Longtime Whose Line Is It Anyway stars Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood are anything but scared when performing in front of an audience.
However, they will be without a script when they take the Fox Theater stage to perform their two-man improvisational comedy show, Scared Scriptless, on Friday, Jan. 13.
With a decade-long tenure on the American version of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, another 10 years on the reboot and seven years of appearing on the U.K. version of the show, it's safe to call Mochrie an improv king. Before his start as a certified funnyman, Mochrie studied theater, never expecting to find his way into the comedy world.
"I had no idea what improv was until I saw Jonathan Winters on a talk show," he recalls. "I just thought, 'This guy is funny!' And because I'm so elderly, improv just wasn't a part of mainstream entertainment when I started becoming interested in comedy. When I did start performing improv, I knew it was what I wanted to do."
Along with Ryan Stiles and Wayne Brady, Mochrie, now 65, became a main cast member on the American version of Whose Line in 1998. The three main men take turns participating in improv games such as Scenes from a Hat, Party Quirks, Props and the much-disliked by the majority of the cast musical improv game: Hoedown.
Certain games required host Drew Carey to ask the studio audience for suggestions about specific topics or situations, while at other times suggestions were written by the production staff or submitted by the audience in advance.
Whose Line had multiple recurring actors who would take on the role of the fourth improv-er on each episode. Sherwood, among the many recurring actors, appeared in 71 episodes of the show, making him the second-most-prolific recurring cast member just behind Greg Proops.
"Brad and I didn't have a ton of opportunities to be on stage with each other before getting on Whose Line together," Mochrie recalls. "We're both stage hogs."
The pair have intermittently toured North America with their two-man show since the early 2000s. Initially, the show was called "An Evening with Colin and Brad."
"We changed the name to Scared Scriptless because we love puns and trying to figure out dumb things to call things," Mochrie says. "It also makes people really slow down and think about the title, which we like."
When first toying with the idea of the tour, having only two people on stage felt a bit foreign to the duo, but Mochrie says the two have a brotherly sibling-type relationship and have always had good stage chemistry, which made the transition from four to two much easier.
"He's the irritating, younger brother pestering me," Mochrie says. "We have a very good road relationship. A good dichotomy. He's a little OCD; he thinks of details that I would never think of. And I'm there to make sure he doesn't have a stroke. We like to say our show is just Whose Line without the tall guy or the Black guy."
With a similar format to Whose Line, Scared Scriptless requires audience suggestions and quick thinking. In order to make sure things go smoothly, the pair try to keep up with recent pop culture happenings.
"We get some pretty niche things as suggestions," he says. "Brad typically keeps up with all of the new music because that's his wheelhouse. It's always good to have passing knowledge of that stuff, though. It's a muscle that gets flabby if you don't use it for a while."
The core of the show has stayed the same over the years. Mochrie and Sherwood continue to garner laughs from audiences around the world, on television and in person, playing familiar Whose Line games, but also creating fresh, new games on the spot.
After over two decades of bantering and performing together, Mochrie and Sherwood feel nothing but excitement when stepping onto the stage each night.
"The stage is the best place in the world to be for us," he says. "We have trust in one another, and it all usually works out in the end. Mostly." ♦
Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood: Scared Scriptless • Fri Jan. 13 at 7:30 pm • $28-$58 • Fox Theater • 1001 W. Sprague Ave. • foxtheaterspokane.org • 509-624-1200
