Here are some of my current improv projects:
- Cookbook – a solo (musical) improv show.
- Bird & Tax Collector – a musical improv duo performing TalkRadio.
- RIOT – musical long form improv since 2007.
COOKBOOK
Cookbook is my solo improv project.
Commercial Blurb
It’s time to stir the pot and offer up some ingredients to “Cookbook”, the unscripted one-person performance piece by Tom Tollenaere. The audience adds the ingredients and Tom’s brain cooks up a feast of characters, concepts, dialogues, scenes, music, songs and choreography. It will only make sense when it does, even if only in the darkest recesses of his own mind.
Disclaimer: there’s no money back guarantee if the promise of choreography isn’t realized. There are especially no refunds when it does.
Format
This is a 20-40 minute solo performance, a kind of montage based on one audience suggestion. The suggestion leads to a first scene, and subsequent scenes are either based on the suggestion or on previous scenes. I typically play several characters, animals, objects and even concepts. If a piano/keyboard is available I typically play music and sneak in a song or two. It may or may not be narrative, it may or may not be game/pattern based.
Background & genesis
I have a whole blog post on who this format came about, in case you are interested.
Video
Bird & Tax Collector
Bird & Tax Collector is a musical improv duo project by Jayda Fogel and myself. We are a transatlantic partnership spanning two different generations, musical styles, genders, and sexualities, and love to take Talk Radio out for our loyal fans worldwide. From sold-out shows in Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Greece – nowhere is too far!
Talk Radio
Inspired by radio shows and DJs choosing music based on interviews and stories from callers, “Talk Radio” by Bird & Tax Collector is a collaboration of storytelling. The audience becomes the live studio audience, and callers are represented through characters on stage. DJ Tax Collector (Tom) improvises on the piano and DJ Bird (Jayda) improvises vocally and hosts, and together they immerse the audience in music that has never been heard before, and will never be heard again. More info, pictures and performance calendar at the official Bird & Tax Collector site.
Written Songs
Because it’s so much fun … Bird & Tax Collector also do written (as in non-improvised) songs. Check out our first music video for our song “Roar” (Latex and all)!
The Royal Improphonic Orchestra & Theatre (RIOT)
RIOT is my musical longform Improv project, started in 2007. Since then we have performed 100s of shows, all over Belgium but also in e.g. UK, Netherlands, Sweden and Finland. For RIOT I am both artistic director and musical director from behind my keyboard.
Horario Estellar
Passion! Drama! Deception! Más pasión¡ That’s right, it’s time for ¡Horario Estelar¡ Tune into a brand new, never-before-seen, fully improvised madcap fusion of comedy, drama, culture, and language that reimagines Latin America’s soapiest and most pleasurable Prime Time creation, the Telenovela. Dive into a world of shocking secrets, nail-biting intrigue, star-crossed lovers, inconceivable plots, and more dastardly villains than you’ll know how to fall in love with (or throw off a cliff). It’s sexy, it’s empowering, it’s theatric, and it will leave you on the edge of your seat and begging for more.
“Horario Estellar” is an improvised telenovella. We presented this show @Impro Amsterdam 2024. The cast is Jayda Fogel (director), Luana Proença, Andromeda Watson Jones, Peter More, Matthew Watson Jones & yours truly at the piano.