Article about Ms Mitchell Husband

Bainbridge improv guy will put you on the spot
By LINDSAY LATIMORE
Bainbridge Island Review Reporter
Mar 20 2009, 4:03 PM

In the world of improvisation, practice helps. But it doesn’t make perfect.

“I kind of get back to that playground mentality,” Chris Soldevilla said.

The tenets “there’s no right or wrong,” “it’s fun,” and “be comfortable” sit at the core of Soldevilla’s performance and instruction strategy. And it’s one that islanders can get the chance to experience for themselves when he offers an adult improv class at Bainbridge Performing Arts starting in early April.

Soldevilla, who moved to the island several years ago with his wife, actor Elizabeth Mitchell, got hooked on improv during his first year at Boston University. Someone from his dorm dragged him to an audition.

He’d done theater throughout high school but assumed he’d be awful at improv, a form of comedy in which actors work off spontaneous suggestions to create skits, riffs, songs and scenes that are meaningful and hopefully, hysterical.

Instead, he found a form that fit, in which the endless stories and skits he’d done for himself as an only child proved all the preparation he really needed.

He’s aware, though, that improv is intimidating for beginners. Do you have to have read tons of books? Know volumes of songs? Understand molecular biology and be completely immersed in pop culture so that you’re ready to take any cue an audience throws at you?

Not really. And the first thing Soldevilla stresses to students, whether they’re teens or adults, is that “willingness to fail, and fail miserably” is not just a key hurdle, it’s part of the fun.

For that reason, beginning improv is his favorite class to teach. He knows that the courage to walk through the door is the hardest part, and by the time his classes end in a friends-and-family performance, he has invariably seen the shyest newbies blossom into confident performers.

“To watch people do something they didn’t think they could do and overcome it, is fantastic,” he said.

After college, Soldevilla hit L.A., continuing to perform and teach improv as he picked up television and film roles. At a certain point, when he and Mitchell decided they wanted a family – and right around the time Mitchell nabbed her role as Juliet Burke on ABC’s “Lost”– they got wind of Bainbridge and began dividing their time between here and Hawaii, where the show is shot.

The existence of the EDGE, a BPA institution, was happenstance. And when Soldevilla first sat in, he admits that he didn’t expect much.

“I’m horrible at watching improv,” he said. “If it’s bad, you want to save it. If it’s good, you want to be up there.”

But the level of skill and the group dynamic compelled Soldevilla to stick around for month after month of performances for sometimes intimidatingly intelligent Bainbridge audiences.

He’s also gotten sucked into the broader BPA community; this summer, he’ll star as R.P. McMurphy in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

Often, he said, he’s the one using his teaching skills to help Mitchell make sense of her cryptic “Lost” scripts. With this show, it’ll be her turn to help him prep.

And who knows, maybe he’ll get to enjoy a little spotlight.

Although one day not too long ago, he and his family were on a Bainbridge street when a stranger approached.

He stepped back, as he’s used to doing when people stop to offer up fan love for Mitchell.

“Oh my God!” the fan said. “You’re that guy from improv!”

Never too late

Improv with Chris Soldevilla meets weekly beginning April 6, with classes running 6:30-9 p.m. at BPA. To register, call BPA at 842-8578. Catch the next EDGE show at 7:30 p.m. the first Saturday of each month at BPA.

SOURCE: Bainbridge Review