Rapid Fire Theatre, the city’s longest-running improv company, has kept Edmonton in stitches for over four decades.
Matt Schuurman has been with the company for about 20 years — first a performer, then a staff member, and now as the executive director that ensures the funny keeps flowing. He began by participating in Wildfire, Rapid Fire’s annual youth festival.
“I got involved in the late 1990s or early 2000s as a teen myself, was immediately hooked, and have been involved ever since.”
Now he oversees the madness that is Bonfire Festival — which Schuurman describes as a pilot for their regular-season programming. It’s where Rapid Fire throws delightful, dippy and occasionally disastrous ideas at the wall to see what sticks. Some shows go on to become smash hits at the Edmonton Fringe or get a coveted spot in Rapid Fire’s regular lineup, while others live forever in improv infamy.
One of Schuurman’s favourite Bonfire moments? A valiant but ill-fated attempt to make AI do improv. Years ago, a performer devised a system to communicate with an AI-generated scene partner.
In theory, the concept was brilliant: The performer says a line, the AI listens, processes and responds. Easy peasy. He even added a video projection of a crude, flappy-mouthed robot head to really sell it.
In a quiet test run, it worked seamlessly. But in front of a sold-out crowd? Absolute disaster.
“We didn’t accommodate for audience noise,” Schuurman laughs.
The bot couldn’t filter out the roar of the crowd, so it just kept processing. And processing. And processing. In 15 minutes, it managed to utter exactly one line. Meanwhile, the audience — aware of the slow-motion train wreck unfolding before them — laughed harder and harder, making the situation worse and worse.
“It completely bombed,” he admits. “But it was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.”
In essence, that’s the beauty of the Bonfire Festival. Some ideas shine, others go up in flames, but it’s always a comedic spectacle.
Bear witness to brilliance, blunders, or a bit of both from April 3 to 5 at the Bonfire Festival.
