news
Fishing for Life’s Answers with BASSPROV
Mark Sutton and Joe Bill reel audience members in with their improvised banter. Photo by Kevin Thom.
This weekend in downtown Toronto, two Hoosiers will drop anchor, bait fishing poles, crack a few beers, and shoot the breeze on any number of topics. The “boat,” however, will be the stage of Comedy Bar, and audience suggestions will determine the starting point for Donny Weaver (Mark Sutton) and Earl Hinkle’s (Joe Bill) garrulous back-and-forth. Yes, veteran improv act BASSPROV has drifted into Canadian waters again.
Bill and Sutton, founding members of Chicago’s famed Annoyance Theatre, first started performing as their good ol’ boy fishing philosophers in 2000, and to the best of Bill’s recollection, they brought the act to Toronto within the first year of creating their now signature show. “We’ve spent a fair amount of time visiting Toronto over the years,” says Bill; both men have been performing around North America for decades at comedy festivals, and earlier in 2000 Sutton had also been in Toronto to direct the Canadian premiere of the comedic musical Co-Ed Prison Sluts for Second City Toronto.
While BASSPROV was created in Chicago and Bill and Sutton’s improv roots go deep in the Windy City, both men are from Indiana originally. “I grew up in Indianapolis,” says Bill, “and Mark in Tipton, a small town north of there.” Bill’s father commuted to work in Tipton for a time, and Sutton’s mother ran a diner he frequented. When we suggest she might have served Bill’s father pie on occasion, he chuckles. “You mean literally, not in some figurative sense, right?”
Of course, while the two characters in BASSPROV enjoy the simpler things in life—beer, fishing, good company—Bill explains that Donny and Earl are complicated, knowledgeable men. “The show’s sensibility lies in Middle America, and we value ‘knowin’ stuff’ there,” says Bill, describing a regional obsession with Jeopardy. “In Indiana, people are very competitive about trivia—sort of like with our state basketball.”
It’s a bit difficult to describe the fascinating appeal of watching BASSPROV, as the show unfolds in real time, and realistically—no zany characters or aliens interrupt the fishing session. Bill and Sutton have helped shape Chicago’s signature improv style over the decades they’ve been performing and teaching; based on Del Close‘s teachings, it favours character development over plot twists. “Chicago-style improv follows the truth of the character, which we weave into the story; we’re concerned more with character interaction than plot development,” says Bill. That character interaction all takes place in the boat, while the two old friends bicker and debate life’s questions, big and small.
Over the decade they’ve been performing shows as Earl and Donny, Bill and Sutton have invested the characters with detailed back stories, incorporating some of their own lives into the show. Currently, “Donny is married, same as Mark, and Earl isn’t, same as me. Of course, they’ve had six divorces between them,” chuckles Bill. Ironically, with both men in demand all over North America (and further) as instructors (Sutton was in Amsterdam when we spoke with Bill by phone earlier this week), life has started to imitate art. “We’ve been working so much, we’ve barely seen each other lately, so the show will parallel real life,” says Bill; the two will actually catch up this weekend, between workshops they’re conducting with Toronto’s Impatient Theatre, and Saturday night’s show.
Bill and Sutton have had guests in the fishing boat over the years, including Emo Phillips, Fred Willard, and The Simpsons‘ Dan Castellaneta, but it’ll be just the pair of them casting line in Saturday’s show. After the BASSPROV set, though, they’ll take part in a midnight edition of The Bat, an in-the-dark improv format they helped pioneer. “We’re looking forward to playing with old pals from Toronto,” says Bill, citing Dave Pearce and Kerry Griffin of Slap Happy, and Marcel St. Pierre of Bad Dog Theatre as potential guests.
BASSPROV play Comedy Bar (945 Bloor Street West) on Saturday May 22 at 10:30 p.m., $10, followed by a special performance of The Bat at midnight.