Mount Olymprov

In the spring of 2018 me and a bunch of improv friends were thinking about going to an improv festival somewhere. People had different opinions but it was decided that two  criteria would be most important:

- Timing, it should be sometime when most of us had time off work, ie. during the summer holidays

- It should be somewhere warm. It was a cold and dark evening in spring so we wanted to dream of the sun.

After a few minutes of googling someone came up with an improv festival at the beginning of June in Athens. The festival was called Mount Olymprov. I immidiately got excited and started dreaming. 

As the months went on I inquired who would come and join me to the festival. In the end nobody else wanted to commit to Athens. After all, a week after Mount Olymprov, there is the international improv festival in Finland (FIIF), and everyone else thought it would be more sensible to spend their money there. They made a wise choice of course, as it is a good established festival very close to home. I, made a different choice though, deciding that if I was to go to a festival anyway it might as well be somewhere where I could have a holiday as well. So I booked the travel and the festival tickets and was set to leave to Athens not knowing anybody there beforehand.

I arrived to the festival late in the evening, missing the first part of the introduction party (the part where everyone says who they are and where they are from, or so I gather, because I was not there). Instead, after taking my stuff to the hostel I followed the map to a local bar, where the second part of the party was in full swing. People were dancing and chatting about improv and their lifes. I joined a couple of fun looking people in their wild and free dancing for a while, and tried to keep away the thoughts of not knowing anyone. All the people who were dancing were German and already knew each other, I learnt in hindsight. I had fun, although it would have been much more comfortable to have been there for the initial introductions. After a bit of dancing, and a bit of listening to conversations of people who seemed to be very important in the improv scene, I retired back to my hostel dorm. 

Because we all slept in the same hostel it was really easy to meet new people there. I believe it was the first day of breakfast that I met Gerry and Isaac, who were both travelling solo, just like me, and we ended up spending a lot of time togethere at the festival. It was a beautiful spot for breakfast too, on the roof top terrace with a straight view over the city and onto the Acropolis. Not a bad way to start one's Morning.

The second day started with a walk to Improvibe, the venue that served as the information point for the whole festival (and also is the practise and performance space of the local improv community). I was booked onto a course about Producing Improv, which is a topic that really interests me (I have done a year and a half of light improv producing already and I would be inetrested to work with producing cultural events in the future). The workshop was run by Marie Wellmann, who clearly knew what she was talking about. The workshop, was only half a day, and most of it was theory, but it gave me new insight into how to manage tasks in a Project. The producing workshop in itself could have been a several days' workshop, as the topic is so vast. It was a nice calm start to the week, and I got to talk to and work together with new interesting people, including Nathan, Barbara and that Scottish-Greek guy with a glittercovered and strokable notebook and whose name has slipped my mind for the moment.

In the evening we all headed for the theatre venue of the evening's performances. Each night there were four shows on the theatre stage, and one evening I got to play a scene in a mixer as well, which was super exciting. But I shall write more about the shows another time. 

After the shows, the festival people had arranged an evening activity for each evening. These were a really nice way to keep the people together, instead of them breaking into little cliques and smaller parties. One night we went to karaoke, and boy did the imrpovisers sing well. Another night we went to a local tavern, that had pasta that just melted in my mouth. One evening we were set to go to a picnic for a park, but the park was occupied by another party, and we were moved to a darker park, from where I left early to the hostel. I was lucky and unlucky in a way, as some people got pick pocketed, but afterwards people moved to the side of a mountain and watched the beautiful sunrise from there, which was a pity to miss.

On Thursday I had booked myself into an activity outside of the improv workshops. A few members from Improvibe had  organised a treasure hunt for us around the city of Athens. I believe one of the several Panos, had been writing the story and the puzzles for us. We went off in two groups, and we had to solve clues and perform tasks in different parts of the city. It was the most splendid fun and a really great way to get to meet new people. We had to dance zorbas on the streets of course, and our performance of the dance was dreadful but really fun. This treasure hunt is one of my favourite memories from the whole festival, and I would promote it so much, if it weren't for the fact that if it gets too popular next year there might not be space for me to attend it. So hush hush every body.

After the treasure hunt we all went for lunch and talked about everything and even played a couple rounds of the old game: "Sex with me is like Mount Olymprov…" Here are a few of those cheesy lines that we could think of that afternoon:

- Sex with me is like Mount Olymprov, hot and greasy
- Sex with me is like Mount Olymprov, cause you're gonna want to say yes, and..
- Sex with me is like Mount Olymprov, your ticket gets you in for the whole night

After lunch I had my first actual improv class of the whole festival, ran by Nathan Keates, from the UK, and I was so excited to start doing improv with people. I especially liked playing with Stelios and Isaac, both of which I had hung out with at the treasure hunt earlier. After the class Stelios, being the massive board game geek he is, showed a bunch of us to a local board game store where we played a couple of board games. This was fun, as I also like board games. 

On Friday I had an all day workshop with Fena Ortelli, called the Tiny Glass Man. I really liked his approach to creating characters, and at some point during the day we created a character that we then stuck with for the rest of the day. We played ball games with the characters and listened to the stories of the other characters with our characters. At some point it got a a bit tiring holding the character all the time, but it was really interesting to immerse into one character for so long. That is something that sadly does not happen that often in improv. 

I say I did not know a single person from the festival before hand, but alas, I did know Gary Schwartz, whose workshop I had attended previously in Helsinki. I had Gary's workshop on Saturday and I was really excited about it. Gary teaches Viola Spolin's games  and I really loved his workshop in Helsinki. The workshop in Athens, had some new interesting games, but half a day is really not long enough for this concept, as it can actually require quite a mind shift from how we (or I) usually play improv nowadays. 

On Saturday evening there was a big party at the Improvibe and on the street in front of it. I talked with a lot of people, and felt very happy about life but sad that the festival was ending and I had to leave all these lovely people. I made lots and lots of new aqcuintances and perhaps started a couple of friendships. It was sometimes challenging being there on my own, as lots of people had their friends already there with them and I had to form my connections from zero. At the same time I was able to stay open to meeting people and I had some very raw and intimate conversations with people that perhaps would not have happened if I had been surrounded by friends.

This festival stole my heart and I plan on returning this year to meet my old friends and making lots of new ones.