The gravity of the moment was not lost on Jon Carr.
There he was, executive producer for Dad’s Garage Theatre, introducing the Juneteenth edition of a show he created, surrounded by the largest collection of Black improvisers on stage in the company’s history. Carr’s telling the audience about being the first Black ensemble member, taking his first classes 20 years ago, and seeking guidance from Amber Nash, Dad’s first female improviser.
“If you told me then what’s about to happen tonight, I would not have believed you,” he says.
What happened that night, was the fifth show for BlackGround, an the all-Black comedy troupe created by Carr. BlackGround includes Atkins Estimond, Leslie Johnson, Dad’s education director Maged Roushdi, Markis Gallashaw and Joshua Quinn. The group’s shows consist of using classic films as a prompt to improvise and imagine what the Black people on predominantly white flicks were doing.
The Juneteenth performance came with a caveat: while Estimond, Johnson, Roushdi, Gallashaw and Quinn were doing a BlackGround show in Canada, Carr was joined by 25 local Black improvisers responding to his open call.
With the 1996 sci-fi action classic “Independence Day” as their muse, improvisers took audiences on a journey through how Black people navigated life on Earth during an alien invasion. “Having some of these moments where we can put out a general call and just see who shows up — it was amazing,” Carr says. “It really helps you recognize that the community is bigger than you might think it is.”
Carr can remember when that wasn’t always the case. Historically, improv comedy is a performance space dominated by straight white men. Atlanta is no different. Through shows such as BlackGround, touring education, diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at Dad’s Garage, Carr wants bring more audiences to Atlanta’s Black improviser community.
A Black joke
The joke Black improvisers like to make is that their parents wouldn’t know what they did if it wasn’t for Wayne Brady, Emmy-winning regular on the improv television series “Whose Line Is It Anyway?,” which debuted in 1998. Carr says when Black folks hear about someone doing comedy, the first thought is that it’s a stand-up routine. Improv comedy, as the name applies, is an art that requires being both flexible and vulnerable on stage in the absence of scripts or practiced routines.
When Carr officially joined the main cast at Dad’s in 2014, he’d been taking classes there for almost 10 years. In his experience, Black and women improvisers in metro Atlanta were scarce. Talent was sprinkled across places like Dad’s, Whole World Improv Theatre and Village Theatre, but rarely working together on the same stage.
That changed one night after a show when Carr found himself at a bar with a group of local Black improvisers talking about race in the industry. Looking around at each other, the fact there were more Black improvisers in a room inspired something. “Somebody just made the joke, ‘Well, we have enough that we could just do our own Black improv team’,” he recalls.
From those conversations came the first iteration of Dad’s Garage’s first all-Black improv troupe, Dark Side of the Room in 2015. The group was comprised of Carr, Mark Kendall, Rickey Boynton, Cris Gray, Kirsten King and Andre Castenell Jr. The show let audience members pick films, TV shows and literature to prompt improvisers into offering a comedic lens to the perspective of Black characters.
BlackGround’s Johnson, an Atlanta native, says it was those Dark Side of the Room shows that drew her to Dad’s Garage. The improviser, actor and voice-over artist is now in the theater’s ensemble cast, but was also a guest player for Dark Side of the Room. She fell in love with theater in Northside High School’s (now North Atlanta High School) drama magnet program. Johnson’s love for performance followed her to Clark Atlanta University where she joined a freestyle rap group called The Black Whole.
The stream of consciousness and physicality of rap performance drew Johnson closer to the world of improv.
“I really loved the art of freestyle, just going off the top and being free with your thoughts, so that transferred into the theater with improv because I love reacting to my partner on stage and organically responding to things,” she says. “That’s why improv felt so comfortable for me to do.”
Johnson’s comfort slowly faded when she graduated from college and started taking classes at Whole World Improv Theatre downtown. She didn’t see anyone that looked like her in class. “I felt isolated,” she says, a common sentiment shared by other improvisers of color. “We just felt like we didn’t have a support system.”
Eventually Johnson and others found a home at The Village Theatre in Old Fourth Ward. Along with other Black improvisers, actors and writers Johnson helped formed Red Pill Players, an all-Black comedy troupe in 2014.
Like Johnson, Roushdi remembers being the only person of color in the room when he started doing improv in Atlanta around 2001. He saw gaps in how theaters promoted diversity. “There was this idea of, ‘Oh, representation really matters. Let’s hire these improvisers or actors of color,’ and then we still didn’t get a chance to play with each other because there was one of us in each show,” he says.
When Roushdi got invited to guest star with Dark Side of the Room, he found a home. “That’s when things started to happen,” he remembers. “I was like, ‘Oh, we’re all speaking the same language up here.’ … There wasn’t any of the inherent code switching that normally comes with being in a room filled with white people.”
The next generation
In a lot of ways BlackGround is the creative successor to Dark Side of the Room.
Carr left his post as Dad’s artistic director in 2020 for a 14-month stint at The Second City in Chicago, which was reeling from accusations of racism and discrimination by Black improvisers. He eventually left when a private equity firm purchased the theater, realizing he wanted to build toward comedy’s future, not bask in its past.
Even as Carr worked virtually from Chicago as the marketing director for Aurora Theater, he got calls from friends in Atlanta and Black improvisers about bringing Dark Side of the Room back. When he returned to Atlanta and eventually started his new role as Dad’s executive producer in February, the launch of BlackGround followed.
In putting the BlackGround team together, Carr says he asked who he felt were some of Atlanta’s best Black improvisers to take part. “Jon always seemed like a conduit for these kind of connections and communications that form these chain links to opportunities,” Johnson says. “I think BlackGround has given people of color images of themselves that they can visualize in that space.”
Typically, Dad’s doesn’t have Wednesday night shows, but thanks to the success of the literary series Write Club, Carr saw the opportunity for BlackGround. The show takes place on the third Wednesday of every month. “BlackGround is not to be just this all-star group. The goal is for it to be a place to inspire and work with new people,” he says.
Carr works closely with Roushdi, who focuses on managing classes for over 300 students, hiring teachers, training instructors and building educational programs. In addition to Dad’s diversity and inclusivity scholarship, the BlackGround team is holding auditions in August to bring younger Black improvisers into the theater. The plan is give the next generation a chance to grow and develop in the craft.
“If we build more people that have confidence in their voices and they’re not just repeating or emulating what they see on TV and the representation that is there, then it can actually start changing the landscape of the Atlanta improv community,” Roushdi says.
By his estimate, Carr feels like Atlanta has one of the fastest-growing Black improviser scenes in the country. The crowds are getting bigger, and more diverse. A quarter of Dad’s main ensemble is Black. Carr hopes to see more of this happen in other local minority improv communities.
Like his goal of building Dad’s up to a place where its lauded as one of the country’s premiere improv houses, Carr wants the same recognition for Black improvisers gracing its stage and others in metro Atlanta.
“Once people hear about it, once people learn about it, it catches fire in our community,” Carr says. “I think we’re not too far off from being one of the pinnacles of improv comedy for Black people in America.”
IF YOU GO
BlackGround
Next show 8 p.m. July 17. $12. Dad’s Garage Theatre, 569 Ezzard St. SE. 404-523-3141, dadsgarage.com.
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