Rick Horner, new Ensemble Director

Rick Horner (photo: Jennifer Gershon)

With over 25 years experience teaching, coaching and performing improvisation, Rick Horner has been named Ensemble Director for Bright Invention for the 2022 – 2023 season. After being a member of the ensemble for two years, Executive Director Benjamin Lloyd felt this was a logical next step for Rick. Ben said “we have been fortunate to have Rick’s experience in the ensemble. Now it feels like this is the right time for new creative leadership, and Rick was the obvious choice. I’m thrilled he is stepping in!”

Rick rehearsing with ensemble member Aimee Goldstein

Since 1997, Rick has been involved in studying, performing, coaching, and leading various improv groups in Philadelphia proper.  Rick was one of the Founders of the Philadelphia Improv Festival and was sole Founder of the F. Harold Improv Festival. Rick was one of the first House Team Directors at Philly Improv Theater (PHIT) (Team Activity Book), who created monthly long-form shows to sold-out audiences. Rick also created and has facilitated the Improv Incubator, which has been running weekly for almost seventeen years and which is open to anyone who is willing. Rick performs virtually with Vintage Improv (Timeless and the Merritt House Team), Ricochet Illustrated Improv and two teams in Improv College. Rick is also half of two different virtual duos; Holdwater and PortmanTwo. Rick created LCR, the progenitor of the fledgling Blue Bell / Ambler improv community scene, focused on creating a healthy improv community in the Philadelphia suburbs. Rick also coaches and directs a musical long form improv team (coming soon to a screen near you!) When not coaching or doing improv, Rick is re-watching Planet of the Apes movies, looking for meaning. 

Rick rehearsing with ensemble member Eric Walker, Jr.

Rick is interested in assembling the diverse, talented folks in and around the Philadelphia area into an improv community. “I have been inspired by the Bright Invention mission and am excited to develop new and innovative long form improvisation with the ensemble,” says Rick. “Improv encourages us to focus our attention on the present moment. We listen to each word that is spoken and watch each movement in order to understand who, where and when you are. This is great exercise for our brains and teaches us to trust ourselves. Improv is made up mostly of trust. Trust feels wonderful and lack of trust feels terrible.”

Ben will step back from creative leadership to focus on developing the company’s corporate training work, and to launch some new initiatives serving marginalized communities. Bright Invention will debut a new show under Rick’s leadership later this fall at their new performance venue at the Arden Theatre Hamilton Family Arts Center in Old City, Philadelphia. “I can’t wait to see what they come up with!” said Ben. “I believe it will be improv like you have never experienced it before.”

Improv 1 is free . . . ish!

“It is the cardinal difference between gift and commodity exchange that a gift establishes a feeling-bond between two people, while the sale of a commodity leaves no necessary connection.” — The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World by Lewis Hyde

ENSEMBLE MEMBERS SHEA SONSKY AND AIMEE GOLDSTEIN

This week, the teachers of our Improv 1 class, ensemble members Aimee Goldstein and Shea Sonsky, decided to make it free to enroll, and “pay-what-you-can”. They are inviting students to make donations as they go, or to join our Patreon if they choose to. Of course, this is simply a request and anyone can take the full eight-week class without a donation if they need to/choose to. In making this decision, they were responding to some prospective students who have expressed an interest in attending, but can’t because of financial constraints, most of which have been brought on by the pandemic. This decision will mean that Aimee and Shea will make drastically less money as teachers, and Bright Invention will forgo its percentage of this tution income. Aimee and Shea are facing their own financial stress. Why would they do this?

There is a relationship to the concept of value which guides Bright Invention as we negotiate remuneration. We make a distinction between the gift economy and the commercial economy, a distinction I first understood by reading Lewis Hyde’s remarkable book The Gift. We understand that our artistic creative gifts - the ones that we refine as we become better and better actor/improvisors - have no price tag, and are not for sale. Likewise, our artistic creations - our shows - are also pay-what-you-can. We expect cash payment for services we render in the commercial marketplace, primarily our work as consultants through our Creative Corporate Training Program. Yes, we are using our creative gifts here too. But the relationship to our “audience” in this case is defined by a fee-for-services arrangement. You hire us to help you solve a problem in your workplace. Our ensemble members make between $50 and $100 per hour for this work, which, it should be noted, has taken a hit during the pandemic.

WHAT YOUR ONLINE BRIGHT INVENTION CLASS MIGHT LOOK LIKE!

Classes have always fallen into a grey area between the commercial and the gift economy. It’s not stated explicitly, but as Executive Director I never want money to get in the way of someone taking a class with us. And - I want our teachers compensated fairly. So this decision by Shea and Aimee - which was entirely theirs - touched me.

We have spirited discussions in rehearsals about the word “free”. Some feel it denigrates what we do, and makes it feel like it has no value. Others feel it is a powerful marketing word and gets people’s attention. I have landed on “free-ish”.

