Artists On The Edge: Mark Robbins

Sun., Nov. 5, 2000

By Jim Kershner jimkershner@comcast.net

Mark Robbins doesn’t consider himself a “theater” type of guy. He tried a couple of dramatic roles in college; it wasn’t for him.

So how did the 30-year-old Robbins become the founder, director, lead actor and writer for the Blue Door Theatre, the hottest new theater in Spokane?

Because about 10 years ago, he discovered a crazier, more spontaneous, more nerve-wracking kind of performing: improvisational comedy.

He discovered that improv is to scripted theater what bebop is to Bach. He loved the spontaneity, the surprise, the danger, the pure creative * (Page idf10)ferment.

So he mustered his courage and went on stage with Unexpected Productions, a seasoned improv troupe in Seattle, where he grew up.

“I was 20 years old, and it was obvious I had a lot of … energy,” Robbins says with his characteristic sardonic smile. “It was also humbling when I started working with people who had been doing it for 20 years.”

So he soaked up everything they had to teach him, and by the time he moved to Spokane four years ago, he was ready to start his own branch of Unexpected Productions here.

He found himself teaching many of the younger cast members the art of improv. In Robbins’ mind, it is an art, and a demanding one at that. It is not merely the art of getting laughs. It is the art of building a scene from scratch, making the scene go somewhere, and then knowing when to end it.

“We start from a realistic platform, and then we tilt it,” said Robbins, who has been called Spokane’s own version of Mike Myers.

This summer, the group began leasing its own theater space, a loft on South Monroe with 80 seats, and Robbins has started scripting a few scenes.

“I love writing the individual sketches, and I love writing the transitions, and I love orchestrating the whole show,” says Robbins. “But I’m not a playwright.”

If that’s not being a playwright, it comes awfully close. The unpretentious Robbins, whose day job is counseling adolescents in crisis, still doesn’t consider himself a “theater” person.

“But someday, I’d like to go audition for a musical in character, just be this flamboyant character and do the whole audition that way,” said Robbins. “I’d even sing the songs in character.”

The audition as improv sketch: Now that’s cutting-edge theater.

Artists on the edge Experience artists’ work in many ways

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