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Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Comedic Pursuits podcast. I’m your host, Seth Payne.
This week I got to sit down with someone who I have found to be a very funny, very talented, very bright and nice person. I’m talking, of course, about Kate Symes.
Highlights from my interview with Kate Symes
Kate has been doing improv for a little over eight years now, so we have a lot to cover in this episode. She’s from the West Coast and has gone on a bunch of different adventures.
She’s taught at Washington Improv Theater, was on Commonwealth, King Bee, Going to the Movies Alone, Press Play, Telenovela, and many other teams. She’s currently on the indie team To Be Frank and is directing The Fourth Estate, which is a brand new WIT show about the media.
Without further ado, Kate Symes.
Some of the following answers and questions have been edited and shortened for clarity. You can hear Kate’s responses in full by listening to the podcast episode.
The early years
I grew up in Portland, Oregon, and am the oldest of four kids, so I think my early comedic influences were my siblings. We weren’t allowed to watch a lot of television growing up. My parents were kind of hippies. They grew out of it as I got older, but they were pretty hardcore hippies when I was young, so television was not a thing. I was encouraged to go play with my siblings in the backyard. We would come up with skits and plays and entertain each other. My dad is super into music, so we listened to a lot of music. We’d play records and put on dance routines. Those were comedic—not on purpose, but accidentally.
I think the earliest thing I saw on film or television that I liked and recognized as comedy was Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I love that movie, and I love the style of it. We bought it on VHS, and it was the only movie we owned for five years, so we watched it a lot. I don’t know why, for my parents, that was the acceptable movie to own. But that was it.
I did gymnastics growing up, and I also played the violin. So I did things where I performed, and I was used to being on stage or in front of people doing a thing. So I got comfortable with that early and often. But music and gymnastics tapered off in high school. Then I just started going to keg parties. That was my biggest contribution to society for the last three years of high school.
I’m not saying I’m funny now, but I really don’t think I knew I had a funny angle to myself until high school. I went to an all-girls high school and quickly discovered I was the class clown. In middle school, I was pretty quiet and reserved. But when I got to high school, I guess I blossomed into being the funny one. When people would laugh, I’d be like, “Oh, I guess just me saying what I want to say is funny.”
When I went to college at the University of Oregon, in Eugene, it was the early ’90s in the Pacific Northwest, and I thought I was full-on grunge. I hung out with a lot of artists, but I myself was not one. I was a journalism major and wanted to be a writer. I think I was still a little underground funny among friends, but I was more wrapped up in, “I don’t know who I am. I’m so emo. What is happening?”
After college, I moved to Hawaii with friends just to fuck off and work at a restaurant and surf. I think I had enough presence of mind at the age of 21 to realize I probably wouldn’t have a better opportunity to do that, so I did it. I was there for about a year and a half. Comedy in those days was just our lives. It was seven people living in a three-bedroom house that was crumbling down around us and drinking our faces off. You can learn more about this story on Short Story Long. I still wasn’t performing, but waiting tables is a performance. I was in front of people doing my schtick.
Then I moved back home. I had a short stint working at Enron. That was weird and random. Then I went to law school back in Eugene. The word “improv” did not even enter my vocabulary until I moved to DC in 2009. Then I moved here, and that was the start of my improv comedy performance.
Starting comedy in DC
I moved to DC for a job after law school. I graduated in 2008, and the economy was horrible. There were no jobs in Portland. But if you’re a lawyer, jobs are plentiful in Washington, DC—PSA for any recent law grads out there. I got a job here through referrals and a friend of a friend. Then I moved, and the rest is history.
I was in DC for about a year before I got into comedy. I gave a toast at my sister’s wedding right before I moved here. I didn’t write it out ahead of time, so that was my first improvised performance. I didn’t know what I was doing, but it got a good reception, and I liked the feeling of it. When I moved here, I thought about giving that toast. I really liked it, and I liked making people laugh, so I thought I might like stand-up.
I signed up for a class at DC Improv not knowing it was an improv class. I’m a pretty open person, so I had no expectations. Even though it became very clear throughout that first class that we were not doing stand-up, I was like, “Whatever this is, it’s fucking rad.” I loved it. I left on a high. I was truly bit by the bug, and I never looked back.
Shawn Westfall was the only teacher at DC Improv at the time, so I took all the classes with them. Press Play formed out of my second or third class. A few other people and I wanted to do improv all the time and perform and practice, so we created this group. I think the first few practices were just us sitting around staring at each other trying to figure out what we were supposed to be doing.