“[The] art that matters to us—which moves the heart, or revives the soul, or delights the senses, or offers courage for living, however we choose to describe the experience—that work is received by us as a gift is received.” — The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World by Lewis Hyde

Something mysterious and fundamentally unquantifiable happens when an actor moves us, or a teacher inspires us. We feel like we have received something personal and precious. Most people, if you asked them to put a dollar amount on that experience, would look at you like you were nuts. Because even if we paid money somehow for access to that experience, the experience itself feels gifted, not sold. It has to do with “feeling bond” alluded to in the opening quote above. The world “gift” swirls around creativity. We speak of God-given gifts, creative gifts, artistic gifts. We artists understand that the urgent and mysterious energy that drives us to make things as something we have been given. It can be refined through practice and instruction, but its origin is essential, fundamental, innate.

This is why it’s so profoundly painful for so many if us when we feel how misunderstood and cheapened we become by selling that gift in a commercial marketplace. Because in the commercial marketplace of the performing arts, what’s actually being sold is a person. And as soon as you are in the business of buying and selling people (auditioning and casting, for instance) that person becomes a thing, a product. This is why the commerce of entertainment is dominated by visual forms: body shape, skin color, height, weight, etc. These are the measurements of things, not people. This warping of people into products does deep and lasting harm to the psyches of young performing artists - I speak from experience. Do I sound bitter? That’s okay. It’s actually outrage. And Bright Invention is my humble way to begin to address it.

So go ahead. Sign up for Improv 1 with Aimee and Shea! And play with them in the flowing circle of gifts they create online with you. You won’t be sorry, I promise. You may be inspired to make a gift in return.

“ . . . a gift is consumed when it moves from one hand to another with no assurance of anything in return. There is little difference, therefore, between its consumption and its movement. A market exchange has an equilibrium or stasis: you pay to balance the scale. But when you give a gift there is momentum, and the weight shifts from body to body.” — The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World by Lewis Hyde

Guest Blogger: Aimee Goldstein, ensemble member Bright Invention

AIMEE IN A HOLIDAY MELODRAMA, SITE-SPECIFIC STRUCTURED IMPROVISATION AT GLEN FOERD MANSION.

You know the feeling you get when a lot more time has passed than you had originally realized? That is how I feel about being Bright Invention’s most senior active member - me! What am I – some sort of physically active senior citizen at the mere age of 28?

L - R: BRIGHT INVENTION ARTISTIC DIRECTOR BENJAMIN LLOYD, ENSEMBLE MEMBER ERIC WALKER, JR., AND AIMEE ON THE WAY TO THE BALTIMORE IMPROV FESTIVAL!

My name is Aimee Goldstein, and I discovered Bright Invention in a park. Yes, you read that correctly. I had just completed an internship at a nonprofit theater company and was wandering around an arts festival in Jenkintown when I saw a sign for White Pines Productions (the previous name of Bright Invention). The education director at the time and I had been colleagues from another project, and she explained to me at this arts festival that White Pines was looking for an intern to assist with their improv group, Bright Invention. Needless to say that assisting as an intern had eventually morphed into becoming a full member of the Bright Invention ensemble today. 

Bright Invention is more than just an improv group to me. (How much more cliché can I get? I know.) I have been attracted to improv since I first saw short-form improvisation (funny, comedic, short scenes – much like Who’s Line is it Anyway) as a teenager. In college I took a course on improv where I also learned about long form improv, which is what Bright Invention specializes in. Long form is essentially longer improv scenes that are rooted storytelling. As long form improvisers, we can tell comedic, melancholy, and heartwarming stories. In my opinion, long form is based in truth and our lives. Life has happy moments, sad moments, and everything in between, and therefore long form touches all of that. 

Why Bright Invention? We tell stories. What more could an actor want. Part of why I love Bright Invention so much is that it can be an escape to just play around with people you trust. We meet every Monday evening in West Philly, and those regular rehearsals build trust and lasting relationships among all of us.

PRE-SHOW ENSEMBLE HUDDLE . . .

One of my fondest memories was last year’s Improvathon, which was held at the Arch Street Meetinghouse in Philadelphia. We set out to raise $500 for the William Way LGBT Center, and ended up raising $1,000 for them after a full day of improvisation and fun! Following our performance, we all carpooled to Chinatown for dim sum. (I want to point out that collectively, the ensemble is a HUGE fan of all Chinese, Vietnamese, and Japanese foods). Half the group got stuck behind a major traffic jam along the way, but we all made it there nevertheless. It was the first time that I realized that not only was this just an improv group that I was a member of, but this was also a family, and I am so happy to be a part of it (insert cheesy “aww” response here). 

The Bright Invention ensemble is such a supportive group of friends. When we aren’t being there for one another in a difficult time, we are celebrating in each other’s company. This all goes back to trust, which is something I can’t stress enough. I think one of my favorite parts of any improv show we do is the half hour before we go onstage, when we are all together. We talk about our day, joke about life, and can often be found lying on the floor or stuffing our faces with pizza. In Bright Invention we can just be raw with each other because we have gained and earned the trust in each other to do so. When I perform with Bright Invention, I am guaranteed that my scene partner will support me and have my back because I know that actor would do the same for me offstage as well. It’s really quite magical. You should come to a show and experience it sometime.

See you there!

Aimee Yaffa Goldstein

Click here to see Aimee in this year’s Improvathon Saturday February 15th!

Click here to see Aimee in one of our monthly shows: Improvasushi!

AIMEE AS MRS. WHITE AND ENSEMBLE MEMBER SHEA SONSKY AS MISS SCARLETT IN OUR INTERACTIVE PARTY SHOW, ROOM WITH A CLUE.