Mark Stefanos
For one weekend a year, the warring tribes of long-form improv comedy in Los Angeles holster their Glocks and unbuckle their parachute pants to break bread at an indie improv festival, this year’s M.I.L.F. 2.
The two-day festival was held last Friday and Saturday, April 25 and 26, at the Jons supermarket strip mall at the corner of Hollywood and Vermont in East Hollywood, between four stages at two storefronts — the two stages at Rebecca Drysdale’s The Clubhouse (basically the last totally independently programmed theater around), and three doors down at another storefront that’s home to two schools: the new home of the Pack Theater and the World’s Greatest Improv School.
The festival featured 108 improv teams (disclosure: including teams with this aging correspondent), nine sketch teams, and 41 performers doing stand-up or characters, and was produced for the second year by Mach Improv (M.I.L.F. = Mach Improv LA Festival), a collective of about 25 performers that have been running a mashup improv show at The Clubhouse for 13 years. All shows were free, and the whole festival ran on donations — you can still donate via their Venmo @MILFest.
Jess Svendsgaard, Mach showrunner and co-executive producer of M.I.L.F. along with Nicole Villela, told us this year’s iteration ran way smoother than last year’s one-day event. “Friday night and Saturday daytime into night gave us room to breathe and also let a lot more performers into the festival. And I even got to watch some shows!” she said.
MI.L.F. co-executive producer Jess Svendsgaard performs a song with Brad Varian (Jennie Roberson)
The logistics of throwing the event, fielding over 260 submissions, and wrangling so many performers was a massive task, requiring six months of prep from a team of 10. But in the end it was worth it — “I’ll spare you of me describing improv scenes despite some of them making me cry from laughter (describing improv is like explaining a dream, it’s just never interesting),” Jess said. “I loved meeting people who traveled to come to the festival. And I loved hearing from people that they were having a good time and happy the festival existed.
“Also, I did a bit show that involved me and three friends taping 7-inch sub sandwiches to each hand and finishing them before the end of our 15-minute improv set. I will have that memory forever. Also, we had a flash tattoo artist that was booked solid both days! Now a bunch of us in the community have matching tattoos which is very cute.”
Shows ran on time throughout the weekend despite most being standing room only, and the packed lobbies poured onto the sidewalk of both locations. The schedule was well curated with a diversity of acts, including bit shows, musical performances, and improv of all kinds — big hit favorite teams like Holy Shit, Gunk, Menudo, Emergency Contact, The Sauce, Carol’s Poolhouse, Sweet Dalai Lama, and Wild, the hilariously strange Funk Shuffle, and sketch from weirdos Dick Cannon.
Tyler Schnupp’s deranged Bread Show closed out Friday night on a yeasty rise, and the festival’s last act Saturday was Convoy, a team made up of three of the Upright Citizens Brigade’s elder statesmen who have been performing together for decades and combined have over 200 years of improv experience.
A packed audience at The Clubhouse main stage (Sarah Bebb)
Of course, we’re kidding about the warring tribes of improv thing — improv remains generally collegial and harmonious. But the LA scene has indeed become more stratified and siloed over the past few years and feels a lot different than the heyday of the late aughts and twenty-teens.
A brief and semi-accurate history: improv’s explosion of popularity during the 2010s led to big enrollments at the established LA schools iO West, UCB, The Second City Hollywood, and The Groundlings, and brought new entrants like The Pack and Nerdist/The Ruby. But the bubble seemed to burst toward the end of the last decade, with the closing of iO West in 2018, and the Nerdist and others meeting similar fates.
(The Groundlings remains a robust theater and school but operates with more of an Apple-style closed-ecosystem/walled garden versus the open-source nature of the rest of the improv world.)
While clown and standup flourished, the pandemic wreaked havoc on improv and sketch. The Second City Hollywood shut down for good in 2022. The other behemoth UCB had an extended pandemic hiatus as the UCB 4 (Matt Besser, Amy Poehler, Ian Roberts, and Matt Walsh) sold ownership and permanently closed their massive two-stage campus and training center on Sunset and Western, as well as locations in New York.
UCB wouldn’t re-open until September 2022, and in their long absence, several smaller schools that teach UCB-style, game-based improv popped up to fill the void, all of which are run by UCB veterans: the aforementioned World’s Greatest Improv School owned by Will Hines, Sarah Claspell and Jim Woods; Jake Jabbour’s WE Improv; and James Mastraieni’s Shared Experience Studio, along with a few others.
They all exist now in a solar system that somewhat orbits around UCB, but they all also do their own thing, with their own curriculums and house teams, and less overlap than you’d think. It’s all very confusing and insular, but that’s what’s happening.
All of these reasons make M.I.L.F feel critical to the scene. It’s really the only remaining event where performers from all these schools can get together and let their improv freak flags fly.
And again — we’re talking about long-form improv comedy here, which is already pretty indie. So it’s fitting that Mach, one of the most committed indie collectives, has stepped in to fill the role of convener. They’re die-hards who clearly do it for the love of the game and the community, and they delivered a great fest filled with weirdos from stages all across LA. It was a nice reminder that funny people can come from anywhere.
