The long-running TV show Whose Line Is It Anyway? popularized creative and goofy games where everything is made up on the spot—giving improv comedy worldwide attention.
Various cast members are now doing their own touring shows, mixing Whose Line games with other improv staples. For example, Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood have teamed up to present Asking for Trouble, during which they invite the audience into their world of spontaneous comedy mayhem. They are set to perform at Agua Caliente in Palm Springs on Saturday, June 22.
During a recent phone interview with Colin Mochrie, he explained why he teamed up with Brad Sherwood.
“Mostly pity, I guess,” Mochrie joked. “We’ve known each other for over 30 years, so we’re good friends, and we built up a relationship that way. Onstage, the more you work with someone, the more you get to know them and get into their rhythms. Especially with just the two of us, you have to trust the person you’re with; otherwise, you’re totally by yourself, which is never good.”
While he’s been working with Sherwood for three decades, Mochrie said they’re still learning about each other—and improv in general.
“We’re constantly still trying to figure out what we can do with it,” Mochrie said. “I truly think the surface is just kind of being scratched. We’re having totally improvised plays; there’s improvised Dungeons and Dragons. People are playing with the format and playing with the art form, and there’s always something new to find out and new to learn.”
Mochrie himself has been involved with improvised Dungeons and Dragons, during which people act out the events of a D&D game.
“It’s been a lot of fun—and I knew absolutely nothing about D&D,” Mochrie said. “I would get my characteristics. I was a neutral cleric with a bunch of numbers and stuff, and I just kept trying to fly, because I figured that would be a thing. And the dungeon master just said, ‘No, you can jump a foot.’ … It makes it fun for the audience, because they could absolutely tell I have no idea what’s going on. Everybody else was accomplished D&D players, so they had their characters, and they knew all the little buzzwords that got the inside laughs, and I just had to rely on charm.”
Whose Line began in Great Britain in 1988, arrived in the United States in 1998, and was revived by The CW after a five-plus year absence in 2013; new episodes have been airing ever since. In late 2022, Mochrie tweeted: “Hey everyone. Hope you are enjoying the current season of Whose Line. In January, we shoot our final season. Thank you all for the support over the years.” The U.S. version’s 20th season finished airing earlier this year—but Mochrie told me the show is not dead yet.
“I really should learn never to say anything at any point,” he said. “The last taping we had was treated as the last taping, and we all had our little speeches, and we said goodbye. A couple of months ago, we got a call saying, ‘Oh, there’s going to be another season,’ because they had so much stuff left over from last year when we filmed that they can make another season out of it. So there is another season, but we don’t actually have to work, which is nice. I wish that would happen more often, where they would just come up with stuff, pay us, and we didn’t have to actually go anywhere and do something.”
Mochrie said he greatly values the friendships he made on Whose Line.
“Ryan Stiles, we grew up together, so I’ve known him for over 40 years, but everybody else became friends through that show,” Mochrie said. “What I loved about it was it wasn’t grueling by any stretch of the imagination. It was two weekends out of the year … so we never got on each other’s nerves. It was just always fun, and it was a concentrated visit where we could do our show, be crazy, go out for dinner afterwards, have a couple of drinks, and then we’re off to our separate lives, so that was lovely. Whose Line, obviously, is always going to be a major part of my life, because it gave us all careers. It got us in the public eye; it allowed us to tour everywhere. Without that show, I can’t even imagine where I’d be right now. It’s frightening and sobering to think about.”
Mochrie said he believes that improv can be an important element of human life.
“Just the basic act of learning how to improvise is such a powerful life tool,” he said. “People always say, ‘How do you do it? It just seems so difficult,’ and it really is the simplest thing. … You listen to people, and you accept their ideas, and that is it. When I’ve taught workshops, that has been the hardest thing to get across to people, to sort of let go of your ego a bit, and if someone comes up with a great idea, it doesn’t matter if you have the greatest idea in the world—you didn’t get it out first, so save it for later. You learn how to listen; you learn how to work with people; you learn empathy—and then the games are just fun.”
“People always say, ‘How do you do it? It just seems so difficult,’ and it really is the simplest thing. … You listen to people, and you accept their ideas, and that is it.“
Colin Mochrie, on improv
He said improv also helps people learn to embrace failure.
“Failure is such a dirty word to everyone—and improv is kind of built on failure,” Mochrie said. “… You also learn so much when you fall flat on your face. You learn how to get out of these situations. You learn how to go, ‘Oh, that sucked all the energy out of the theater; it was the worst thing anyone will ever see—and, hey, we’re still alive, and now we’re going to do another one, and hopefully, that will be better.’ Obviously you don’t have to go into this as a career, but it really is a good thing to have in your life utility belt.”
Mochrie said he prefers to constantly keep honing his improv skills, from continuing to work with Brad Sherwood to performing improv alongside a hypnotist.
“It’s a muscle that gets flabby incredibly quickly, and I always try to work with people I’ve never worked with before in an improv setting, because I find that also gets me back to having to listen,” he said. “Working with the Whose Line guys, even though we’re improvising, I can kind of tell where we’re going to go in a scene, and I don’t have that with these people. I do another tour with a hypnotist where he hypnotizes audience members, and I improvise with them, and that’s been really good for me as an improviser, because I truly have no idea what these people are going to do or say, so it really keeps me on my toes and keeps me sharp.
“I’m always trying to do something that I haven’t done before, that’s outside of my comfort zone, just because I think to get comfortable in improv can be very dangerous. You can get really sloppy, and maybe start repeating stuff you’ve done before. I find for me, it works best when I’m totally outside of my comfort zone—and just truly trying to survive.”
Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood will perform at 8 p.m., Saturday, June 22, at the Cascade Lounge at Agua Caliente Palm Springs, 401 E. Amado Road. Tickets remaining as of this writing are $100. For more information, visit aguacalientecasinos.com.
