Director Laura Derry stands to one side of the stage, watching intently as her actors, Barbara Scott and Kasey Klemm, play out a scene. Kasey is the haughty master of a manor, and Barbara is his put-upon servant, who for some deeply depraved reason known only to Laura, is also a horse. Kasey plays up the imperious aspects of his character, ordering the equine Barbara hither and yon, until finally Laura abruptly barks out, "Poop on him! He’s being a wiener!"

This unusual tableau was a scene at a Friday night performance of "Gorilla Theatre," a competitive improvisational theatre format, played for points awarded by the audience, in which improv scenes are "directed" on a rotating basis by each of the actors in turn. "Gorilla Theatre" is just one of the many shows offered every week by Bay Area Theatre Sports, commonly called BATS, a San Francisco institution since 1987.

BATS, like many improv groups, is very much grounded in the philosophy of Keith Johnstone’s seminal book, "Impro." Yet BATS is also a product of lively cross-pollination, and is additionally influenced by the teachings of the legendary Viola Spolin.

One of the original BATS founders, Rebecca Stockley, is the main instructor at BATS. She’s a jovial woman who laughs often and whose smile-inducing job gives her cause to be cheerful. Stockley had been a participant in Theatre Sports in Seattle. After she and several others, including members of famed SF Commedia Dell’Arte troupe Fratelli Bologna, gave a successful series of improv workshops in 1986, the seeds of BATS were sown.

"Originally," explains Stockley in her enthusiastically rapid-fire manner, "one of our ideas was that we would create a place where actors could sort of keep their chops when they were not doing shows. Since then it’s changed -- hugely."

Not only was BATS originally conceived as an actors-only domain, the program was previously much less comprehensive. In addition to broadening their scope to encourage non-actors to attend, the curriculum became much more structured over time. It evolved from crash courses where participants would take one class a week for four weeks before being thrust upon stage, to the point where attendees now must study for at least six months before appearing in front of an audience. And BATS has burgeoned into a thriving theatre school, with public performances four nights a week and classes every weeknight.

Stockley encourages my participation in a beginning class in order to get a better feel for her methods. Tonight’s group covers an age range from fourteen to fifty, and none of the students were previously actors. For me it’s like a look back to the very beginning of my own theatre training. To waken our brains, we begin with basic, old-school improv warm-ups with names like Power Ball and Bippety Bop, and they are the kind of exercises that cultivate vocalization and quick thinking. We later move on to meatier work, and engage in two-person mini-scenes to practice the concept of "endowments," which means that one performer suggests the circumstances of the scene by giving the other person information that pre-defines their relationship and/or environment. Participants quickly morph into doctors, sailors, dancers, astronauts, soldiers, and an endless parade of other characters.

Many of the school’s attendees do not necessarily plan to pursue a career in theatre, and I ask Stockley what some of the benefits for these non-actors might be. "A lot of people say that they’re doing it because they want to enhance their creativity, they want to get in touch with their spontaneity. Some people just do it because they want to have fun." She mentions that there are several out-of-work former dot-commers in this evening’s group who just wanted to participate in something enjoyable in their post-NASDAQ universe. The gainfully employed are also present. "I have a lot of students who have said that they have a very left-brain job, and they wanted some right brain play," she notes. And there are also those who simply come to meet other people in a playful environment.

Kasey Klemm is not only a performer, but a regular BATS instructor as well. I ask him about the "sport" component of the group’s name. "When you come to a Theatre Sports show you have two teams of very talented improvisers competing against one another for points from judges," says Klemm. "The whole theory behind Theatre Sports is to get the audiences on the edge of their chair and to care about the performers, and to care about the work that is being done."

There is also an interactive component that most theatre lacks. Klemm points out that, "Every Theatre Sports show you go to, ninety percent of the scenes will start with the improviser asking for a suggestion (from the audience)." Theatre Sports shows differ also from the "Whose Line Is It, Anyway?" format that many people associate with improv. "(They) do what they need to do be on TV, and that’s get a laugh every thirty seconds or so," explains Klemm. "If you watch two hours of Theatre Sports you see stories being told."

Stockley also emphasizes the narrative quality behind the BATS style. "The whole Theatre Sports training, the Johnstone-based training, is all about story," she relates. "And I studied improv for years and never heard a word about story." BATS groups not only engage in the shorter, bite-sized form of improv scenes, but also engage in full-length, two-hour long-form improvisations in which the plot is invented on the spot. Klemm says that the BATS focus on story leads to such great results that, "Sometimes people tell us that our long-forms (must be) scripted because the narratives are so tight."

BATS training, according to Stockley, is ideal for actors to improve their overall skills. She points out that improv skills are essential for auditions. "To be able to make choices really quickly, to be able to commit to them fully, and to be able to do five takes completely differently," Stockley emphasizes, "is a skill that gets people cast."

She enthuses about how her own acting process evolved because of improv. "I have an MFA in theatre, and was a trained actor, and was out there doing theatre," she says. "But what I do now is so much more alive, and so much more real, and it comes from me. It’s my own acting style -- it’s not method and it’s not technique, and it’s not something I learned from some teacher -- it really comes from me, and that’s because of improv. I learned how I work because of improv."

In addition, she says that the process of putting on scripted theatre is much more lighthearted when informed by improvisational training. "The rehearsal process is so wonderful if you can improvise," Stockley gushes. "You don’t have to be good in rehearsal -- you’re playing in rehearsal." Thus, with improv as a basis for the experimental nature of a rehearsal, it means that the process is, in Stockley’s words, "More fun, more informative, more liberated, more free, more productive."

Klemm notes that an improv-trained actor has an edge that others actors lack. "I think people who are trained in doing improv have a confidence that shows because they don’t have to rely on a script." More importantly, he says that improv enhances an essential aspect of acting. "Improvisers, I think, more than anyone else, know what it’s like to be in the moment. You always hear actors talk about, ‘I was really trying to be in the moment,’ but when you’re improvising, you have to be in the moment, or you don’t know what’s just happened."

Stockley sums it up nicely when she says, "Improvising increase the spectrum of possibility for an actor. I think actors are often cast the same way at times, so they can get really good at doing that, and have no experience of other voices, other characters, other emotions, other colors that they can create." As a result, she says, "If you have so much freedom to explore everything you’ve got, you bring all that back when you go back to scripted work."

Ultimately, the goal of improvisation as espoused by BATS is to reconnect actors to the wonder of the creative process. Stockley muses, "I’ve been an astronaut, I’ve killed monsters, I’ve driven stakes into the hearts of vampires, done surgery, and been a little child."

There’s no limitation," adds Klemm.

Yet the proof is in the pudding, and for actors considering BATS training, there is no better way to "audit" the effectiveness of their program and techniques than to watch the end results at one of their weekly Fort Mason Theatre shows.

As "Gorilla Theatre" continues, some of the school’s more advanced improvisers strut their stuff. Onstage, Jenny Meyer plays a hesitant woman who brings her date, Chris Thompson, into her strangely empty apartment for the first time.

"You don’t have any furniture?" he asks, confused.

"No," she admits.

"Why?" he asks.

She looks away, then shyly confesses, "It burdens my soul."

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