Chris Borger, Sam Stralak, Nikki Hulowski, Quinn Contini, Mike Robertson in Marv n’ Berry. Photo supplied
By Liz Nicholls, .ca
Where do hit sketch comedy troupes come from anyhow?
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Ten years ago, the once-upon-a time of the Marv n’ Berry story, five improvisers found themselves hanging out, onstage and off-, at the Bonfire Festival. They were veterans of Rapid Fire Theatre’s annual extravaganza of experimental long-form improv comedy, where no idea is too crazy or impossible.
Bonfire 2015 lit something in Chris Borger, Quinn Contini, Nikki Hulowski, Mike Robertson, and Sam Stralak. “Chemistry!” declares Borger. Hundreds of Marv n’ Berry sketches — and thousands of air-miles on tours that have taken them to festivals (and awards) across the country and the continent — started happening in the decade that followed. The 10th anniversary Marv n’ Berry special that happens Thursday live at the Varscona Theatre is a ‘best-of’ special that “brings back a lot of audiences faves,” dating back to their first show, says Hulowski.
When the idea of writing sketch comedy became irresistible, Borger had only ever done improv and stand-up. As theatre constantly wants to know, what was his motivation? Improv, as Borger says, “lasts a second; it doesn’t have to be perfect. In fact, you kinda celebrate the failures. So I was excited by something that would be more polished, something you can refine a bit more, have more control of … and you’d have a product at the end.
He makes Marv n’ Berry sound almost inevitable. “We had a lot of chemistry, from our very first sketch show, and became great friends…. And we decided to keep on making dumb jokes together!”
“We needed a name, and we’d asked the audience to help with that,” says Hulowski. The people in the house seats came up with “The Dirty Teasers.” Hmm, no wonder she and her sketch-mates, in need of a name for their first out-of town venture (to the Vancouver Sketch Comedy Festival) decided to take nomenclature into their own hands. And the result was Marv n’ Berry, a comical steal from Marvin Berry of Back To The Future fame by one of their early sketches, about an office with a time machine that could only be used to fix minor clerical errors in filing.
In the Marv n’ Berry archive there’s no shortage of retrospective possibilities. Hulowski reports that when they were polling each other about their favourite sketches for Thursday’s special, they whittled down the possibilities, by means of a voting system, to a 64. “Impossible!” she laughs. “It would have been a five-hour show.” Further editing ensued. Their upcoming summer Fringe show will offer a different selection.
The variety in the Marv n’ Berry sketch vault is impressively wide. There are musical sketches. There are parodies, physical comedy, political satire, wordplay, and virtuoso scenes that call for special skills like a top-speed tongue-twister, or special choreography that demands a head-stand, or logic puzzles that set about “convincing the audience of an insane idea through logic.” The “Your Welcome” sketch available on their YouTube channel is a protracted step-by-step argument that insists that “your,” not “you’re” is the correct spelling. The brainy and the goofy co-exist shoulder to shoulder.
Hulowski, a theatre school grad with a BFA from the U of A, arrived at improv, then sketch comedy, from “a comedic family,” as she puts it. “My mom was a clown and puppeteer for a long time; my dad was a master tradesman.” Growing up in a small town north of Athabasca, “my brothers and I would write sketches and, when we got our first video camera, film them…. ” She went into theatre, both performing and writing (she was on a writer’s retreat when we talked last week), and will soon be onstage in Shadow Theatre’s at season finale Where You Are. There are multiple films in her resumé. 
Mike Robertson, Chris Borger, Sam Stralak, Quinn Contini, Nikki Hulowski, of the sketch comedy troupe Marv n’ Berry. Photo supplied
Her Marv n’ Berry mates have intriguing resumés, too; the route into sketch-writing rarely follows a straight line. Borger’s kid self “made dumb videos” with his sister on the family acreage. And he arrived at comedy from … the gym. “I was going to be a gym teacher and immediately hated it so I decided to pursue comedy….” There’s signature Marv n’ Berry logic in that decision.
As Borger and Hulowski describe, Marv n’ Berry sketches are collaborative creations. “We come to each other with pitches,” says the former, “then we all riff on them. Then whoever pitched it takes all that juice, back to their computer and comes up with a script.” Then, it’s back to the group for a trim, or a punch-up of a joke, or a new one, or a switched-up ending. “We don’t really have them finalized till we’ve performed them three or four times, based on what the audience like, what they react to, what they don’t react to….”
Sometimes characters recur in multiple sketch series. A small French boy named Lucien, played by Contini is one, “in several iterations, playing the recorder, or doing magic tricks, or just screaming….” Gary and Deb are a recurring pair who go to couples counselling to learn how to fight.
At the beginning, whenever a Marv n’ Berry sketch needed a female, Hulowski was the automatic choice. “But that didn’t happen for long,” she says appreciatively. “We each started by writing a lot for ourself (to perform). That’s changed over the years, too.“We write characters for each other.” When you’re a member of a sketch comedy troupe, perpetually on tour, “essentially you’re in a long-term relationship with the others; you’re building a family together.”
As Borger points out, sometimes a joke just won’t work “coming from a straight white guy. But if Nikki does it, it’s hilarious.” One sketch he wrote for a show called “Clearly A Pyramid Scheme,” was about the MeToo Movement; it was set in a gym called Me Too Movement. Borger and the other guys were understandably wary; Hulowski “loved the sketch and fought for it to be included.”
Their sketches vary from 30 seconds to 12 minutes, but sometimes we’ll play within that and “a sketch written to be five minutes will turn out to be 12.” Sometimes, they just want to surprise each other onstage. For a sketch called “Interpretive Lap Dance,” with Borger as the customer, Hulowski deliberately didn’t tell him what would happen — until it was in progress n front of an audience. “What makes us different from other sketch troupes is that we like to play with each other onstage…. We’re all professional improvisers, and we like to have fun!”
“We grew up together over 10 years,” says Hulowski, who was 23 when Marv n’ Berry was born. “And it was at an important developmental stage in life!”
PREVIEW
Marv n’ Berry Presents: Best Of … 10 years
Starring: Chris Borger, Quinn Contini, Nikki Hulowski, Mike Robertson, Sam Stralak
Where: Varscona Theatre, 10329 83 Ave.
When: Thursday, 8 p.m.
Tickets: eventbrite.ca
