Time Travel Backwards
Before the COVID-19 era, walking into the Reno Improv theater, the intimate space was quickly filled with smiles, laughter and greetings, with mutual respect between the audience and performers acting out bizarre and hilarious scenarios.
Now the theater is closed and its affiliated website has a glaring banner that reads “Shows and Classes Postponed”.
Tim Mahoney, a teacher, performer, and board member hopes its success will return, because of its importance to the wellbeing of many.
“What we're really about, is community first,” Mahoney said in an interview over the phone during this period of confinement. “It’s also a place where it's safe mentally for people to come in, be creative without the fear of their ideas being judged or told that they're not good enough or whatever,” he said of the in person experience which is no longer possible right now.
“It’s been a tough, tough few weeks,” Mahoney said. “It feels like a lot longer than that. This is the first time in almost 10 years, that I haven't performed on a fairly weekly basis. Certainly it's the first time in a long time, that I haven't been to a theater in more than a few weeks, so it's been a challenge.”
Missing the Interaction with Live Audiences
Mahoney says one of his favorite parts of performing is showing the audience a good time and, “ keep[ing] everybody's heads up a little bit. And one thing we do at Reno Improv is try to do that on a weekly basis anyways with providing our audiences a place to come and laugh for a little while and take their minds off things. So not being able to provide that absolutely necessary service of just providing a little bit of levity to people's lives is something that I think we miss as performers, but I think that our audience also misses too.”
Mahoney is also dealing with a sharp loss of income. ”A big part of my income is based through the theater and through teaching classes, so there's been a challenge that goes along with that. Yeah, it's definitely some unknowns that we're dealing with [during] these strange times,” he said. “Not knowing when we're going to be back up and running is challenging.”
Mahoney says Reno Improv, which has been around “about five years,” already faced challenges with a rapidly changing Reno. “What we don't wanna do is lose the identity of the community that we're already in,” he said going forward.
Thriving on Diversity
Mahoney said performing and teaching in such a diverse and open place has been eye opening for him and others.
“Getting all the different people of Reno in the same room together and getting them to create things together, be vulnerable and honest… And when we're vulnerable and honest on stage at an improv (show), you know, we find out a lot about the reality of things around us.”
This value gives him optimism for the future. “I'm optimistic that when this all blows over and they will want to come out on the other side that our community will be stronger as in so much that we've had to band together.”
Travel forward now, and foresee how when the performers will take their bow, including Mahoney, there will be roaring applause yet again in a sanctuary for collective expression.