Improv. It’s high-risk, high-reward at the best of times. Success and failure competing in real time to upstage each other for the final bow.
It’s a roll of the dice, loaded by those looking on.
And, indeed, veteran improviser Alex Martyn rolls out the time-honoured whakataukī: "Pai tū, pai hinga".
The proverb describes the experience of standing (tū) and falling (hinga) ... on the way to getting the job done.
Here it flags an advisory that, despite its burgeoning popularity, improv is not for those with an eggshell ego.
Yet for this year’s Dunedin Fringe, Martyn and his partner in Ngahau Tene, Zac Nicholls, have decided to add a further level of difficulty to their metaphorical highwire act.
They’ll be performing their improv show in English and te reo Māori — making it all up in two languages, on the spot, across three nights. Oh, yes, and doing it all in song. So, let’s call it two further levels of difficulty.
However, over coffee on a recent morning, Martyn appears entirely sanguine about the whole thing.
"I actually do find it easier to do things on the spot," he says by way of explanation, sounding very much like he means it.
"Maybe musicians can relate to what having a jam feels like, with your band, instead of rehearsing the music that you’ve written together. It’s kind of like that, except you just have to be a little bit more turned on to trying to weave, especially, the lyrics into something that has some sort of coherence to it."
So, there you have it. Not so hard really.
Except ... that Martyn and Nicholls are going to attempt this across a whole range of styles.
"We’re hoping to have a sort of wheel of fortune type thing, with musical genres on it," Martyn explains.
So, the next song could be folk, maybe. Indie pop/rock, also a chance.
In English. Or te reo Māori.
Not necessarily in that order though. But potentially any combination of the above.
Depending on you, the audience, and your suggestions in that moment.
What could go wrong?
While to the casual observer the wheel might appear to ramp the whole endeavour up to impossible, Martyn actually sees it as limiting the potential for calamity and/or cacophony.
"Obviously, we don’t know all the music in the world, so if someone says ‘can you please do southwest American hip-hop’, we’re not going to be able to conjure that up out of anywhere," he says.
However, country fans, kaua e āwangawanga, don’t worry your hearts, Martyn indicates it will likely be there waiting for the wheel to stop.
The wheel will at least in part be informed by the pair’s own musical tastes, the sorts of music they play, he says.
"So, there’s a sort of Simon and Garfunkel-esque folk, New Zealand indie rock-pop."
Classic rock, yep. And jazz.
"There’s only two types of jazz we can really play and that’s kind of smooth and then weird. So there’ll be probably those two options."
And if it all comes a little unstuck at times, Woody Guthrie forgets his American geography or George Benson begins to sound a little Van Halen, that’s improv.
"There’s actually a big joy to that and the audience going, ‘they made a mistake. It is real, they are making it up’," Martyn says.
The excitement that improv generates comes from things happening right in the moment, responding to suggestions from the audience, he says.
"When you’re actually there in the room, it feels amazing. It feels, like, magical almost."
Comedy necessarily comes along for the ride.
"It almost always ends up being comedy because there is something, inherently, that makes you want to laugh about people doing things on the spot."
Ngahau Tene weaves different threads together in another way too, strands from Martyn’s various endeavours.
His day job is teaching te reo Māori at Trinity College, a new role this year, after completing the master of teaching programme at the University of Otago Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka.
"Drama and music are the other subjects I specialised in in that year, but at the moment I’m just teaching te reo Māori. All of those three things are huge parts of my life, basically at all times.
"Mai rā anō." Since forever.
Martyn, whose whakapapa connections take in Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa and Ngāti Raukawa, also flats with fluent reo Māori speakers, so it’s an everyday thing for him.
"Kāore au e tū kūmara ana ahau. Kei te mohio ahau, he koi ake taku reo Ingarahi, Pākehā i taku reo Māori," he says, modestly.
He’s not lauding his own proficiency, he says, acknowledging his English is still sharper than his reo Māori.
"Nō reira, mō ngā waiata Māori, ka tūpato ake ai me te tikanga hoki, tērā tētahi o ngā take o te tūpatotanga, kia kaua e whati te tikanga."
So, for the waiata in te reo Māori, he’ll be taking care not to do anything inappropriate.
"He pō ngahau tēnei, engari me tūpato tonu ahau, kia kaua e takahi i tētahi mea kāore au i te tino mea."
It’s a night of entertainment, but you still need to take care so as not to unintentionally trample on propriety.
He and Ōtepoti guitar hero Nicholls had been thinking about doing a gig-like improv show for some time, Martyn says.
They’ve both also studied music — and played plenty.
"Because I’m a songwriter and I write songs by myself a lot of the time, I realise that the songwriting process for me is improvisation a lot of the time. And if I’m ever writing waiata reo Māori, I will be sort of improvising that line, which I think should fit there, or what it should sound like.
"I think I was pretty self-aware that I wouldn’t be able to do an entire show solely in te reo Māori, but I could definitely do a few songs.
"And I also felt it would be great to have, not necessarily a kaupapa Māori show in the fringe, but something that was just, as Tīmoti Kāretu I think once said, ‘Kia waipuketia e tātau tēnei whenua ki te reo Māori’, to just flood the world with te reo.
"Let it be out there, regardless of whether it’s super, super serious, or just he pō ngahau, something fun, something entertaining."
While the accent is on fun, Martyn says songs can take unexpected turns in the moment.
"Some songs actually do suit a bit more of a poignant, somber kind of feel and can be really meaningful. It can often just happen and you don’t expect it, you thought you were going in for a comedy song and then you’re like, oh actually, it’s feeling like it doesn’t need so much of that.
"Zac is such an amazing musician and guitarist that I can throw anything at him and he’ll respond to it, but he’s also really good at picking up on the mood of where the song is or what it could be or should be like. That’s another magical thing, he seemingly can handle anything and know where to go and what the movement of the song should be."
Providing a little bit of narrative through-line to the evening is the character Martyn will inhabit.
"Part of the premise is that I’ll be playing a character, a singer-songwriter character — with my fellow band member Zac — who is a little bit pretentious and under the impression that the whole audience really loves him and knows all of his work and the songs and is ready to sing along and things.
"Because I think there’s something really funny about that."
Martyn’s character will introduce the beginnings of song titles, expecting the audience to know how to complete them.
He might be surprised.
"It’s quite experimental. There’s a few things which are quite experimental about it but that’s what a fringe festival is for. I’m really excited to try it out and see what happens."
This also plays to Martyn’s predilections in another way.
"I don’t know if I’m just a weird anomaly, but the gigs I have played for my own music I sometimes enjoy more talking to the audience and the banter between songs."
The final element of Ngahau Tene is that the entertainment won’t be over when Martyn and Nicholls pack their guitars away.
Each night they’ll effectively play support for a band. They have Francisca Griffin & the Bus Shelter Boys, Tiny Pieces of Eight and The Something Quartet lined up as the "headline acts" across the show’s three night.
"We’re almost opening for these other bands and I think it’s a really unique format trying to bring together a whole lot of different people. There might be the Dunedin music scene, there might be the theatre improv scene or theatrical types, fringe audiences, people learning or speakers of te reo Māori, people interested in that."
The show
• Ngāhau Tene, Pearl Diver, Tuesday, March 17, Wednesday, March 18 and Saturday, March 21.
