Who

Hi folks, my name is San and here is my improv ‘journey’.

Growing up I always liked to entertain people and make people laugh, but never really explored the entertainment world as football was my big passion both watching and playing. But as my football playing days came to an end I was lost for many years searching for something I could be part of. I was always part of a team so struggled to find something to stimulate me, my mental health suffered and I was left with a massive  void in my my life and I didn’t know how to fill it. 

Then I found a place in Liverpool called the Life Rooms. Here I started a course on stand-up comedy. It was going rather, well then the glorious pandemic hit us. The courses transferred to Zoom but not stand-up comedy. There was however one on finding confidence through drama. I will give it a go, I thought but I can’t see me liking it. 

Fast forward a few weeks and I found myself saying what is this magical spellbinding art form that has captured my inner child and has made me feel alive again. Turns out it was improv. I found it came naturally to me. Where had it been all my life! The facilitator Rebecca introduced me to LCI and Emma Bird and the rest, as they say, is history. 

The Oickers formed during a separate LCI course to me and I watched a few of their shows with a little bit of envy! So, I was ecstatic and amazed when they asked me to be part of their amazing troupe. Since then my confidence has gone from strength to strength. I have gone on to do projects with other companies, such as Paperwork Theatre, Glossop Improv and more recently Collective Encounters. Nothing on a big scale but to me they are everything and keep me motivated and stimulated. Performing improv and drama stops me from fall back into that great big hole that I fell into and fought so many years to get back out.

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Michael is a 63-year-old silly person who is very fond of the word, ‘jamboree’.

A member of Liverpool Comedy Improv since 1380, Michael has only recently been allowed to take part in improvised scenes on the understanding that he refrains from biting himself (unless integral to the scene).

Recently, Michael abandoned his efforts at stand-up comedy because audiences kept laughing at him.

He says: “I wish for a world where improv is everywhere. Where man and beast can live side-by-side ‘yes anding’ each other, and where cake and jellies are always free.”

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I first started doing improv back in May 2016 with the ImproQuo group back in Manchester – I have no previous performing background, but have always been one for giving things a go, and saw there was the chance to do improv. I fell in love with it immediately, and started attending regular drop ins and courses. 

Due to other life events happening, I took a year out in 2018, but when I moved to Liverpool in September 2019 I started improv again under Liverpool Comedy Improv with Emma Bird,  and I’ve never looked back! Being involved with improv has made me feel part of a community for the first time in my life, and I’m eternally grateful for this, especially as its allowed me to be a part of this wonderful group known as The Oickers!

Affectionately known in the improv community as ‘The Mayor’ for his support of other improvisers worldwide, Mark is also the Champion Orange Squeezer for the North West and is also the impresario for the Flea Dancing company “Flea’s a Crowd” who recently came 2nd in Britain’s Got Talent.

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I have always loved the theatre and the arts, with both myself and my two daughters being regular visitors to the theatre from them being a young age. After going to see a couple of plays at the Unity theatre to see a brilliant theatre company performing whole improvised plays, I was totally awestruck by that idea.

So, when in 2016 my youngest daughter who had recently moved to Birmingham and joined an improv group there, took me to see an improv showcase I became hooked. Then – I saw a facebook page about improv classes at Merseyside Academy of Drama in Liverpool, run by Emma Bird, how would I resist? I joined my first class in September 2018 and have never looked back. Improv is so much fun, challenging and scary at the same time. I later went on to do some improv drop-in classes with Liverpool Comedy Improv and learned so much from them. I particularly love any chance to dress up and play a comedy character. This became a very useful skill in some of my other acting classes, monologues and a play I have also done with MAD.

Having been plucked from the obscurity of St Helens and then later Wavertree, Liverpool but having no formal acting training, I feel greatly privileged to be part of the wonderful fruit bowl of talent which makes up The Oickers. I hope to have many more fun and fruit-based adventures with you all!

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Originally having a background in amateur dramatics, I have always had the desire to perform, especially through my time spent with Wirral based theatre companies.

I have always loved comedy in all its forms, and it wasn’t until 2015/2016 when I had the opportunity to attend a comedy improv show, hosted by none other than Emma Bird. There had been an advertisement for The Liverpool Comedy Improv drop-in classes every Monday night over in Liverpool and I seized the opportunity and I never looked back.

I have had the chance to perform not only live, but also online, as well as with such talented performers – and joining with my fellow Oickers, I’m excited for the future.

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I have been performing my whole life in one way or another, but it wasn’t until 2020 came along that I finally found where I truly belong in the improv world.

I have always been a fan of improvised comedy but had only ever experienced it through warmups for drama classes. One night in early 2020 after a massive binge on ‘Whose Line is it Anyway?‘ I decided to see if improv comedy was actually something you could do in my area. I found a session that was being run by Liverpool Comedy Improv in Chester (a city that is just over the border from where I live in Wales) that was taking place that very week, I contacted Emma Bird who runs it, I went along and fell in love with improv and have not looked back since. I became a regular at LCI over 2020, initially in person and then online and I have had the pleasure of playing with many talented individuals from all over the world during the pandemic.

As well as regularly playing with the Liverpool Comedy Improv community I also kicked off 2021 by launching the Liverpool Comedy ImprovCast, a weekly podcast where I interview members of the LCI community about all things improv and life.

I am also a regular at Glossop Improv who have been another wonderful community that have embraced me and who treat me like family. To everyone at Glossop Improv I am known as Iain the Hat but hat’s a story for another day.

I became a member of The Oickers when a doctor diagnosed me with bananaitis, a rare disease that means I’m particularly appealing  to monkeys and other fruit afflicted improvisers. Much like a bowl of fruit The Oickers is a real mixed bag of fruity treats and I look forward to seeing how much comedy juice we can squeeze out of our wonderful fruity troupe.

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Sekki is a Filipino currently living on the A57, between Manchester and Sheffield, in a little town called Glossop (don’t ask her how she got there, she launches into a Homer-esque level story 13 years in the making and you’ll never hear the end of it and then you’d miss your tea!).

When she found out that she and fellow improviser Jess Napthine-Hodgkinson didn’t drive, they decided to carve out their own little improv world in the upstairs of a pub, and this is how Glossop Improv was born—from two people’s reservations about taking the last train back from Manchester Piccadilly on cold rainy evenings.

After many sad twists and turns in our heroine’s story, Sekki was invited repeatedly by acting buddy Brigid Hemingway to give online improv a chance. By the summer of 2020, Emma Bird’s LCI classes inflicted Sekki’s bizarre shortform outbursts on a group of people who surprisingly loved it instead of telling her to go away forever, and this is how The Oickers got stuck with Sekki. Think of her as the browning banana to the fruit hamper’s more temperate fruit selection—healthy in a gooey, kind of icky way.

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Stu was raised by grey squirrels until he could no longer hide his nut allergy. Wandering alone in Wirral Country Park with little confidence, he was found and adopted by Liverpool Comedy Improv in the summer of 2019.

The Jedi Improv Master, Emma Bird and all the lovely people at Liverpool Comedy Improv raised him in the ways of improvisation. It is during this time that he met his fellow Oickers and now he no longer climbs trees or craves a bushy tail.

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