When I started classes at WIT, I jumped into level 3. I should have started from square one. WIT’s program was different from DC Improv’s because they start you from long-form from the get-go. I got passed to the next class and had no idea what I was doing. I appreciated the vote of confidence, but I failed myself and retook level 3 with Mark Chalfant.
WIT Harold and ensemble teams
After I got through classes, I auditioned for Harold and was put on a team called Telenovela. That was amazing. We were all brand new to Harold, and we were super excited. We had such an amazing time, and we got better and better together. Then Jonathan moved to Providence, and we lost a couple other people for other reasons, so we chose to disband. It didn’t feel like the same team without all of us.
Then I was put on King Bee, which was a Harold team at the time, and that was super fun. We were coached by Murphy McHugh. They were such lovely, warm people. It feels a little intimidating to join an existing team, but they were welcoming. We were made into an ensemble house team, which was fun.
Then I can’t remember exactly how this transition happened, but I left King Bee and ended up on Commonwealth. I was on that team for a couple years. You’re always looking for your comedic home and voice and people who get you when you’re on stage, where you make a move and see the electric look of understanding from someone else. That’s the feeling we’re always chasing. And I really felt that with Commonwealth. It was such a powerhouse team with really experienced people.
Teaching improv
I started teaching relatively quickly after I started doing improv, mainly because the scene in DC was just starting. If you’d done improv for a year, you were qualified to teach. I probably had no business doing that. But the wonderful thing about teaching and coaching is, it reinforces what you think you know, and you have to explain it in a way that makes sense to people.
I think teaching has helped me become a better improviser because I have to look at improv from different angles. I also have to watch so much of it and analyze whether or not something works. Then I have to explain why it does or doesn’t work.
Taking a break from improv
I think there was a time period of several years, probably starting with King Bee, where I was doing all improv all the time. I can’t remember exactly when, but I definitely had… not quite a burnout moment… but I’d piled on too much. And just like anything, when you’re so immersed in it, you kind of can’t see why you’re doing it anymore, or what’s good, or why it’s not good.
I remember the first year I went to Del Close Marathon, I was like, “Holy shit! This is amazing.” I came back so ready to go. Then over the years, each time I’d go to DCM, I’d come back excited, but I’d also be discouraged. Because I’d seen Mecca, the best of the best, and I wanted to bring it back and translate it here.
I’ve tried doing it a few times, and I got worn down over the years. That’s great because it means you’re always striving to be better and better and better. But DC is a transient city, so it’s hard to keep talent here. I can’t take the best team from DCM and make that happen in DC. It’s not impossible, it’s just harder. You don’t have pools and pools and pools of people who are all trying to do this as a profession. I’m not even trying to do comedy as a profession, but I do take it very seriously—sometimes too seriously, so I had to take a break.
I think I took a little break before joining Commonwealth. Then after I left, I took a break more in earnest, for maybe six or eight months. I think it’s like anything you’re trying to get good at. It’s good to incubate for the first few years and go all in—not to the detriment of your personal life, but it can sometimes happen because you love it a lot. But if you’ve done improv for a really long time, you can take a break, then come back in and do shows from muscle memory.
Directing The Fourth Estate
I’m directing a show called The Fourth Estate. It’s a behind-the-scenes look at the media. The idea is that we’re so inundated by media shit right now, and everyone’s got an opinion. Is the press bad, or are they good? Which is good? Which is bad? What’s fake? Where are you getting your news? It all feels so partisan. It’s an interesting time for news.
I wanted to see the characters behind the news and see a show where the news collapses in on itself. We see that in real life: cable television news is reporting on what was tweeted, and Twitter’s tweeting shit they saw on a print news story, and print news is covering what was on local television.
I’m very excited. It’s an amazing cast. Just like with anything, you have an idea, and then you see people bring it to life, and it’s so much better than you even imagined.
To Be Frank
My indie team, To Be Frank, has really honest conversations. We ask if anyone’s had a conversation recently where they had to be very frank or honest with somebody else. We’ve had some great responses. It gets into emotion and relationships.
We’ve had a few practices with Dan Milliken as our coach, and he’s wonderful. He’s honed in on a way for us to follow the fun down a rabbit hole, as opposed to just doing a montage that’s skipping stones across the surface.
