitantly, lightly tapping the actors’ legs to get them to take steps across the front of the gym. By the mid-point of the skit though, both volunteers are army-crawling across the gym floor on their bellies, frantically pushing the feet of VanRassel and Carson through a chase scene in the skit.
As a finale, Rain City asks a student to come up and share the story of their worst injury, then acts it out based on that information, with ongoing guidance that the student can only offer via blasts of a horn.
Linda Lamers, St. Elias principal, says it was great to see engagement across the grades and even among staff.
“I think it’s great for [the students] to have exposure to different types of opportunities … it’s an introduction to a new art form for them,” she says.
She also thinks it was interesting to watch a performance that was teaching kids something without feeling like a presentation.
That’s kind of the goal, says VanRassel. He and Carson don’t try to teach kids anything in the same way a teacher would—with discipline and direction—but there are lessons built into the experience.
Two of those are emotions and communication. When you’re dictating the live progress of a story, you learn to choose your words more carefully. And when VanRassel and Carson ask for someone to shout out a feeling (which they often do), kids have to stop and think about what feelings are. You don’t hear “mad” as frequently as you might expect, VanRassel says. In fact, the most common response is “depressed.” Which is sad, he says, but also offers a great starting point for a conversation about emotions and how to process them.
An open, easy going, jokey setting like improv can be a much less scary way for kids to open up about that kind of thing.
Other times, the lesson can simply be what improv is (or just that it has little to do with fractions), or that acting and theatre are actual career paths.
“A little girl in Teslin came to me and was like ‘I want to be like you when I grow up’ and ran away. It was hilarious,” VanRassel says. “But it’s a tough life, kid.”
In collaboration between the Yukon Arts Centre and the Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre a smaller selection of the Honouring Our Future: Yukon First Nations Graduation Regalia exhibition is set to embark on an international journey to the United Kingdom. The exhibition will be…
