“Rock ’n’ roll stars have ‘Remove the blue M&Ms,’” Mochrie says. “We have, ‘We need 100 mousetraps.’”
The mousetraps are for the duo’s infamous routine, where they cover the floor with the devices and proceed to play a game such as singing opera about mail while walking across them.
Mochrie and Sherwood will bring their “no pain, no gain” approach to improv to the Weinberg Center for the Arts on April 22. Prior to the weekend gig, Mochrie spoke with The Gazette over the phone from his home in Toronto about the show, his new book and his utter disdain for the “Whose Line” game hoedown.
A&E: After eight years, how have you seen the show change?
Mochrie: We were looking over some old running orders and we've had so many games that we no longer do. I felt old all of a sudden. Some of those games I never recognized. Most of the time we’ve spent on the tours trying to figure out how to get audience suggestions in a way that we won’t get the same thing over and over again. ... We’ve sort of invented new games over the years because there’s just the two of us, there’s sort of a limited number of games we can play. So we are constantly workshopping new games. Unfortunately, when we workshop it, we have to do it in front of an audience and hope it works. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t.
A&E: What are some of the newer games you're trying out?
Mochrie: You put me on the spot here. We’ll be doing sort of a new game where it’s sort of rap-based, where we start doing a scene and, at any point in the scene, if [one] person thinks what the other person said sounds like a rap song, we go, “Kick it,” and we start doing a rap song until somebody says “Word.”
A&E: So it’s not quite like [the “Whose Line” game] hoedown.
Mochrie: Oh, God no. Nothing’s like hoedown.
A&E: Has that followed you throughout your career?
Mochrie: I guess so. We often get suggestions for hoedown, which I can state with absolute assurance it will never happen. Ever.
A&E: What was the problem with hoedown?
Mochrie: Toward the end, when we finished taping “Whose Line,” we had been doing it, including the British version, for 14 years. So that was 14 years of hoedown and we would do two to three a taping. We would get a different suggestion for every hoedown. It was horrible. You’re trying to think of a joke you can have and then the person beside you would take that joke. Your minds are going along the same lines and then you’re just screwed. So it was the only time during the show that I felt pressure and was nervous. ... Although, Brad and I have found over the eight years we have been doing this, when the show works best it’s when we’re off balance. When we really ... just have so many different elements that we’re constantly trying to figure out what to do and where to go, and that’s sort of the fun part of improv, where it’s almost like Sudoku or a crossword puzzle. Where you’re using every part of your brain to try to figure out where to go next and wrap up what you’ve done.
A&E: Can it be a negative thing to be too comfortable in improv?
Mochrie: I think so. It certainly can. You can rest on your laurels, especially. You can get very lazy with improv. You can go, “Oh, your suggestion sort of sounds like something we’ve done before. We can head into this area because we know it gets a laugh.” So we definitely try to stay away from that.
A&E: I've read that you said after doing so many bits with Ryan Stiles on “Whose Line” that you started to feel like you were repeating yourself. Was that one of the reasons the show stopped? Because you guys felt like you hit a wall?
Mochrie: There were other reasons. It was sort of an odd show. The network never really knew what it was or how popular it was. When we first started as a summer replacement, we got great ratings and everything was fine and then they decided, because the show was so cheap, they put us up against “Friends” and “Survivor.” Totally killed us in the ratings, but we still made the network money because the show was so cheap to produce. Then a new regime came in at ABC ... [and the show] was canceled, although we were never actually told it was canceled. As far as I know, we're still on hiatus, but it has been eight years, so I’m willing to let that go.
A&E: Don’t think you'll be getting that call anytime soon.
Mochrie: I’m pretty sure not. Even though we got creamed, I'm still amazed how all of us are recognized everywhere from “Whose Line.” God bless it, it gave us all a really good career. so I’m certainly thankful for the show.
A&E: I have to ask you about the mousetraps. When did you start doing that?
Mochrie: I think we were doing it fairly close to the beginning of our tour. It’s a horrible game. We’ve tried to get rid of it, but people are upset when we don’t do it. Oh, OK. We begrudgingly keep it in our show.
A&E: Is it the most painful improv game you’ve ever heard of?
Mochrie: Yeah, we've both been hurt from that game. Yeah. It's a painful, painful game.
A&E: I don’t think I've heard of any other game of improv that involved so much physical pain.
Mochrie: No, because everybody else is smarter than we are.
A&E: How many mousetraps do you tend to have on stage?
Mochrie: It changes depending on venue to venue. ... It’s always at least 100.
A&E: I understand you have a book that is coming out this year, “Not Quite the Classics.”
Mochrie: Yes. Technically, that is correct. I’m supposed to have it finished by the end of this month.
A&E: How is the writing going?
Mochrie: It’s horrible. I have quickly found throughout this process that I despise writing.
A&E: What convinced you to write the book, then?
Mochrie: I was so roped into it. My agent said, “You know, you should write a book,” and I replied, “I don't feel like I have anything pressing to say.” He got me a literary agent who hooked me up with Penguin Canada, so I said, “Alright, I'm up for a challenge.” So I was trying to figure out a way of writing a book in sort of an improvised style, so ... what I came up with is I used the first and last line of classic novels and I do a completely different middle.
A&E: I know you were trying to write it with an improv mindset. Was there much revising?
Mochrie: Oh God, yeah. A lot of editing. If you actually transcribed our improv scenes, they make no sense. They’re not funny. They make absolutely no ... It truly is an art form where the comedy is of the moment. If you try to describe to friends an improv scene that you saw, it’s really hard to get that across why you were laughing. So as I was writing, I thought, “Oh the improv is sort of a jumping off point,” then it’s honing and editing.
A&E: Do you see a connection between improv and stream of consciousness writing, which is partly what I imagined you were doing with the book?
Mochrie: On stage your thing is you just accept what comes to you and you work from that, and I’ve sort of been doing that also with this. There have been a couple of stories where I get to a point where I can’t, I don’t know what to do, where to go from, so I just kind of relax and sort of go back to the beginning and try again and find a different path to get to the same end. There are similarities between the two, but making up stuff on stage is much easier.
Photo by Dan Bergman
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