MARK JANE

The phenomena soon spread beyond the English speaking community.  More and more French speakers discovered the Improfessionals and their unique improvisation style that, without forgetting to be funny, was sensitive, story based and above all celebrated mistakes with liberating pleasure.

The original line-up is a list of players who would become veritable institutions in the Parisian impro world : Florian Bartsch, Clara McBride, Caspar Schjelbred, for many years this dream team delighted audiences with totally original improvised shows in their unique style.  If their short form shows and other of their impro games seemed similar to aspects of the Match, the team’s pioneer instincts led them to create revolutionary long form shows.

An « Improvised Soap Opera » that played every weekend for a month in the Théô Théâtre.  “Attack of the Improfessionals” a totally improvised play in the universe of 1950’s science-fiction B movies at the Théâtre de Nesle.  And also….improvised musicals.

Even in short form the Improfessionals distinguished themselves with “Improflicks”, their improvised film festival, or when they attacked current affairs in “Totally News” as they improvised stories based on headlining news.  Led by Caspar Schjelbred and his passion for physical theatre and movement in improvisation they performed “Bubble Soup”, a format that was later adopted by other troupes (notably the Komptoir de l’impro).

Mark Jane created the formats “Coffee”, based on the universal pass time of “people watching” in coffee bars, and “Synopsis”, creating full stories from a cinema synopsis and rekindling his old love for cinema.  In 2014 he became the artistic director of the Improfessionals and continued to explore the possibilities of improvised performance.

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His colossal work and experimentation has allowed him to achieve in spectacular fashion all kinds of possibilities on stage.  His creative talent is surely one of the most fertile in the world of French improvisation.  The adepts of the Match therefore began to consider other show formats in an attempt to push their improvisation experience further.  Others found in the work and performance of Mark the spark that would ignite forever their passion for this unique art form.

Preaching Johnstone

Many spectactors, seduced by the group’s performance, wanted to know their secrets and began taking classes at the Impro Academy.  Mark, being the first apostle of Keith Johnstone in France, took on the responsibility of preaching the performance philosophy of his master.  The core of the Impro Academy is obviously impregnated with Johnstonian concepts: the subtleties of status in a scene and the interactions it generates, theatricality, celebrating failure, the capacity to create comedy without trying to be funny…  

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Mark even managed to bring the illustrious theoretician himself to Paris.  He would be followed by his disciples from Loose Moose Theatre Calgary, who opened up more obscure areas of Keith Johnstone’s teaching to French improvisers, like Trance Mask.  Every year the Impro Academy welcomed Steve Jarand and his collection of masks to explore, for the duration of a workshop and a unique show, his unique techniques.  Mark, not wanting to wait for the annual visit from Steve, has since made his own series of masks and half-masks to introduce interested improvisers and actors to the art of mask.  In the company of Tama Carroll, he brought the masks to the stage at the Théâtre Pixel in “Vie DéMasqué”, where masks and humans discovered each other in a tender and poetic game or mirrors.  In 2015 he created “Trance Mask France”, the first French structure dedicated to the teaching and creation of shows with Trance Mask techniques.