Twenty-five years ago, Chris Wells, a 27-year-old American raised in Missouri, faced Jun Imai, a young Japanese method actor from Tokyo who was on his way to becoming a leading authority on improv in Japan. "We met at an improv show in Tokyo," Imai says. "We had two teams against each other: a gaijin (foreign) team and a Japanese team."
Since that day, the couple has developed both a business partnership as well as a romantic one. They launched an improv studio called Studio Gokko with several classes a week, a professional comedy show called Improvazilla performed in English, and they are months away from opening a black box theater for Japanese-language shows. And, in addition to their bilingual lessons, they just held their second Spanish-language improv workshop.
Despite their successes, however, they have found it difficult to introduce improv into Japanese culture.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.