The local theater scene is booming, with respected companies and award-winning actors on stages spread across the desert. While productions, staged readings and other theatrical events happen frequently in the Coachella Valley, there has been a lack of representation for one theatrical genre: improvisational acting.
Actor/educator Melanie Blue is stepping up to fill that gap.
Improv, in which actors perform scenes without a script, finally has a local home at The Scene, with performances, classes and workshops taking place at the Arthur Newman Theatre at the Joslyn Center in Palm Desert. After a grand opening on Oct. 25, catch improv shows on Nov. 8 and Nov. 22.
“I come from Chicago, where improv was wildly available,” Blue said during a recent phone interview. “I’ve been teaching here for about seven years and slowly trying to build up a community of improvisers, which we have—and now we have a place to play at the Arthur Newman Theatre.”
While The Scene will focus heavily on improv, Blue is also hosting a staged reading of Expiration Date, a play making its world premiere on Dec. 6.
“My dream is really a home for improv, which we don’t have right now here in the Coachella Valley, but I also want to support other arts and storytellers,” Blue said. “I have scheduled Keith Hoffman’s original reading of a play he wrote, called Expiration Date, and he’ll be directing. I also have a cabaret in February scheduled, but I really do want to focus mostly on improv, just because that’s so lacking here.”
Blue said she’s not sure why the improv scene has been nearly non-existent in the desert, especially since the artform is “so mainstream.”
“There are literally Oscar winners and Emmy winners and movies and TV shows fully improvised, and factually, we all improvise every single day in our lives,” she said. “We’re improvising now, you and I in conversation. It’s so prevalent, and I don’t know why this little valley has been protected from it.”
Blue said the legion of actors across the desert can learn so much from dropping the script and trusting their scene partner(s).
“I’m also an actor, and we improvise all the time, and every single time you’re onstage, another actor forgets their line, or the cue doesn’t go off right—and we’re improvising,” she said. “I get a lot of actors who just want to strengthen their performance.”
“The skill of being present and fully listening to someone—fully taking them in with our ears and our eyes and our hearts and our souls—enhances every single thing we do in life.”
Melanie Blue
Improv classes and workshops attract both seasoned actors looking to sharpen their skills and non-actors just looking to try something new.
“Some people are just trying to get a little bit out of their comfort zone, especially after COVID—people wanting to get out of their house,” Blue said.
People from non-acting backgrounds can take away valuable lessons and life skills from improv.
“I’ve had a real estate agent who said it vastly improved his whole perspective of his job, saying yes to his clients and listening to them,” Blue said. “The skill of being present and fully listening to someone—fully taking them in with our ears and our eyes and our hearts and our souls—enhances every single thing we do in life, be it performance, plumbing or real estate.
“I teach about six classes a week, and some people just come for a place to laugh and play on a Sunday afternoon, and some people are really saying, ‘Hey, I think this improv is something I want to excel at and do performance-wise.’”
Blue said the often-goofy artform can make a big difference in people’s lives.
“It makes us better humans, better performers, and just better at living, I think. I have seen attention spans increase,” she said. “I work with seniors over at the Joslyn Center, and I’ve seen memories improve. The therapeutic value is unparalleled. People sign up for a six-week session, and then they just want to keep going. … One of the main tenets of improv is to make your partner look good, so the selflessness it offers, the connection, the collaboration, the building and creating together has increased exponentially (participants’) skills and assets.”
Blue said improv can also help people learn to fail.
“Improv is a lovely culture, because it embraces failure,” Blue said. “It says mistakes are discoveries, and we make it work, so this is an opportunity for all the people I have been teaching to strengthen their performance muscles by doing these reps of regularly performing, figuring out what works and what doesn’t work, and watching others do the things—and trying them themselves.”
As The Scene features regular improv shows, Blue hopes desert-dwellers grow more familiar with the form of theater.
“There is a place that people can go every other Sunday to perform or to catch a show or to say, ‘Hey, this looks like something I want to be a part of; let me look more into classes,’” she said.
Catch The Scene at 3 p.m., every other Sunday ,at the Arthur Newman Theatre at the Joslyn Center, at 73750 Catalina Way, in Palm Desert. Tickets are $25 at the door, cash only. For more information, visit themelanieblue.com.
