pHull speed ahead

STAPH MEETING Today’s pH leadership team takes a stand.

“Where we are now is where we should have been at the beginning,” says pH Productions’ co–artistic director Jason Geis. So on the eve of his playful, late-night improv company’s fifth-anniversary party Monday 12, Geis feels they’ve only broken even?

He elaborates: pH was scrapped together out of the wreckage from the demise of Low Sodium Entertainment, a short-form alternative to iO. And what a spectacular wreck it was: That company was helmed by Aaron Haber, the self-proclaimed “badass of Chicago improv,” who formed it in 1995 as a grand “fuck you” to the scene. (The community gladly returned that sentiment, particularly after he hawked flyers for his own shows in front of iO.) They embarked on what Geis calls the “tour of food,” performing in restaurants and bars before settling into the 24-hour Coffee Craze café in Lakeview, where they ultimately put on an exhausting five shows nightly.

Things got ugly again in May 2002 when Haber and other ensemble members were forced to add “coffee-shop employee” to their résumés, working four-hour weekly shifts in exchange for stage time. Suffice it to say, the troupe wasn’t thrilled. Unbeknownst to Haber, five members (including Geis) were organizing a walkout; on August 19, 2002, the entire 23-member ensemble called it quits.

The nonprofit pH, thrust into an unstable position, didn’t have many friends or supporters to lean on, but once news of Haber’s departure circulated, people warmed up. Stage Left Theatre’s administrators, who’d had problems with Low Sodium, overcame their apprehension and let the company return in 2003—it remains in residence in this Lakeview storefront today.  At the group’s first auditions, before it had performed a single show, 45 hopefuls showed up for six spots. The process (same as now) was intensive and involved an interview round, which may have been an attempt to weed out egomaniacs who weren’t in it for the long haul, regardless of their talent.

The group had another thing going for it besides the collective community mood swing: its well-honed, time-tested sense of play. pH-style improv is very interactive. In its weekly pHrenzy and pHrenzy pHucked (the dirty version), the audience intermittently votes players off the show, à la Survivor; the other weeklies, pHamily and pHamily the Musical, have audience members offer key plot points and character traits. Try to avoid notice by sitting quietly in the back, and you’ll get called on.

The quick-change adaptability the group honed during its earlier itinerant phase has served it well in the Stage Left space. Not only is it relegated to late-night slots (on weekends, it rolls at 11pm and 12:30am); it’s also forced to perform in whatever set has been constructed. (Stage Left also rents its space to other companies.) pH has done shows in bedrooms, living rooms, castles, a world made of cheese—you name it.

But pH members take it all in stride. And when audiences don’t show—an all-too-frequent occurrence aside from packed opening weekends—the cast is game to stand out in the cold and corral passersby inside. No matter how few people buy tickets, there’s always a show. And the group’s kept busy in other ways: pH maintains a Spotlight Series Thursdays at 11pm for sketch runs written by company members, and a pHarm Team (spot a pHonetic trend yet?) system to spread itself across four college campuses. Recently, pH opened a training center at the Park District’s Gill Park fieldhouse. Sure, there are a lot of improv shows and classes in Chicago, but an unfazed pH continues to, politely, do its own thing.

It’s a far cry from Low Sodium’s “Fuck you.” Even so, it seems pH can’t shake its rebellious roots—but its go-forth-and-conquer attitude will likely serve it well in the next half-decade.“We could keep going for five more years and make rent,” Geis says. “But we’re ready for the next step. We need to find what it takes to make our shows the kind that everyone talks about. We just don’t know what that is yet.”

Ingest some chemicals on pH’s behalf Monday 12.