Name: Synaptic Chaos Theatre
Contact: Website, Facebook, and Twitter
Upcoming Events: A Taste of Animethon , Japanese Anime Festival.
Members: Ryan Caron, Brendon ‘Beej’ Dery, Ian Horner, Dan Ross, Paul Saxberg, Erinn Watson, and Will Wood
Summary:
- The “99 Cent Yen Challenge” will continue under Synaptic Chaos Theatre.
- The new group is going to try a number of experimental things. Long Improv, more audience participation based games, comedy podcasts and videos, and even a story about an insane boy and his invisible car are all possible future projects for this budding group.
- Synaptic Chaos Theatre’s first performance will be at A Taste of Animethon. The 99 Yen Challenge is set for 1:30 – 2:30 PM and their first Live Improv Show is scheduled for 3:30 – 5:00 PM. [Note: At the time of the interview, we mistakenly believed that the "Japanese Anime Festival" was going to be their first performance.
- The group will also be giving a show at the Japanese Anime Festival on Saturday from 2:00-3:30pm.
Synaptic Chaos Theatre Podcast
Transcript – Synaptic Chaos Theatre Dan Ross
Victor Vargas Well Anime Alberta fans, this is Dan Ross of the new improv group that is hitting Alberta.
Dan Ross: Hi everyone. It’s nice to talk to all you Anime Alberta fans out there. As a former Anime Alberta, you know, fan myself, I’m really happy to see you guys still kicking and going strong.
Vargas: Well you were once the Anime Alberta site administrator, weren’t you?
Ross: That is right. Yeah, I used to have my hands in the back, you know, turning the wheels, fixing things, you know all the things that made the site work. And I really enjoyed it. Me and Mark, you know, ran it for the better part of a decade and it was a lot of fun to run. And I’m glad to see you guys doing good things with it.
Vargas: Ok. Well great. Well anyways, so you are starting a new improv group that is hitting Alberta called “Synaptic Chaos Theatre”, well for starters, what inspired you to come up with that name?
Ross: Well we were trying to come up with a name for our new group, and we actually started with a list of about 100 different entries. It took us almost a month to actually to decide on it. We tried a bunch of various things on for size. And we tried some very high concept stuff. And we sorta just settled down and decided that this gave us a unique name that isn’t being used very much and it has a quality behind it—a mind blowing. If you see the logo, it actually has a guys brain bursting out of his head, which is pretty awesome. Its kinda got this neat feel about the name. Our group, which in many ways, is kinda brainy and kind of very, very chaotic.
Vargas: Speaking of this group, who is going to be in this new improv group?
Ross: So the Synaptic Chaos Theater is made up of 7 members. And these members are Ryan Caron of Vancouver, we have Brendon ‘Beej’ Dery, Ian Horner, myself, and three improvers from Calgary: Paul Saxberg, Erinn Watson, and Will Wood. So you’ve probably heard a lot of these names before, a lot of these people have been involved in “99 Cent Yen Challenge” before, and most of these people have performed, at one time or another, with the 404s as well. So I mean, a lot of familiar faces, I think, in the group, and Calgary and Alberta in general the improv community is not that large really and I think there’s a lot of different directions. There’s a lot of familiarity between all the different groups, I think. Every group knows every other group, or at least is familiar with them. And I think there’s a lot of room that hasn’t been covered yet. And I think the group of people we have in the “Chaos Synaptic Theatre” is a great bunch of people and we’re really excited to go on and do new things.
Vargas: Ok, and what new things do you intend to do as a group?
Ross: Well we’re going to probably continue doing to a short form improv of the “Who’s Line, George Kyle” that has been sort of tailored by Mark and the 404 group over the last few years. I think we are probably going to continue to that at a lot of the Anime shows in Alberta. As well as were going to try to do some sci-fi cons and stuff. We’re going to continue to focus on some of the game show and fun participatory activities we have, such as “99 Cent Yen Challenge” and I think there are other projects we’re are looking into and we’d like to start expanding on because we really enjoy doing them. We may start doing some fully scripted comedy as well as some videos. You know, put some videos online and do some cool stuff.
We’ve been writing a lot, a couple of us in the group have been some prolific writers and have some great ideas. And I mean our group is pretty diverse, for example, Beej and Will are starting to work on a very strange and very experimental series aptly named “The Will and Beej Show” or the “The Beej and Will Show”, I’m not really sure, but they are doing this strange video with an insane 6 year old boy and his imaginary cat. I’m not sure if that is under the umbrella of “The Synaptic Chaos Theatre” , but it kinda shows what we are doing.
I think we are also going to try to double in long form of improve when we have a chance. As opposed to the short form of improv that you’ve seen on “Whose Line” or “The 404s” style, it’s sort of a style of improv in which you take on a character and you sort of stay through an extended scene or a series of scenes, and just based on the setting and the initial setup, you continue the story all the way through. And I think it’s something a lot of people in the group are excited about.
As well, we have Ian who has been running “The Di-Cast” from his website tiltyhouse.com. I think we are also interested in doing some audio comedy or some podcasting of our own through “The Synaptic Chaos Theatre Website” once it’s up.
Vargas: Ok, you guys are relatively new, so far I’ve only seen your Facebook site. How do you guys intend to differentiate yourself from the 404s, who many of you were once members of.
Ross: That’s a good question. I think initially we are going to probably doing similar things. Most of us have experience in short form improv. So I think we are going to initially lean on our strengths. And I think we’re going to take it in a different direction, probably. I know Mark is really aiming to try to be a headliner at some of the larger conventions in Alberta and Canada. They’re focusing on Calgary Comic Expo, for example and I think they’ll do well at those kind of gigs. But I think there’s room for a group to do more experimental work. Also, maybe do more fan based sort of stuff—more anime based material, sci-fi, a lot of people in our group have choice for that.
In general, our focus is really to be a big solid improv group at its core. It does mean we probably have similar goals as the 404s, I think we are going to have distinct personalities as improv teams. And I do really think there is room for both. At least one of our members, Paul Saxberg, is in both groups.
[For the sake of my sanity, the rest of the transcript of this interview will be available later in the day. As Synaptic Chaos Theatre's first performance is a couple of days away, I feel it's important for the interview to be up even if it is without a complete transcript.]
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Victor Vargas is the manager and editor of Anime-Alberta. He's the former chair of Animethon 16 & Animethon 15 as well as a former president of BAKA (The Banzai Anime Klub of Alberta)