CRUMBS knee deep in summer

Oh summer, you wine us and you dine us (figuratively), and then you slip out the door. And while you slip out the door you leave the door open long enough for fall to thrust itself unto us. Oh fall, you are the beginning of the season of comedy theatre. The fall this year (2011) brings for CRUMBS:

1) The Winnipeg IF... Improv Festival 2011. The Gas Station Arts Centre again brings you and everyone the festival of making things up. This year will mark the 12th year... a dozen years of making things up! September 20th - 24th is when improv comes to town.

2) The CRUMBS tours Europe in the Fall! What? We thought that CRUMBS only toured Europe in the spring? There just aren't enough hours in the day, days in the week and months in the year to bring everyone the CRUMBS love.

3) The Free Laughs Comedy Series at the King's Head...
FREE LAUGHS The 6th season of Free Laughs Comedy Series at the King's Head on Tuesday nights. The free comedy shows continue for year six, rotating through several hot hot comedy shows right here in Winnipeg. Let's look at some of the shows one can expect to be blown away by this fall.

CRUMBS with Dj Hunnicutt -The world class improv duo (CRUMBS duh?) does the improv thing with Dj Hunnicutt and people (you) come down and party with us.

Comedy Loser -The hit comedy show that has performers play characters, monologues, puppetry, video and everything else that screams solo comedy (except stand-up).

CRUMBS & Friends -This show has CRUMBS inviting improv players onto the stage to play with us. Sometimes these guests are famous, sometimes they are old friends, all the time they are awesome.

Shitz n Gigglez This is the high quality elite super elite stand-up comedy show hosted by John B Duff. This show rules the funny.

Show and Tell Just like when we were all in grade school except way way funnier. Comedy folk bring in an object to "show" and then they "tell". Hilarious.

Kings of the King's Head This is the game show of comedy that pits Improviser against his sworn enemy, no not scripts, I'm talking about Stand-up Comedians. The show blew everyone away in 2010, the next show is August 30th, 2011. Hosted by Lee White.

Outside Joke Local heroes Outside Joke take over for CRUMBS while they tour the world. Improv in Winnipeg is safe in their hands. The party continues.

CRUMBS relaxes

CRUMBS has closed the door on yet another Winnipeg Fringe Festival. Number 14 actually. We did 10 shows and not one of them sucked, which statistically is quite rare, usually when it comes to improv there must be at least one show that crashes and burns, if only to prove to the universe that improv is not an exact science. But as it turns out, this Fringe is perhaps the end of this "rule". As people out there might not realize, modern improv is literally riddled with rules, theories and proper protocol.

All improv shows upon their completion must have an Official Show Report filled out and submitted (called OSR, pronounced Oh-Sirs). The report includes information such as the number of people who showed up, the number of laughs per minute, number of mimed objects, number of characters played. Mostly, it has to do with plenty of numbers, numbers are very important with all art forms. The form also involves a special rating scale, that for laymen can be simply be expressed by whether it was a great show or whether is totally sucked. This rating scale is called the Close/Johnstone median.

We have submitted our Official Show Reports to the Central Improvisation Agency (aka Central Improvisation Service International) and are currently waiting to hear back from them. They will crunch the numbers and see if, in fact, we have broken the Close/Johnston median barrier on extended improv show run averages. Exciting times, stay tuned for official results.