A COFFEE WITH ... CHRIS TREW AND TAMI NELSON

For comedy duo, fun comes in teaching others how to do improv

By Kaitlin Ballard
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, June 04, 2009

Chris Trew and Tami Nelson are no different in person than they are on stage, except maybe they're not pretending to be a cab driver or a member of the opposite sex. Informal settings aside, the two jam together just as they would when performing.

Their instantaneous back-and-forth responses appear telepathically produced at times. Plain and simple, they have good chemistry, and that's why they've opened the New Movement. They teach Chris and Tami style, which consists of long-form improv comedy jam sessions that seem to flow naturally.

While drinking Topo Chico at Cherrywood Coffee House in East Austin, they shared stories about the New Movement, which opened its doors March 1 on Rosewood Avenue.

The training center was a long time coming for Trew and Nelson, who have been doing improv in New Orleans and Austin for almost a decade. When they moved to Austin shortly after Hurricane Katrina battered their hometown, there were fewer than 10 improv groups and an even smaller number of training centers, with the Hideout Theatre dominating the scene.

"When we moved here from New Orleans, we didn't have day jobs. We were just hanging out with nothing to do except learn more improv and perform more," Nelson said.

To get their names out, Trew and Nelson started going to the Hideout and signed up for a slot with the organizer of improv troupes. As a tradeoff to perform live, they had to work the door, take tickets or manage the lights, which is common for the downtown theater.

Over time their act expanded to the Velveeta Room and empty warehouses, as well as hitting the road nationally to places like Phoenix, North Carolina and Dallas.

They eventually helped form ColdTowne — a training center and theater also based on long-form — in 2006 with other improv aficionados from New Orleans, but their affiliation now is nothing more than being part of its birth. They were able to use that experience as a jumping-off point for the New Movement.

When they talk about the future of the New Movement, possibilities seem endless and ideas plentiful. Unlike most other training centers in Austin, the New Movement does not have a theater, which means their attention is devoted solely to education.

And they love their group of 50-plus students. Some are returnees, others are brand new and some are just looking to expand their communication skills. Trew and Nelson stand firm on the idea that improv applies to all walks of life. Therefore, a key feature of their training is working one-on-one to find out exactly what students want from classes, such as new material, better writing skills or just looking for a change of pace on the weekends.

"Almost more than being the perfect show, we really enjoy the perfect class," Trew said. "The moment when the class as an ensemble 'gets it,' that makes my day," Nelson said. "It's like a baby saying 'Mama.' "

The improv doesn't stop there. Trew brings his alias Terp 2 it to the stage to perform nerdcore hip-hop, a subset of the genre associated with rhyming about typically "nerdy" topics such as science. He takes his love for hip-hop and exaggerates it by celebrating the unremarkable, such as rapping solely about a backpack.

"If you're going on a trip, put a first-aid kit in your backpack ... backpack," Trew raps nonchalantly against synthesized piano and drumbeats. He also raps about having blood-red hands and then stuffs a skeleton into his backpack, in classic nerdcore style.

"Backpack" is just one of many nerdy songs on Trew's latest album, "My Weiner Touches the Ceiling," produced in association with Studio8, a comedy booking company based in Los Angeles that produces Terp 2 it music videos, as well as videos for Comedy Central. Trew also happens to be the co-founder and has known Studio8 members since New Orleans, where the initial idea was spawned.

Trew's been writing comic raps since his days in New Orleans but didn't take his act onstage until he moved to Austin and performed at Fun Fun Fun Fest and South by Southwest. Nelson also takes the stage as Boss Coyote — Terp 2 it's backup singer and all-around sidekick.

Trew's nerd-dom (and he gladly admits it) extends to his passion for pro wrestling. He's created a blog on his Web site, christrew.com, devoted to critiquing the production of wrestling matches and why wrestlers are pitted against one another, which he says applies to improv. "I have a love for booking shows and the continuity of an event ... and the way a wrestling pay-per-view event is organized, the marketing behind the individual event ... translates to what I'm doing now with booking shows," Trew said.

The duo Chris and Tami cannot hold back their enthusiasm for what's happening in Austin's improv scene, which offers more opportunities to be onstage than established comedy cities like Chicago and New York. They live and breathe the art form and have built their own language of improv, a style characteristic of the New Movement.

Ultimately, they draw inspiration from the truth in comedy, Trew said. And after thousands of hours spent on stage, literally, "I've been granted access from the comedy gods to at least try and do stuff that I really like, and that's inspiration."