Biggest aha moment in comedy
I took a TJ And Dave workshop where TJ said something that anyone who’s been in a class or who are coached by me has heard this a million times. He said at the start of every scene, you know each other, you like each other, and nothing’s wrong. I have found that, more often than not—probably 100 percent of the time—to start a scene that way greases the wheels for the scene to start. Even when I say that, at least 50 percent of the time someone hears that and then says, “Ugh, Jim you didn’t get kale! I asked you to get kale! You got spinach.” And I’m like, “Fuck!”
It doesn’t mean that the scene has to be like, “Oh my God, I love you! You’re so great.” Because I see a lot of improvisers default to these really nebulous, vague affectionate relationships. Nobody says that in real life. Also, I don’t buy it. I don’t believe that you really believe that. So it doesn’t mean we need to mush over each other. It just means we don’t need to start the scene by having something be wrong with the other person. As TJ described it, the scene’s already going. We just encounter these people in their lives in this moment.
A thing that distilled it well for me was a podcast interview with Jason Mantzoukas, where he said that improv is the only thing that takes discovery in the moment, and that’s the magic of it. For scripted theater, stand-up comedy, all of that, we’re looking for it to be funny. We know the structure of these things that will make them funny. But the thing that really is different about improv is when we’re sitting in the audience and watching people truly discover something in the moment. We see that they’re discovering it, and they’re accepting that as a discovery and playing with it. And the more improv you do and the more you watch, the more you realize it’s rare that you really see that level of openness and discovery in the moment. I would say I don’t see it very often. It’s a thing I’m chasing constantly.
What I don’t love, and what I shy away from, is being clever. Clever, cute, coy, I hate all that shit. It’s winking at the audience and not committing. Over the years, the way I’ve come to view it is that the audience wants to relate to you. They want to laugh because they see something familiar, and they recognize it so powerfully.They’ll laugh if you do something cute or clever, but the quality of the laugh is less. I’m looking for people who double over and cry, they’re laughing so hard. Because that’s when the audience is like, “Well, part of that was scripted, right?”
Biggest failure within comedy
I don’t know if I do well in auditions. I don’t get nervous at auditions, but they’re always nerve-wracking because you want to do well, and it’s an unknown. I auditioned for a Second City show that was at Woolly Mammoth, and that was high pressure. I was in there with people I knew from the DC improv community, so I wanted to impress them, too. I would say in that way, workshops are also stressful because you’ve got a visiting teacher, and you’re kind of trying to perform for them but also for your friends.
I auditioned for that Second City show, and I knew I was doing horribly because I was so in my head. I was watching the trainwreck as it was happening. I recently auditioned for a storytelling show and hadn’t prepared well. I really winged it, and I knew I wasn’t doing great. And that’s disappointing. I get disappointed in myself.
To try to overcome those moments of disappointment, I usually try to remind myself to be gentle. It’s not the end of the world. We’re not performing brain surgery. Nobody died on the table. All of this is a process. This is another thing I quote TJ on far too often, but he said that improv is not a math problem to be solved, it’s a jazz song to be listened to.
I think of it as a good thing that it’s an art form that will take you a really long time to get good at. I look at the people who I think are phenomenal, and they’ve all been doing improv for longer than I have. I think of myself as a pre-teen or teenager in terms of where I am now with improv, eight years in.
There is no end to the learning. At the very worst, you stay sharp, and at the best, you get way better. What’s the worst that could happen if you keep practicing and keep learning? There’s no downside to it at all. I’m not just willing, I’m actively interested in continuing to learn. And I feel very humble because in DC, we don’t get to see those people every day who have been doing it for 20 years.There’s Murphy McHugh, Topher Bellavia, Mark Chalfant, only a handful of people who’ve been doing it for that long. It’s cool, though. Our community’s evolving and and aging, so we have more of an opportunity now to see more experienced people.
Where can people find you?
To Be Frank has upcoming shows. The Fourth Estate will be in WIT runs. One Women Show might have something coming up. You can follow me on Instagram and Facebook. But Facebook’s so boring these days.
I’m still teaching classes. I’ve taught workshops. I don’t do them regularly, but I definitely have in the past and probably will in the future. I’ve taught a lot of yoga and improv workshops. Look for those again, maybe.
Thanks for tuning in!
Come back next week to hear my interview with DC improviser Robin Doody.
You can follow this podcast on:
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