As „The Groundlings“ celebrate their 50th anniversary, members of the improv and sketch comedy group reminisce about how it all began, and the troupe’s enduring legacy.
Laraine Newman insists that she is not good an improv.
“Character monologues are really my forte,” she says. “But I am always trying to get better at improv.”
Newman might hold this view, but she’s responsible for the very successful group, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.
An improv and sketch comedy troupe and school, The Groundlings is based in Los Angeles, California and has been in operation for the last half century.
Famous alumni include Paul Reubens, Jon Lovitz, Maya Rudolph, Jennifer Coolidge, Will Forte, Lisa Kudrow, Jimmy Fallon, Mikey Day and Heidi Gardner, among many others.
As one of the original founding members, Newman, who spent five seasons on the ground-breaking, perennial series Saturday Night Live, details the evolution of the group, saying, “In the beginning, it was simply just improv workshop. It was for people who just wanted to kind of goof around. I was at Cal Arts at the time, and other people were film students at USC, etc., but there were also people like Pat Morita, Tim Matheson and Valerie Curtin, who were working actors who wanted to broaden their skill set.”
She says that the group started having what they called ‘scene nights’ during which, “people would present sketch ideas or maybe a character they were working on.”
The audience consisted of, according to Newman, the performer’s friends, but then, as she says, “because of word of mouth, there started to be bigger and bigger audiences, and not just people that we knew.”
Soon, a class structure was set up by founding member and then-Artistic Director Gary Austin.
“Back in the day, improv wasn’t on TV and there weren’t really any classes in it or anything like that,” says Groundling member Phil LaMarr.
LaMarr studied drama at Yale and after graduation began working as a transcriptionist and delivery person for court reporters while he pursued an acting career. After joining the troupe in the ‘80s, he worked as a company member from 1992 to 1998, later segueing into teaching for the company. He’s since became a successful actor, specializing in voice work.
‘There was a point after The Groundlings stared when improv broke into the mainstream and people started to think, ‘hey there’s something magical about this,” says LaMarr.
While working with the group, he was able to craft several characters that he’s proud of.
“The greatest feeling is when you see an audience respond to a character that you’ve created.
