Comment on this story What: Einstein Simplified When: Every Tuesday, 8:30 p.m. and the special anniversary performance on Saturday, Aug. 21, 9 p.m. Where: Patrick Sullivan’s Cost: Tuesdays are free; there may be a nominal fee for the anniversary show.

Einstein Simplified breaks down the formula of improv comedy

by Paige M. Travis

“Do you think you’re funny?”

The advertisement published in the summer of 1994 was a gauntlet thrown to Knoxville’s class clowns, cut-ups and aspiring comedians. Paul Simmons took the bait. Why?

“I think I’m funny,” he explains with a sly smile that tilts his red mustache. The ad recruited students for a class on The Harold, the Chicago-style long-form improv comedy that develops from audience suggestions into a one- to two-hour show. For eight weeks, Simmons and 11 other wannabes studied, honed and prepared for an on-stage test of their powers: a 15-minute gig during an open-mic at Manhattan’s in the Old City. The group was funny enough to get invited back for a 30-minute slot, and then for an hour-long set warming up the open mic crowd. Not long after, the improv group netted its own two-hour gig. Einstein Simplified has been making audiences laugh ever since.

Although Simmons, now 38, and Bill Slayden are the only remaining original members, the group seems at the height of its powers. Seven players strong, ES draws 80 to 100 fans to the third floor stage of Patrick Sullivan’s every Tuesday night. They scrapped the long-form format early on in favor of short-form improv, which utilizes the kinds of games seen on ABC’s Whose Line Is It Anyway?

On a recent Tuesday, it’s Slayden’s night to be emcee. A tall, lean man in his early 50s, Sladyen reinforces his stage persona as a conservative white Republican by giving color glossy photos of George and Laura Bush as prizes to audience participants. His comedic style is hapless; Bill doesn’t get pop culture references; Bill misses cues; Bill is famously bad at the game called Invader. And audience members, many of whom are the age of his children, love him like a goofy, clueless father.

Tonight, Slayden asks first-time audience members to raise their hands. He explains the concept of yelling out suggestions when the players request them. “What’s your favorite noun?” he hollers. “Chair!” they scream. “What’s your favorite color?” “Blue!” He reminds that suggestions like gynecologist and proctologist have been heard a thousand times and will be disregarded.

“The emcee is the bridge between the audience and the group,” Simmons says. He makes up the night’s game list, either in advance or sometimes on the spot. The emcee encourages the crowd and also keeps it under control.

A good night is a barely contained chaos of one joke after another resulting in raucous laughter from the audience. Although, much like a Saturday Night Live skit or a humorous memory, a night of ES comedy doesn’t always translate later.

“Mostly, the funny moments are like Zen koans,” says nine-year member Todd Covert. “They don’t translate well in the retelling and explaining. They need to be experienced.”

Frank Murphy calls them “you had to be there moments.” The co-host of Oldies 95.7’s Ashley & Murphy in the Morning joined ES two years ago to sharpen his spontaneous wit. Those kinds of moments happen when the chemistry is right, he says.

“Improv is a team sport,” Murphy says. “We rely on each other. No individual can know all the references our audience yells out.”

On a good night, the players can experience “group mind,” a kind of psychic anticipation and intuitive response that results in the best kind of improv. But the audience members—the source of nouns, film genres, international accents and other ingredients the players use in games—are a major part of a successful night.

“We have to have the audience full of energy and ready to shout out good suggestions, or the show will fall flat on its face,” says five-year member Wes Hope.

And if there are troublemakers in the crowd?

“Sometimes we have to unleash the Steve animal,” says Simmons of nine-year member Steve Denton, who’s been known to berate out-of-hand audience members with: “I don’t come down to Hardees and slap the fries out of your hands while you’re trying to work. Why don’t you shut up while we’re trying to work?!”

On most occasions, however, Denton’s comedy ranges from clever, twisted, physical to all-out juvenile.

“There’s nothing funnier than a guy getting hit in the nuts,” claims Denton, who moved to Johnson City a few years ago and still drives down every Tuesday to play.

Denton also likes to dodge an audience’s expectations. The crowd expects Barney the purple dinosaur; he gives them Barney Fife. They call for checks; he delivers Czechs.

And, true to his profession in sales, he’s not afraid to dish out a little self-promotion. At a recent ES gig, he pitched his first novel, Trouble De Ville, from the stage. The way Denton describes it—funny, exciting, wildly quirky, twisted with vivid characters, local flavor, funny parts and action with a lot of twists—it sounds a lot like a night of improv.

What has kept Einstein Simplified going for 10 years could be considered a healthy co-dependent relationship. The players need to perform.

