Sporting an electrical tape mustache and wearing a light blue shirt emblazoned with the Spanish word “Que?,” Rob Mitchelson moves slowly across the stage, arms waving languidly, doing his best impersonation of a cirrus cloud. His peace is soon broken, however, as the lusty zephyr wind (Ken Gardener), which he can never resist, sweeps him up in a whirl of hot air, low pressure and passion.

Strange? Yes, but it’s just another night of Theatresports at Loose Moose Theatre, a tradition that is celebrating its 30th anniversary. Theatresports revolves around teams of improvisers challenging each other to theatrical duels. These include “death in a minute,” “rhyming,” “one word at a time” or a “serious scene,” which is what Mitchelson and his partners on the Que? Team managed to bastardize with their wind and cloud performance. Think of the TV show Whose Line is it Anyway? and you’ve got it.

Loose Moose is celebrating the anniversary by hosting a round robin Theatresports tournament featuring current performers at the company, as well as some alumni that still consider the theatre their home. It all leads up to the coronation of a winner on the final night of competition, November 28.

Theatresports is hugely popular around the world, but what many don’t realize is that it got its start right here in Calgary, at Loose Moose.

Keith Johnstone, playwright, director, retired professor of drama and founding artistic director of Loose Moose, first developed the idea while working at the Royal Court Theatres in London. It was at Loose Moose, however, that the concept took hold. Of course, it helped that improv was illegal in England at the time. “England’s not as democratic as they like to think,” says Johnstone. “You couldn’t say a word, or make a gesture on the English stage if it hadn’t been censored first.”

The idea for Theatresports came from another sort of dramatic enterprise: wrestling. “Well, wrestling’s all fake, that is to say, it is theatre, and it is competitive between people,” says Johnstone. “It was more a vision idea at the time to apply it to theatre, but people like anything that’s like a war.”

On stage it’s a happy take on war. Teams engage in friendly competition and try not to lose control when one of their own comes up with a hilarious line, facial tick or overly dramatic stunt. It’s something that gets the participants charged up and develops into a constant desire to be onstage. “There are those people that, they just need to, it becomes almost like an addiction, you just need to perform,” says writer, director and performer A.J. Demers, who has been doing improv at Loose Moose for 18 years.

However, it’s not just Theatresports that make this Calgary company so special, it’s also the way Loose Moose picks its actors. Anyone can come to the company, volunteer, take classes for free and end up onstage. “I think we’re spoiled in Calgary because Loose Moose allows you to get up onstage and perform. It’s a very open theatre company,” says Demers. “All over the world you have to take classes and pay fees and fight to get membership and to get a little bit of stage time, whereas at Loose Moose, certainly you have to do well, and you have to succeed, and you have to learn, but you can keep showing up.”

Rebecca Northan, an accomplished actress who now lives in Toronto, comes back to perform at Loose Moose whenever she’s in town. She feels so connected to the theatre that she got married there. Northan credits the theatre for her successes and her eyes still light up with joy when she remembers past scenes that clicked. One night, long ago, as the team asked the audience for a suggested profession for a character in a skit, the inevitable cry of gynecologist rang out. Rather than dismissing it as usual, her team decided to take it on. “I played the ovaries. It was all very clinical. They had to crank it open and then it sort of opened and they entered in, sort of like they were spelunking up a cave. They ended up going down the right Fallopian tube and they got to the ovary, and the ovary was like this young 17-year-old-girl, which made sense,” she says with a smile.

It’s not all silliness at the theatre though. The actors that just can’t get enough of Theatresports consider this place to be their home, their social centre and the place where they learned as much about life as they did about acting.

Andrew Phung, who has an economics degree and works as program director for Child and Youth Friendly Calgary, has been performing with the company for nine years. He credits Loose Moose with giving him more than just a background in improv. “I grew up in northeast Calgary, and it kept me not breaking into cars. It kept me out of trouble,” he says. “I got to live a very cultured youth life, and that really helped. In high school, I didn’t really know who I was.”

Northan has orphan Christmas dinners in Toronto for Loose Moose alumni, and says the theatre is where she formed many long-lasting friendships. Phung says it gave him the skills and the confidence he uses at his day job, and Demers says Theatresports taught him how to live his life. “The philosophies that Keith Johnstone put forward are really basic — simple improv rules like be positive and say yes, take risks and know that you’re going to fail and fail gracefully and people will be all right with that,” says Demers. “A bunch of us took that into our personal lives, and that just changed everything. All of a sudden we’re taking risks, we’re doing stuff. I never would have done half the things I’ve done.”

The theatre holds many memories, hilarious performances, Northan’s wedding, and the marriage proposal that Gardener worked into the final moments of a skit (she said yes). It is clearly a special place for those who perform on its stage, but it’s also a special place for Calgary. Fortunately, all the weighty stuff about life, love and friendship is forgotten when the lights go down, and the audience just gets down to laughing.