“I love doing it,” Simmons says. “I’m the driving force, the heart and soul of the group, the one that’s got the most desire to do it. That’s why I’m still doing it. If I didn’t, I’d be going around at work, going into people’s doors and performing. I have to. I can’t not.”

Two-year member Brad Bumgardner serves as a kind of closer. It’s not uncommon for a game to be in progress—either successfully getting laughs, or foundering—when Bumgardner steps up to deliver a punchline that earns a roar of cackles and applause. His recent definition of a yeast infection: “When your bread goes bad and you can’t make toast.”

“My work is very stressful, so for me, improv is primal scream therapy,” he says. “I have to stay focused and make clients happy all day, and it’s great to have an outlet to where I can act like a complete idiot for an hour or two once a week and feel like a contributing part of society.”

Improv can also be a learning experience that translates into the players’ careers.

“Improv has been shockingly useful for my career,” says Covert, a lawyer by trade, the troupe’s resident guitarist and go-to guy for a Scottish accent. “Improv has taught me to think quickly on my feet, adapt to the situation and move on when something doesn’t work.”

Hope, a photographer with The Daily Times newspaper in Maryville, concurs. “It’s taught me how to be more creative and think outside the box. Everything doesn’t have to be black and white.”

Audiences are willing accomplices to the weekly comedic throw-down. Before she moved to Portland, Ore., Aubrey Baldwin was a regular attendee. “I went every Tuesday, virtually without fail for about two years,” she says. “They consistently made me smile. Laughter is such good medicine, and they seriously helped me forget about my troubles and worries for a couple of hours.”

In addition to being free, she adds that ES, “creates this sense of community. People get in the habit of going, and because the guys are so reliable, the people know they can keep going without worrying about showing up one day and having nothing to watch.”

“It’s the funniest show in town,” testifies David Snow, a 25-year-old bookstore manager who has been coming to the show—and bringing his friends—for two years. “It’s the best thing you can do for free on a Tuesday night.”

That oft-repeated compliment may sound backhanded, but it’s not hard to imagine the same crowd turning up on a Thursday or Friday, although the “free” part is an attractive proposition for all concerned. Patrick Sullivan’s provides the space for free in exchange for the anticipated food and drink orders and tips. That keeps ES’s costs low; their tip jar takings provide the occasional prize to audience participants.

It may be cheaper than other kinds of entertainment, but the caliber of the talent can’t be dismissed.

“The guys are a lot of fun to watch—and play with,” says Peyton Wilson Daley, a former local actor who performed with ES for about a year before she moved to Chicago in the late ’90s. Now married with a 15-month-old daughter, Daley performed frequently at Theatre Central (where she met Denton and was invited to join ES) and is on the adjunct faculty of Second City for whom she teaches improvisation to adults and children. Her time with ES prepared her for working in a city she calls “the Improv Mecca,” which includes Second City, The Annoyance Theatre and Improv Olympic.

“I have to say that I was intimidated by the reference levels of some of those cats, but what I realized was that my zany characters kept me on par when I lacked that bizarre reference,” she says. “As a result, I think I blended well with the troupe at that time.

“They’re smart, they’re funny and they’re fast: the necessary ingredients for a watchable troupe,” she says.

And it’s seemingly impossible to faze them. Awkward bodily functions, sexual acts, jokes that fall flat—none of these squeamish human foibles result in chagrin. Maybe the bright lights hide their red faces or, as Covert suggests, only self-inspection causes self-consciousness.

“It’s only embarrassing if I lose the moment and realize I’m grown man with a professional career and several college degrees standing in front of 50 or 60 people and pretending to be a huge box of egg beaters arguing with a frying pan.”

The magic of Einstein Simplified is the element of surprise. Neither performers nor viewers know what they’re going to get. But the means and the motivation are there; something funny will happen.

“To me, we are like a jazz group,” Covert offers. “The games provide the form, but we provide the content, which can be radically different from week to week.”

The line-up of Einstein Simplified has changed a lot over the years, but the theme from that original improv class still applies: Be honest.

“If your character’s a crazy person, you’re going to be a crazy person no matter what,” says Simmons, whose own improv classes at Pellissippi have netted new ES members. “Be honest to the scene. Be honest in the situation in whatever choice you make. Be true to that. True stuff is funnier than anything you’d make up.”

The ‘Steiners are in the process of recruiting a few new members, and longtime fan David Snow is one of three finalists remaining out of 11 original potentials. He wants to join the giddy ranks of those risking absurdity every Tuesday night.

After a recent show, he earns a slap on the back from Hope. “He’s the funny one,” Hope says with a smirk.

Let the games continue.

August 5, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 32 © 2004 Metro Pulse